Why former Fla. lawmaker still matters
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 minimum wage? Insure the uninsured? Forget it. Republicans or Democrats, it hardly matters.
But there was one time when as low, deliberative approach was the right response, and it’s worth re calling now amid predictions that we could have another extremely tight race for president like we had in 2000 between George W. Bush and Al Gore.
As that dead lock stretched well past Thanksgiving, am ad scramble en sued 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 free world dangling like ac had, Republicans plot ted to name a full slate of electors loyal to Bush as he clung to a precarious 537-vote lead amid as lew of lawsuits andre counts.
The times were different. Bush’ s brother J eb 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– 63out of120– had just taken office.
A legislative fix for the electoral dead lock was championed by House Speaker Tom Feeney, a conservative fire brand with an impulsive streak and higher politicalwho sometimes carried a copy of the Federalist Papers in his coat pocket.
Feeney knew there were political risks, but he plowed ahead. But it did not happen, largely because of one person: John McKay, the new Senate president.
Both Fee ne ya nd McKay were on the list of the state’ s 25 presidential electors. But McKay was much less partisan than Fee ney and he worried that strong-arm tactics by legislators would set a terrible precedent. It would have been an unprecedented raw powergrab.
McKay also was the newly installed leader of a more centrist Senate that historically favored a bi partisan consensus over hyper-partisan top-down politics. Even though Republicans had a 25 to 15 advantage, McKay handed committee chairman ships to several Democrats, including Bro ward’ s Steve Gel le rand the late Walter“Skip” Campbell.
“I wanted to make sure that we didn’ t have a lot of animosity in the Senate because I thought the issues that were facing Florida were more important to most Floridians than who the next president was going to be,” McKay said. “I felt that if we rushed in and we selected the elect ors, which we had the authority todo, that in the future, another Legislature might use that action as a precedent ora san excuse .”
Throughout the tense 36- day or deal, McKay shunned the national media spotlight that shone so intense lyon Florida for those five weeks. He said here presented all the people of Florida, not just Republicans.
“Tom Feeney was much more aggressive in appointing the elect ors ,” 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 partisan s by saying that if Gore prevailed through re counts or lawsuits, he could live with that.
Fee ne y’ s House voted on Dec .12,2000, to name as late of pro-Bush electors, with the 43 House Democrats, under the leadership of Rep. Lois Frankel, loudly protesting.
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. It was 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, RonDeSantis. Other states, including Wisconsin, have floated the idea of their legislatures picking elect ors.
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 hind sight of history, going slow was the right call. As McKay looks back, here calls the advice he heard from his father-in-law: “Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.”