OT
I think this might qualify and, conveniently, it was in today's paper.
Related Features
Politics & Government
Science & Technology
Health News & Info.
Special Reports
Seven-Day Archives
Published Tuesday, November 14, 2000, in the San Jose Mercury News
Florida election czar is big Bush backer
BY DANA MILBANK AND JO BECKER
Washington Post
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- Last winter, Katherine Harris, a former real estate broker from Sarasota, flew to New Hampshire with other Floridians to campaign for George W. Bush. Going door to door with Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and other state Republicans, she handed out orange-shaped stickers and even kissed two lapdogs on their noses while meeting voters in one Manchester home.
On Monday, Harris, Florida's secretary of state, announced she would end the state's presidential vote recount today -- a decision that, if it holds up in court, would enable the Bush campaign to succeed in preventing what a spokesman said was Vice President Al Gore's attempt to ``ignore the law so that he can overturn the results of this election.''
Warren Christopher, leader of the Gore effort in Florida, said after an eight-minute meeting with Harris at her ornate Capitol office Monday morning that her deadline was ``arbitrary and unreasonable.'' Gore spokesman Chris Lehane, accused her of being ``a lackey for the Bush campaign.''
A flamboyant and controversial figure in Florida politics, Harris, 43, is not close personally to the Bush family -- Jeb Bush endorsed her opponent in a primary fight in 1998. And her Republican allies say that in insisting on today's deadline, she was simply enforcing state law.
``She's not doing anything on behalf of a party,'' said Sandra Mortham, a health care lobbyist who lost to Harris in the primary. ``She's doing what the statutes tell her to do.''
But there is no doubt that Harris is closely allied with Jeb Bush, and keenly interested in the election of his brother. In addition to her work in New Hampshire for George W. Bush, she was a co-chair of his Florida campaign and a delegate to the Republican convention. She recruited retired Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, a prominent Bush supporter who taped phone messages for Bush in Florida, to do a taxpayer-funded get-out-the-vote commercial just before the election, drawing a rebuke from the watchdog group Common Cause.
As a result of a change in the state constitution, the job of secretary of state will be eliminated in 2002, and Harris has said she is interested in running for the U.S. Senate. But she would bring a decidedly mixed record to any race.
Even top Republicans say Harris has shown little interest in the election-law side of her job. While her predecessor was credited with making campaign finance information more readily available to the public, Harris has made few proposals in the area of election reform. Though the secretary of state's job is traditionally one for internal matters such as elections and corporate governance, Harris has seen her job as promoting the state overseas.
She has flown to Barbados, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and Sydney, Australia, spending upward of $400 a night for hotels at times. She has spent more than $100,000 on travel, and her expenses last year were nearly triple that of the governor.
Energetic and ambitious, Harris benefited from her powerful family when she first ran for the state Senate in 1994. Her grandfather, Ben Hill Griffin, a cattle and citrus magnate, served in the state House of Representatives and Senate and the University of Florida's football stadium is named after him. Harris, herself reported to be worth $6 million, went to school at Agnes Scott College in Georgia, and earned a master's degree in international trade from Harvard while serving in the state Senate in 1996. She worked for IBM and then in real estate.
While in the state Senate, Harris became ensnarled in a scandal involving Riscorp, a Florida insurance company that made illegal contributions to dozens of political candidates and committees, including $20,600 to her 1994 campaign. Employees were asked to make contributions on behalf of Riscorp and then were reimbursed through fake bonus checks or fake expense accounts. A damning memo written by the secretary to Riscorp's founder later appeared in Florida newspapers: ``Katherine's office called and asked if we could give them different addresses to list for each of the checks.''
Harris denied knowledge of the matter, returned the money and was cleared in a state investigation, though her campaign director was an non-indicted ``co-conspirator.'' |
