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Stuck in this land of the chad
© St. Petersburg Times, published December 5, 2000 Day 27 of the hostage crisis dawned crisp and cold Monday in North Florida. You might not feel like a hostage, but all of us in the state capital do. Many of us have worked with no day off since Nov. 7 -- the day voters went to the polls. Dirty laundry is piling up, the Christmas shopping is mostly undone and packages have yet to get in the mail. Our families wonder if we'll even be home for Christmas, since many of us got called away from the Thanksgiving dinner table by the Florida Supreme Court. Most of us stayed up all night on election night, waiting to see who would become president. We are still waiting. Maybe Santa will bring us a new president. We hope we don't have to wait that long. Reporters covering this mess are spending their days in tents all around the Capitol and the Leon County Courthouse across the street. They've made instant celebrities out of half the town. Former Supreme Court Justice Stephen Grimes is being paid by Fox News to do legal commentary for them. Legislators you never heard of are on CNN and Meet the Press. It's surreal. Board of Regents member Steve Uhlfelder is collecting money for representing several television stations on access questions and is doing political analysis for some of them. CBS, NBC, CNN, ABC and Fox are calling everyone they can find and hauling them down to the Capitol to analyze the situation. Over the weekend, CBS was calling us to ask if they should believe state Rep. Mike Fasano about a special session. We suggested they might want to wait. CNN didn't wait and started reporting that a session was imminent, a report they later had to retract. Rumors seem to find their way on the air quickly when the satellite trucks are parked in the front yard. Press conferences pop up constantly. We know whether it's going to be the Gore folks or the Bush folks by reading the flags. One U.S. flag and one state flag behind the podium means the Gore people are coming. Somewhere between two and 10 U.S. flags on new poles topped by golden eagles means it's the Bush people. The Republicans didn't think those puny Democrat flags were good enough, so they sent off to buy these splendid gold-fringed versions of the stars and stripes. Senate President John McKay was out of town tending to his own real estate business Monday. He has yet to decide whether he'll join the House in calling a special session. Friends say McKay is being deliberate and watching everything else. He is also aware of how weird it looks for the Legislature to be complaining to the U.S. Supreme Court that the Florida Supreme Court was changing laws after the election, while planning to come back in a special session to tinker with the laws that govern the selection of presidential electors. House Speaker Tom Feeney doesn't seem to care how nutty this all looks. He's got his helmet on, and he's ready to rock and roll into a special session. Meanwhile, protesters carrying signs and wearing "Sore Loserman" shirts or "Gore-Lieberman" signs are everywhere. The Capitol Police have locked up the Capitol complex and made everyone go through a metal detector to get inside. It seems some legislative leaders are taking their calls and letters seriously and ordered beefed-up security for us all. Satellite trucks ring the Capitol and are also arrayed outside the courthouse. A village has grown up around the trucks. Some networks are operating out of motor homes. Others have pitched tents beside the trucks and serve up lunch and dinner for their employees. CNN is complaining about the cold weather a lot. Bill Hemmer, the young reporter they have nicknamed "Chad Lad," says he had to go buy long underwear Monday after starting work in a wind chill that was allegedly 23 degrees. "One has a perception that when one is in Florida, you will be warm," Hemmer explained later. CNN has 86 people on the ground in Florida bringing the news 24 hours a day around the world. They've made Tallahassee ground zero. It is costing CNN "millions," says Eason Jordan, the network's chief news executive. Most of their reporting crew arrived in Tallahassee a day or so after the election thinking this would be a one- or two-day assignment. "It's one of the biggest, most significant stories we've covered," says Jordan. "It's a huge story. Nothing has been bigger in peacetime." All these highly paid network news people say their credit cards are being canceled back home because they've been living in exile unable to get mail or pay bills. Hemmer says he arrived in Tallahassee with two suits, three shirts and four ties. Since then he's had to buy a winter coat, have clothes sent via Federal Express and beg friends to water his plants and pick up his mail. He's been here for his 36th birthday and Thanksgiving. In Tallahassee, people have been bringing the newscasters hot chocolate, food and offers of free lodging whenever they get kicked out of hotels. No one knows when this invasion will end, but CNN and the other networks have started putting up Christmas lights on their trucks and broadcast tents. "There's a little competition setting up over who has the best decorations," Hemmer said.
 © 2006 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times
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