The Big Lie Read online

  Senator Stahl was polling the group in his living room. Reality had reared its ugly head at exactly 11:34 p.m. Eastern Time, when the Associated Press called the state of Florida for MacLeod. The loss of those twenty-nine Electoral College votes made it mathematically impossible for Senator Stahl to reach 270. It wasn’t hard to imagine the euphoria at MacLeod’s penthouse on Fifth Avenue. What Jack couldn’t grasp was the reason for his father’s advice.

  “Why concede?” asked Jack. “MacLeod’s margin of victory is two-tenths of a percent, if my math is right. Anything less than half a percent triggers a mandatory recount under Florida law.”

  Until that moment, Jack had offered little more in the way of election advice than had the untouched election cake. Perhaps it wasn’t Jack’s place to speak out in this group, but healthy disagreements with his father were somewhat second nature, a positive offshoot from the bad old days of mutual verbal assault.

  Senator Stahl reached for his phone and dialed his campaign manager, who was running what was supposed to have been a victory party at the Miami Beach Convention Center. “Turn off the election coverage, Irwin. Cue the campaign video.”

  Stahl put his phone aside and looked the former governor in the eye. “Harry, what’s your answer to the younger half of the Swyteck contingent?”

  “Jack and I had this same disagreement with Gore versus Bush. The certified results on election night had Bush ahead by less than eighteen hundred votes. Even closer than this race. What did the Democrats get by challenging the result? Nothing.”

  “You can’t frame the issue in terms of whether it’s good for one party or the other. People are fed up with the Electoral College. The idea that the candidate who wins fifty-point-one percent of the vote in Florida gets a hundred percent of Florida’s twenty-nine electors is just wrong.”

  “Those are the rules, Jack. That argument is not even on the table.”

  “I understand. All I’m saying is that if you have a winner-take-all system, it’s even more important that every single vote is counted. Asking for a recount makes sense.”

  “Son, you’re being wrongheaded.”

  “What’s your point, Harry?” asked Stahl. “Don’t try, because we might fail?”

  “First of all, you will fail,” said Harry. “A recount might turn up a few hundred votes, but not eight thousand. Number two, we have a midterm election in two years. Sure, we can cry ‘do-over’ tonight and be labeled the party of sore losers. Or we can accept reality and be the party that puts our country above our party—and hopefully take back the Senate the way we took back the House two years ago.”

  There was silence in the room. If it had been just Jack and his father talking over beers, Jack would have argued the point further. But this was Harry in his element, and the advice was coming from a two-term governor of Florida who had never in his political life been forced to deliver a concession speech—not once in forty years. Harry Swyteck might have been old and retired, but he understood Florida politics.

  Everyone in the room seemed to understand that much.

  “Bring me a landline,” Stahl told his assistant. “I need to congratulate our president.”

  Jack and his father were the first to leave the Stahl watching party. Everyone else in the candidate’s living room had invested too much, hoped too much, and worked too hard over the past sixteen months to push themselves up from the couch and be the first ones out the door.

  “Was I right?” asked Harry. He was in the passenger seat, glancing over at Jack in the glow of dashboard lights.

  “I don’t know. But I respect you enough to say you made sense.”

  “Thank you. I think.”

  It would have been enough for Jack to call it a night and head straight home. His father wanted to witness the concession speech, however, so Jack went with him.

  To Jack’s knowledge, there had never been a funeral at the Miami Beach Convention Center. A funeral would have been jolly compared to the mood at the Stahl election party, as election night turned into the early morning after.

  The Stahl campaign video—not live election coverage—was playing on the jumbotron, exactly as the candidate had directed. But there was no hiding the fact that Florida had gone Republican, and that there was no road to victory. Thousands of sad faces, many washed with tears, told the story. Some folks had already left, as evidenced by the pink and blue make america fabulous caps left behind.

  The campaign video cut off. Governor Greer of Wisconsin entered, stage right, in the company of his wife, three sons, two daughters-in-law, and two grandchildren. The midwestern governor had done his job and turned the Dairy State blue, but it wasn’t enough.

  It would have made sense for Greer to introduce his running mate, but the governor and his family simply lined up behind the lectern, waiting, smiling, and waving in response to applause. A moment later, Senator Stahl stepped out without introduction, probably to save himself the embarrassment of walking onstage without his wife and daughter.

  “How the heck are ya?” Stahl shouted in his trademark greeting.

