And that is why Gore lost the 2000 Presidential election, or so says Katherine Harris, the former Florida Secretary of State now seeking to spin her popularity into a seat in Congress.
Al Gore might have had a statewide recount if he hadn't decided to "unleash the dogs of war" on Secretary of State Katherine Harris in Florida's postelection chaos.
The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights did a media-assisted hatchet job on Harris and Gov. Jeb Bush in its election post-mortem last year. And some of the male TV news anchors making snide references to her makeup wear more paint and powder than she ever uses.
Those are some of the insights gleaned from "Center of the Storm," a book Harris wrote about her experiences - and lessons learned - in the aftermath of the 2000 presidential election. The 289-page book, subtitled "Practicing Principled Leadership in Times of Crisis," is scheduled for publication in October, just before the election that Harris hopes will take her to Washington as Southwest Florida's newest member of Congress....
"When the Gore campaign began to unleash the dogs of war upon me during the difficult recount controversy, I was not inordinately surprised," Harris wrote. She also said that "at the beginning of the recount period, I had erected a firewall between my office and any partisan activity."....
Harris said the media and her Democratic critics ignored her Harvard graduate business school education and four-year term in the Florida Senate, where she led an economic development committee, and depicted her as a wealthy dilettante more interested in cutting ribbons at art galleries than the humdrum election duties of the Department of State. Throughout the book, she repeatedly states that she applied the law impartially, never caring whether her decisions favored Bush or Gore.
"I never set out to be a hero to anyone - not to President Bush, not to Gov. Jeb Bush, not to former Vice President Gore, not to the Republican Party, not to the Democratic Party and not to the media," she wrote.
She also explains the separate "protest" and "contest" phases of an election challenge, saying Gore could have had a statewide recount if he had not tried to block her from certifying the election results. Harris also raps the Florida Supreme Court for "legislating" pro-Gore rulings that were reversed by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Harris set a 5 p.m. deadline Nov. 14, one week after Election Day, for all counties to certify results of their machine recounts. Gore wanted recounts in four Democratic strongholds - but later called for a statewide recount.
"In fact, had Al Gore not fought my enforcement of that deadline (thereby enabling me to certify the election on Nov. 17, 2000, the deadline for our receipt of overseas military ballots), he could have filed his contest more than one week earlier," Harris wrote.
"When the four-justice majority of the Supreme Court ... delayed certification until Nov. 26 (thereby writing new law, not interpreting the law), they abandoned traditional judicial decorum, chiding me for being too much of a stickler about the law - as if this trait somehow constituted a defect in character," Harris wrote of Florida's highest court.
"They ruled that certification constituted such a significant event with such momentous implications for Al Gore's ability to obtain a 'full and fair' (for only four Democratic-majority counties) manual recount, that they had no choice but to legislate from the bench and change the law."
Interesting, isn't it, how the victors write the history, and how they always come out looking like Mary Magdalene. I'm not saying the Democrats wouldn't be doing the same thing if they had won, but let's take a moment for a reality check here. Shrub's brother is Governor of Florida. Harris was and is a Republican activist. The Supreme Court leans just slightly to the left of Machiavelli. And someone out there is going to tell me in all serious that Shrub won fair and square, and that the deck wasn't stacked against Gore from the start. Get a $&#^$(@ clue....
Katherine Harris, if not for her role in this heist, would likely have trouble getting herself elected Palm Beach County dogcatcher. Now she is attempting to paint herself as the innocent victim of the liberal media, and perhaps on some level she is. That hardly makes her worthy of a seat in Congress. I suppose this sorry episode just proves how much one can capitalize on a travesty if one is willing to do so. Clearly, Harris is more than willing.
If elected (and according to polls, she is a heavy favorite), Harris' constituents will get exactly what they deserve- a Republican harridan willing to prostitute her role in one of the sorriest episodes in American political history for her own political gain.
