Senate leader's prudence may avert acrimony

MORGAN

By LUCY MORGAN

© St. Petersburg Times, published December 6, 2000

The calm, quiet man in the eye of the storm never expected to be involved in deciding who the next president of the United States would be.

Senate President John McKay is taking his time, despite pressure from House Speaker Tom Feeney and others who think the state Legislature should put its stamp of approval on a slate of electors in the face of court challenges filed by Vice President Al Gore and others.

McKay, 52, says he is merely upholding a Senate tradition by being more deliberative. He's reviewing the issues, talking to constitutional scholars who oppose a special session as well as those who favor it and listening to his members.

"They like the idea that this might play out in the courts," McKay said Tuesday as he talked about the alternatives he faces.

He thinks there is time. While some think legislators have to approve a slate of electors by Dec. 12, McKay thinks they have until Dec. 18 -- the day the electors meet to vote for a president. And McKay is not inclined to meet on the Jewish or Christian sabbath, so forget the weekends.

Does McKay feel pressured?

"No, the only pressure is in the House's desire to move more expeditiously," he says. "Most, if not all of the senators prefer the more cautious approach."

They are keenly aware that the Legislature is moving across new ground. No presidential election has ever been this close.

It's just possible that McKay has saved the entire Legislature from two years of acrimony and hatred. Democrats are bitterly opposed to a special session and say it would damage relationships between the members for months and months to come.

If the courts decide who won the election, that would likely take the Legislature off the hook. But some members are fearful that the barrage of litigation won't be resolved by the time electors need to be in place.

No one wants Florida to lose its Electoral College votes, including McKay, who supported Texas Gov. George W. Bush.

Everyone is waiting to see what McKay will do. The national networks and a horde of reporters are bombarding McKay with requests for interviews. He has turned most of them down. Don't look for him on Meet the Press or the nightly news.

McKay has no ambition to remain in politics once his two years as president are over. He'll go home to Bradenton and resume his life of real estate and development.

He has had to make a few changes in his life to accommodate the turmoil. He and Feeney both have changed their telephone numbers -- too many calls from national reporters, some of them coming in at 2 a.m.

McKay knows he's getting lots of calls and letters from citizens, but he hasn't stopped long enough to determine how they are weighted. He says some of them are pretty nasty, but he understands that comes with the territory in such a close election.

"I don't think any one of us expected to be involved in something like this," McKay said. "No one in the Senate is reveling in this. My agenda didn't include deciding who the next president would be."

McKay expects all of this to end cordially.

"Society has very little cordiality," he notes. "We are going to try to maintain it in the Senate."

McKay's roots are deeply embedded in the political history of Florida and the South. His Scottish ancestors arrived in Tampa in the early 1800s and established a shipping line.

One member of his family served as the mayor of Tampa in the late 1850s and helped organize the "Cowboy Cavalry" to protect and move cattle to Southern troops during the Civil War. One relative worked as a reporter and editor of the Tampa Times.

When he nominated McKay to become Senate president, Sen. Don Sullivan, R-St. Petersburg, said McKay "has the wisdom to know what he does not know and the candor to admit it."

And he is "not mortgaged to any individual or group, uncompromised by the desire for attention or by the need to receive credit," Sullivan added.

And by being deliberative, McKay just may save the Legislature from itself.

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