Tight race triggers recount memories

Recalling his 14-vote Tampa City Council loss, Scott Paine stresses respect for the electoral process.

By CHRISTOPHER GOFFARD

© St. Petersburg Times, published November 15, 2000

TAMPA -- Scott Paine was close. Excruciatingly, infuriatingly close. Just 14 votes shy of his opponent in his bid for re-election last year, the two-term City Council member contemplated demanding a manual recount, maybe even taking the matter to court.

Instead, he said, he considered what he does at his kids' soccer games when a referee's bum call costs the game. Try to take it gracefully, and move on.

Considering his experience, Paine has a notion of what Gov. George W. Bush and Vice President Al Gore might be living through now, as their ferocious sprint toward the finish line of the presidential campaign has given way to protracted uncertainty.

"That marathon you thought was 26 miles? It's actually 30," Paine said. "Emotionally it's just profoundly difficult. You don't know where you're going to live."

For Paine, who teaches political science at the University of Tampa, the electoral imbroglio has been more than a case of deja vu. It has also been a useful teaching tool. This Friday, in fact, students in his freshman seminar will write an essay on this question: Against the current backdrop, to what extent does the United States remain a model for emerging democracies?

While Paine voted for Gore, he does not support calls for a re-vote in Palm Beach County, where confusing ballots likely cost votes for the Democratic candidate. But he said he is disappointed the Bush campaign has sought to block manual recounts throughout the state, which he called justified in clarifying the outcome.

In his own case, Paine was losing by a single vote to Rose Ferlita in his re-election bid last year after the last precincts reported. That triggered an automatic machine recount, and when the tally put him just eight votes behind, Paine and Ferlita agreed to a second recount.

Still just 14 votes behind out of more than 31,000 cast, Paine couldn't help feeling cheated, particularly when he considered that 5,000 pieces of his campaign mail didn't arrive at voters' homes until the afternoon of the election, by some mysterious snag.

"At the time I was furious," he said, but he opted to concede rather than challenge the results. He's happy he didn't. "At the end of the day, the most important thing is that the process is respected, and you move forward," he said. "Not to be able to yield at some point, I think, says a lot about a person, and it's not good."

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