Legislature meets today to ensure Bush electors

Democrats accuse the GOP-led Legislature of taking orders from Texas.

By LUCY MORGAN, SHELBY OPPEL and DIANE RADO

© St. Petersburg Times, published December 8, 2000

TALLAHASSEE -- The Florida Legislature will gather in a special session at noon today to begin work on a joint resolution designed to ensure that Texas Gov. George W. Bush becomes the next president of the United States.

Republicans who control the Legislature say the session is necessary to be sure that Florida voters are represented when electors meet Dec. 18 to select a president.

If a clearly approved slate of electors does not exist Dec. 12, legislative leaders feel they must appoint one. They plan to appoint the same 25 electors already appointed by the Republican Party for Bush.

Legislative leaders are hopeful that the courts considering election challenges will decide the issue and make the session unnecessary. But they fear the legal tangle is unlikely to be resolved in time.

Senate President John McKay and House Speaker Tom Feeney called the special session, which is expected to cost taxpayers about $45,000 a day. It begins today and is scheduled to end Dec. 18, the day electors will meet in each state capital to vote.

But they expect to finish by Wednesday if all goes as planned.

Democrats vehemently object to the session, preferring instead to leave the question to courts that are considering more than 40 lawsuits that have challenged Bush's 537-vote lead.

Both houses must approve the measure before it is final, but Republicans have a firm majority in both the House and the Senate. GOP leaders expect to urge a joint resolution, instead of a bill, meaning that the measure that would help elect George W. Bush will not have to be signed into law by his brother, Gov. Jeb Bush.

One of the questions legislators may have to answer is which of Florida's several vote totals to include in the resolution that will be sent to the U.S. Congress.

On Thursday, moments after watching the Florida Supreme Court question attorneys for Bush and Vice President Al Gore on the finer legal points of the case, Senate President McKay and Rep. Johnnie Byrd, R-Plant City, began discussing how they will craft the resolution.

They sat in the courtroom, Byrd in the front row, McKay behind him, as they discussed the language that would declare Bush had won the state.

McKay said he thinks the Legislature needs to pick the election results available on Nov. 14 plus the overseas ballots and certify Bush with a 930-vote lead over Gore.

Byrd thinks legislators would be smarter to simply certify Bush as the winner without attaching a vote total.

At various times since Election Day, Bush has been ahead by 1,784 votes, 930 votes or 537 votes, depending on which votes were being counted.

On the eve of the session, Democrats continued to charge that the session was orchestrated by Bush's campaign. "I have little doubt that this entire exercise was initiated by the House leadership on behalf of the Bush campaign," said Sen. Tom Rosin, leader of the Senate Democrats and a supporter of Al Gore.

GOP lawmakers and the Bush campaign denied the accusations, though the Associated Press reported there were signs the two camps maintain open lines of communication. "I've talked to a lot of Bush and Gore supporters in the last 24 hours," said Feeney. "We did not discuss the special session."

Feeney told reporters he had been talking about the possibility of legislative intervention more than a week before Bush adviser James A. Baker III publicly raised the possibility in late November.

"Most of my conversations have been with friends who work at the party who were over there full-time," Feeney said. "The party has been taken over by folks from 49 other states that are coming down here and telling the party folks how to run things. But I had very little conversation about this. . . . I didn't talk to anybody in any capacity at the Bush campaign."

Today will mark the first time legislators have gathered since they met in an organizational session Nov. 21. With more than 60 newly elected freshmen in the House and committees yet to be appointed, legislative leaders are scrambling to get ready for a session that will put them in a national spotlight.

All of the major television networks are camped out around the Capitol and dozens of out-of-town reporters have gathered for the spectacle.

Today's session is expected to be brief, possibly less than an hour.

Legislators will gather and refer joint resolutions to committees for hearings that will begin Monday.

Senate rules allow the chamber to consider a joint resolution. The House, on the other hand, will have a Rules Committee meeting at 10 a.m. today to consider a change in the rules that will allow them to take up a resolution.

House Democrats, outnumbered by Republicans 77 to 43, refused to waive the rules, a step that requires a two-thirds vote of the chamber.

After an initial hearing in elections committees in both houses, the resolutions will be heard by the Senate and House rules committees before each goes to the floor for a vote.

Feeney and McKay have both pledged to allow plenty of time for debate, but expect most of it to come from Democrats who are opposed to doing anything.

Feeney and McKay say they expect the resolution to reflect the narrow majority for Bush, but they said they would approve measures giving the votes to Gore or any other candidate who is declared the winner.

Asked what he would do if the courts declare Gore the winner, Feeney said: "It depends on how he gets there."

"If I thought there was a legitimate resolution in favor of Vice President Al Gore, then I think I would do my duty."

On Thursday, McKay named the members of the two committees that will play a major role in handling the joint resolution. They included a seven-person Ethics and Elections Committee that will be chaired by Sen. Lisa Carlton, R-Osprey. Other members are Sens. Rod Smith, D-Gainesville; Betty Holzendorf, D-Jacksonville; Jim Horne, R-Orange Park; John Laurent, R-Bartow; Tom Rossin, D-West Palm Beach, and Dan Webster, R-Orlando.

McKay also named Sen. Tom Lee, R-Brandon, as Rules Committee Chairman. Lee is an independent-minded one-term senator who has often bucked tradition.

Other members of the Rules Committee named Thursday are Sens. Ginny Brown-Waite, R-Brooksville, vice chairman; Locke Burt, R-Ormond Beach; Skip Campbell, D-Tamarac; Charlie Clary, R-Destin; Steve Geller, D-Hallandale; Daryl Jones, D-Miami; Jim King, R-Jacksonville; Burt Saunders, R-Naples; Ron Silver, D-Miami Beach; Don Sullivan, St. Petersburg and Webster, Rossin, Holzendorf and Laurent.

Feeney says he will name a special committee to hear the resolution.

The elections committees in both houses are likely to be a busy place in the months to come. Republicans and Democrats in both houses have already begun to file election reform bills for the legislature's regular session next spring.

Rep. Gus Barriero, R-Miami, has filed a bill to create a "uniform statewide voting system" with standardized ballots "to eliminate confusion as to which name or issue a square belongs."

Rep. Chris Smith, D-Fort Lauderdale, filed a measure to give convicted felons speedier access to the voting booth once they've served their time. Smith filed a second measure, which would put the new felon-voting requirements into the state Constitution.

Twelve Republican lawmakers filed a "House Memorial" that asks Congress to pass laws to ensure that overseas ballots are counted, even if they have no postmark.

- Times staff writer Julie Hauserman contributed to this report.

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