cities.
Now Bush wants to know: was this all for naught?
At midnight, he directs Jeb: “Get me figures, little brother.” 6
Jeb punches keys at a computer, entering figures for each precinct.
“I can’t believe this is happening,” Bush says. “This is like running for a city council seat.”
Bush leads Gore in the state, but as the last 10 percent of the precincts are counted, Bush’s lead narrows.
In Nashville, Gore knows this. He’s been watching the returns come in with his family, on the ninth floor of the Loews Vanderbilt
Plaza Hotel. But at around 1 A.M . eastern, he comes down to the seventh floor to watch with his staff.
It looks promising. Bush’s lead narrows from 80,000 to 60,000 to 30,000.
20,000.
10,000.
Gore and his team are well aware that a number of the last counties to report their tallies are largely Democratic ones in
the southeast corner of the state—Palm Beach, Broward, Miami-Dade.
It looks as though Gore is going to pull into the lead again.
Suddenly Bush’s lead pops up to an unsurmountable 50,000.
Gore staffers curse under their breaths. There must have been Republican-leaning counties holding their returns to the end,
they think.
It’s quiet on the seventh floor. Nobody is talking. Gore puts his hands on the shoulders of his staffers, to buck them up.
In New York City, Ellis calls his cousins in Austin.
“Our projection shows that it is statistically impossible for Gore to win Florida,” he says to his cousins’ delight.
At 2:17 A.M . EST, Ellis calls Florida for his cousin, thus giving him the presidency, Bush with 271 electoral votes (270 are needed to
win), Gore 249.
“It’s just Fox,” Rove says at Austin HQ.
The guys in the office cheer, nonetheless. The women are a little more circumspect. But then NBC calls Florida for Bush, and
the women cheer, too. Within thirty seconds, every other network follows Fox News Channel’s lead.
Bush brother Marvin takes a moment to tease the Florida governor. “Jebby!” he jokes. “You can come in from the ledge now!” 7
Now, of course, the VNS brain surgeons are fucking it up the other way.
At 2:10 A.M. , 97 percent of the state’s precincts have reported in. VNS wizards guess that 179,713 votes are still outstanding. It ends
up being about 360,000. In Palm Beach County—decidedly Gore country—VNS guesses that there are only about 41,000 votes left
to come in. It ends up being 129,000.
In Tallahassee, Gore’s main man on the ground in Florida, Nick Baldick—who helped Clinton win the state in ’96—has been disappointed
with the numbers coming in. But he’s not ready to concede just yet. Yeah, some of the news is pretty grim: Gore’s getting
killed pretty bad in the north, Baldick thinks. Much worse than he’d thought. Clinton is hurting them, he thinks. We didn’t
go on TV in time, didn’t let them know Gore was a vet and Bush was a National Guard draft dodger. Jews in the south are turning
out huge (thank God for Lieberman!), but old people in the I-4 aren’t going for Gore in the numbers they need them to. Yikes.
Studying the returns, suddenly Baldick realizes something’s a bit off.
“What the fuck’s going on in Volusia County?” Baldick thinks.
The Gore team had anticipated winning Volusia County, around Daytona Beach on the northeast coast, by 10,000 or so votes—but
on the Volusia County Web site Gore has only won by 942 votes. Baldick dispatches a ground staffer, Deborah Tannenbaum, to
the board of elections there, in DeLand.
When she calls him, she has good news. The Web site’s all screwed, she says. Gore actually won Volusia by 15,000 votes, she
says.
Baldick looks at the precincts that have yet to come in. Twelve in Broward, where they should be strong, a couple in Palm,
ditto. One in Dade. Half of Sumter County and a little bit more than half in Union. Hmm.
VNS clearly doesn’t know this—and in fact, based on Volusia’s computer screw-up,
Now Bush wants to know: was this all for naught?
At midnight, he directs Jeb: “Get me figures, little brother.” 6
Jeb punches keys at a computer, entering figures for each precinct.
“I can’t believe this is happening,” Bush says. “This is like running for a city council seat.”
Bush leads Gore in the state, but as the last 10 percent of the precincts are counted, Bush’s lead narrows.
In Nashville, Gore knows this. He’s been watching the returns come in with his family, on the ninth floor of the Loews Vanderbilt
Plaza Hotel. But at around 1 A.M . eastern, he comes down to the seventh floor to watch with his staff.
It looks promising. Bush’s lead narrows from 80,000 to 60,000 to 30,000.
20,000.
10,000.
Gore and his team are well aware that a number of the last counties to report their tallies are largely Democratic ones in
the southeast corner of the state—Palm Beach, Broward, Miami-Dade.
It looks as though Gore is going to pull into the lead again.
Suddenly Bush’s lead pops up to an unsurmountable 50,000.
Gore staffers curse under their breaths. There must have been Republican-leaning counties holding their returns to the end,
they think.
It’s quiet on the seventh floor. Nobody is talking. Gore puts his hands on the shoulders of his staffers, to buck them up.
In New York City, Ellis calls his cousins in Austin.
“Our projection shows that it is statistically impossible for Gore to win Florida,” he says to his cousins’ delight.
At 2:17 A.M . EST, Ellis calls Florida for his cousin, thus giving him the presidency, Bush with 271 electoral votes (270 are needed to
win), Gore 249.
“It’s just Fox,” Rove says at Austin HQ.
The guys in the office cheer, nonetheless. The women are a little more circumspect. But then NBC calls Florida for Bush, and
the women cheer, too. Within thirty seconds, every other network follows Fox News Channel’s lead.
Bush brother Marvin takes a moment to tease the Florida governor. “Jebby!” he jokes. “You can come in from the ledge now!” 7
Now, of course, the VNS brain surgeons are fucking it up the other way.
At 2:10 A.M. , 97 percent of the state’s precincts have reported in. VNS wizards guess that 179,713 votes are still outstanding. It ends
up being about 360,000. In Palm Beach County—decidedly Gore country—VNS guesses that there are only about 41,000 votes left
to come in. It ends up being 129,000.
In Tallahassee, Gore’s main man on the ground in Florida, Nick Baldick—who helped Clinton win the state in ’96—has been disappointed
with the numbers coming in. But he’s not ready to concede just yet. Yeah, some of the news is pretty grim: Gore’s getting
killed pretty bad in the north, Baldick thinks. Much worse than he’d thought. Clinton is hurting them, he thinks. We didn’t
go on TV in time, didn’t let them know Gore was a vet and Bush was a National Guard draft dodger. Jews in the south are turning
out huge (thank God for Lieberman!), but old people in the I-4 aren’t going for Gore in the numbers they need them to. Yikes.
Studying the returns, suddenly Baldick realizes something’s a bit off.
“What the fuck’s going on in Volusia County?” Baldick thinks.
The Gore team had anticipated winning Volusia County, around Daytona Beach on the northeast coast, by 10,000 or so votes—but
on the Volusia County Web site Gore has only won by 942 votes. Baldick dispatches a ground staffer, Deborah Tannenbaum, to
the board of elections there, in DeLand.
When she calls him, she has good news. The Web site’s all screwed, she says. Gore actually won Volusia by 15,000 votes, she
says.
Baldick looks at the precincts that have yet to come in. Twelve in Broward, where they should be strong, a couple in Palm,
ditto. One in Dade. Half of Sumter County and a little bit more than half in Union. Hmm.
VNS clearly doesn’t know this—and in fact, based on Volusia’s computer screw-up,
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