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Jeb Bush, Florida's Governor, reportedly succumbed to the pressure that has been on him ever since his brother announced for the presidency. With tears in his eyes, Jeb apologized to his brother for letting him down. Poppy and Barbara were distraught. The family business--politics--was now tearing at the fabric of the family itself. The media reports had been hard to take: reports that Jeb hadn't worked hard enough for George, that he resented George's relatively greater success and was worried that a George in the White House would almost certainly mean there would never be a Jeb there one day. Now those notions and rumors could harden into truths passed on from one stranger to another: Jeb had failed. He had sabotaged his brother's campaign. He couldn't deliver.
Jeb left the restaurant. And instead of staying at the Four Seasons suite to savor the moment with friends and staff, George decided he just wanted to go home. He summoned the motorcade to take him and Laura and Mom and Dad back to the Governor's mansion to watch and wait and wonder. Jeb would later turn up there too. If George really came unglued at the prospect of losing, he would allow only his family to see it.
The Bush aides at campaign headquarters were beside themselves that the networks would call Florida even before polls had closed in the more heavily Republican panhandle, which is in the Central time zone. Also, the raw numbers the Bush people were seeing were telling them they were slightly ahead of Gore statewide, not behind. "I don't believe some of these states they've called," Bush said. Rove and strategist Ed Gillespie called the networks to complain. "I don't know how you can call a state that's this close!" Bush media adviser Stu Stevens protested. "It's ridiculous! It's an outrage!" It was Rove's idea to summon the camera pool into the Governor's mansion so Bush could break into the newscasts and question the Florida results himself on network television. "It's going to be a long night," Bush said.
The calls were desperate because the steam was going out of the Bush effort in the West. In California, the Florida call hit just at the wrong moment: drive time. Voters and volunteers have to be wooed on their way to work or going home. Once they get home, it's a lot harder to get them out of their comfy chairs into dark cafeterias and libraries to vote. After Florida was called, Bush volunteers just started going home or not showing up at all.
At 8:15, Gore was surfing the time zones, calling tiny radio stations in rural New Mexico, urging people to vote. Lieberman was working Arizona and Minnesota. Gore's geeks were hunched over their computers hunting for paths to the magic 270 electoral votes in states in which the polls were still open. Once they lost New Hampshire, their eyes turned to New Mexico; if that collapsed, it would come down to Oregon. Even back in New York, President Clinton had quickly concluded that, with Florida, Gore had 262 electoral votes locked up. So at the moment Clinton's wife was declared the winner of her historic Senate race, the leader of the free world was talking to a Las Vegas radio station, trolling for the last eight votes.