Florida Supreme Court Public Information Officer Craig Waters announces the Gore campaign's suit this morning
For an hour, it was quiet.
Then Al Gore's lawyers, smarting, declared that Sunday need not be the end of the fight.
The campaign's low-wattage legal eagles outlined for reporters a plan to reappear before the same high court with a different vehicle: a contest of the original Miami-Dade results that are headed to the Secretary of State's office on Sunday. And they will fight them in "perhaps other counties," until Gore calls them off. Some say this means weeks.
Not that Gore's worried about Sunday, mind you: Ron Klain, a senior adviser to the campaign, smiled for the cameras Thursday and said of Broward and Palm: "I believe that will be enough to get us over the top.
Meanwhile, at the counting houses
Sometime around 3 p.m. ET Thursday, Broward County counters knocked off and went home after bringing their dimple-by-dimple scrutiny of the 2,000-ballot "undervote" pile to near-completion. So far, 205 net votes for Gore — reportedly, the standard is on the loose side. In an episode much re-played on the cable news channels, a Broward counter got in a shouting match with a GOP lawyer, and Montana firebrand Gov. Mark Racicot tried to break it up.
In Palm Beach County, where Judge Jorge Labarga's vote-by-vote dimple-counting method is running its own legal gauntlet, counters will concentrate on their larger machine-accepted pile while waiting for the next court's word.
The pile at issue there — with 10,000 "undervotes," 930 isn't a tall target — could get to pick Sunday's winner.
Unless 930 isn't 930. Bush, fighting fire with fire, has a back-up lawsuit percolating to force 13 Republican counties to force canvassing boards to count all acceptable military absentee ballots and get them in by the deadline.
Monday: the next threshold
Where could it go from there? If Bush loses on the Sunday numbers, and SCOTUS turns him down, that's it. Unless he redirects, sends his lawyers back up the chain with a Gore-style contest. But that would be off-message, and anyway by then we may hear from the Florida legislature, whose Republicans can declare Bush president by a majority of representatives. Bush seems the more likely to go political.
Gore's lawyers are already into next week, salting the earth in Miami-Dade in case Palm Beach and Broward don't get their man "over the top." But from Sunday night to Monday morning, a losing Gore would have a chance to yank on the legal leash.
He can take Miami-Dade (and any other county he wants) all the way back to the Supreme Court and poke the Florida legislature in the chest. And really catch hell from congressional Democrats who already have the votes to shut Bush down — they'd love Gore to take one for the 2002 team.
If it's for the veep, would he answer? The vice president walked in those congressional moccasins for 16 years, and practically since birth. But then again, this Al Gore says he's his own man. And he's got some great lawyers.