Why this former Florida lawmaker still matters after 20 years
TALLAHASSEE – The Florida Legislature is famous for failing to act. Name a problem, and politicians in Tallahassee will wring their hands and create another task force or study commission— anything to avoid making tough decisions. Restore voting rights to felons? Raise the minimumwage? Insure the uninsured? Forget it. Republicans or Democrats, it hardly matters.
But therewas one time when a slow, deliberative approach was the right response, and it’s worth recalling now amid predictions thatwe could have another extremely tight race for president like we had in 2000 between George W. Bush and Al Gore.
As that deadlock stretched well past Thanksgiving, a mad scramble ensued among Republicans to have the Florida Legislature intervene and orchestrate an end run around a Florida court system that Republicans viewed as too liberal.
With leadership of the freeworld dangling like a chad, Republicans plotted to name a full slate of electors loyal to Bush as he clung to a precarious 537-vote lead amid a slew of lawsuits and recounts.
The times were different. Bush’s brother Jeb was a first-term governor and Florida Republicans-were still flexing their majority muscle after being fully in charge for only four years. The destructive effects of term limits were becoming evident as the largest freshman class of House members in state history – 63 out of 120 – had just taken office.
Alegislative fix for the electoral deadlock was championed by House Speaker Tom Feeney, a conservative firebrand with an impulsive streak and higher political ambitions who sometimes carried a copy of the Federalist Papers in his coat pocket.
Feeney knew therewere political risks, but he plowed ahead. But it did not happen, largely because of one person: John McKay, the new Senate president. Both Feeney and McKay were on the list of the state’s 25 presidential electors. But McKay was much less partisan than Feeney and he worried that strong-arm tactics by legislators would set a terrible precedent. Itwould have been an unprecedented raw power grab.
McKay also was the newly installed leader of amore centrist Senate that historically favored a bipartisan consensus over hyper-partisan top-down politics. Even though Republicans had a 25 to15 advantage, McKay handed committee chairmanships to several Democrats, including Broward’s Steve Geller and the late Walter “Skip” Campbell.
“Iwanted to make sure thatwe didn’t have a lot of animosity in the Senate because I thought the issues thatwere facing Florida were more important to most Floridians than who the next president was going to be,” McKay said. “I felt that ifwe rushed in andwe selected the electors, which we had the authority to do, that in the future, another Legislature might use that action as a precedent or as an excuse.”
Throughout the tense 36-day ordeal, McKay shunned the national media spotlight that shone so intensely on Florida for those five weeks. He said he represented all the people of Florida, not just Republicans.
“Tom Feeney was muchmore aggressive in appointing the electors,” said Mike Fasano, the House majority leader at the time and now tax collector in Pasco County. “McKay’s approach was typical of the Senate back then. Slow and cautious.”
McKay decided on legislative intervention as a last resort, and only if the votes of Floridians would not otherwise be counted in the Electoral College. But he still didn’t like the idea and he infuriated some GOP partisans by saying that if Gore prevailed through recounts or lawsuits, he could live with that.
Feeney’s House voted on Dec. 12, 2000, to name a slate of pro-Bush electors, with the 43 House Democrats, under the leadership of Rep. Lois Frankel, loudly protesting. Twenty years later, the memories of 2000 are still very vivid for Frankel, and very troubling.
“The action by the Republican legislature to take over and decide the election was disgraceful and immoral andwould have been challenged as illegal,” Frankel said. “The infamy of the the legislative leaders was saved by a politically motivated Supreme Court that stopped the recount and handed the election to Bush. Like many who believe in democracy, I am still angry about it.”
McKay moved slowly and worked the clock like a crafty basketball coach. The Senate likely would have acted the next day, but the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in Bush’s favor and Gore conceded. Itwas over.
It could happen again, especially with Donald J. Trump in the White House, repeatedly threatening to ignore the election results. Republicans remain firmly in charge of Florida, a must-win state for Trump, governed by a major Trump ally, Ron DeSantis. Other states, including Wisconsin, have floated the idea of their legislatures picking electors.
McKay, a commercial real estate broker from Bradenton, is 72 now. After he left the Senate in 2002, he never again ran for office.
In the hindsight of history, going slow was the right call. As McKay looks back, he recalls the advice he heard fromhis father-in-law: “Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.”