OT: Kodiak, looks like Seminole County is Gore's last gasp.
washingtonpost.com
But interviews with a number of congressional Democrats found little optimism that the Florida Supreme Court would take the political risk of reversing Judge Sauls. Several said the seven members of that court--six Democrats and an independent--would be cautious about their actions after the Supreme Court in Washington yesterday unanimously sent back for clarification their earlier pro-Gore ruling that delayed certification of Bush's Florida victory and permitted more vote-counting.
Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), a member of the House Judiciary Committee and leading liberal voice on Capitol Hill, said of Gore: "He has one more appeal to the Florida Supreme Court, and he'll probably lose it, and then it's over."
New York lawyer Joseph A. Califano Jr., a senior official in two previous Democratic administrations, said, "It's going to be very hard to overrule that judge. He heard the evidence and the law gives him a lot of discretion in weighing it." A Washington lawyer who served in the Clinton administration with Gore agreed. "The finding of the trial court has a lot of weight in a case like this," he said.
Nonetheless, most Democrats said they were not surprised that Gore would order his lawyers to exhaust every possible legal avenue. Rep. Collin C. Peterson of Minnesota, a member of the group of conservative Democrats known as the "Blue Dogs," said, "If I were going to do it, I would probably pack it in, but he's got a right to appeal and I expect he will."
But in the wave of phone calls Gore and his running mate, Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.), launched to Democratic senators, representatives, governors and mayors, soliciting statements of support after Judge Sauls's ruling, they left the impression that they were changing legal strategies.
Those Democrats were told that Gore could still prevail on the basis of challenges to absentee votes in two Florida counties--Seminole and Martin--which have been filed by local Democrats, ostensibly acting independently of the Gore campaign.
Those suits allege that Republican election officials in those counties allowed GOP workers to add voter identification numbers and complete other paperwork on absentee ballot applications from prospective Republican voters, who are supposed to do all that themselves.
The suits ask that thousands of absentee ballots in the two counties be discarded--a shift that would put Gore far out front in the statewide tally. The larger of the two suits, in Seminole County, will be heard on Wednesday.
Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack (D) said he had been told that "the facts are clear, the law is explicit and the remedy is available."
Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) said he had received a similar briefing, adding, "I think he [Gore] will bring it to finality with the pending absentee ballot cases . . . and that will be it." But Gore spokesman Mark Fabiani said the vice president is not formally joining those suits, and some congressional Democrats questioned whether a victory achieved that way would stand up politically. One said, "That would involve throwing out the ballots of thousands of people who legally voted. I don't know how you square that with the [Gore] position that every vote should count."
Republican pollster Bill McInturff said, "If he [Gore] were to become president by throwing out 15,000 [Seminole County] votes, I would hope he would see how injurious that was to his reputation." |