  The crowd cheered and hollered with whatever voices they had left. Jack had watched plenty of concession speeches on television, but the heartbreak of loyal supporters was palpable when you were actually in the room. Stahl waited for the applause to fade—it took a while—and then began.

  “I have so, so many people to thank,” he said, “not the least of which are the sixty-seven million Americans who gave us an impressive five-million vote majority in the popular vote.”

  That was the proverbial red meat to the partisan crowd, and Stahl allowed them a moment of revelry. Then, with a pained smile, he pushed forward.

  “But first, let me take care of business.”

  “Don’t do it!” a woman shouted, joined by others with similar pleas.

  The senator’s smile drained away, and his expression turned serious. “In every campaign, often at the very moment political tension threatens to tear us apart, there comes a time to stop serving one side or another and serve democracy itself.”

  “No!”

  “Please, please,” Stahl said, quieting the crowd. He swallowed the lump in his throat, and then he continued.

  “History is a great teacher,” he said, “and our country is rich with great history. In 1824, Andrew Jackson won a plurality of the popular vote and the electoral vote, yet the House of Representatives chose John Quincy Adams president. Despite having much to say about the process, Jackson conceded.

  “In 1876, Samuel Tilden won a majority of the popular vote, but the electoral vote was disputed in four states. Not surprisingly, one of those states in dispute was Florida,” he said with a smile, drawing a few sad chuckles from supporters. “Congress appointed a commission that made Rutherford B. Hayes president. Tilden conceded.

  “Twelve years later, it happened again. Grover Cleveland won the popular vote. Benjamin Harrison won the Electoral College. Cleveland conceded.

  “In this century, Al Gore won the popular vote, but lost the state of Florida by a few hanging chads, costing him a majority of Electoral College votes. His fight went all the way to the Supreme Court. But in the end, he, too, conceded. ‘Just as we fight hard when the stakes are high,’ Vice President Gore told us, ‘we close ranks and come together when the contest is done.’

  “Many of us still feel the sting from just four years ago, when Senator Hillman won the popular vote by a bona fide landslide. But it was Malcolm MacLeod who took the Electoral College, and so Bernadette did the right thing. She picked up the phone and made the call no presidential candidate wants to make.

  “In that same spirit, I called President MacLeod about thirty minutes ago. Unfortunately he was unable to come to the phone.”

  The candidate paused to allow a chorus of boos to pass. He gathered himself, on the verge of concession, when his campaign manager approached and handed him a note. Stahl reviewed it and gazed out toward his sea of loyal supporters.

  “Well
, what a surprise,” he said with a wry smile. “I see that the president just tweeted.”

  A few laughed through their sadness, but the candidate fell silent. The crowd waited. Jack watched from a distance, sensing change in the air. Jack was too far from the stage to read the senator’s expression, so he checked the close-up on the jumbotron overhead. What he saw only fueled his sense that something was afoot. A transformation seemed to be bubbling up from deep inside the candidate, breathing life into a political soul that had been dying day by day, starting with the press conference that had turned a Democratic cakewalk into a political death march.

  Stahl cleared his throat and read aloud. “The president’s tweet says as follows: ‘I will take Senator Stahl’s phone call and accept his concession only after he apologizes to the American people.’”

  The boo-birds returned, but the candidate quieted them, signaling that there was more.

  “Hashtag—” Stahl stopped, biting back his anger, and then he finished reading the president’s tweet. “Hashtag ‘Sodom and Goliath.’”

  A split second of silence followed, as collective confusion—Goliath? WTF?—fell over the audience.

  “I’m guessing he meant ‘Gomorrah,’” said the senator.

  Silence gave way to shrieks of outrage, and then a man in the front row shouted, “Five million matter!” He said it again and again. It quickly caught on. Two women joined him, and it spread across the entire row. In a matter of seconds, the whole crowd was chanting, “Five million matter! Five million matter!”

  On it went, the crowd refusing to let their candidate finish his concession speech. As thirty seconds became a minute, and as a minute grew into two minutes, the senator seemed to come back to life and embrace the message.

  “Yes! Five million do matter!” Stahl shouted, and the crowd erupted with a roar of approval.

  “We live in a tech-savvy world in which dirty politics has gone high-tech,” he said, speaking with newfound energy. “As a businessman, Mr. MacLeod made billions of dollars mining your personal data. If you’re on social media, his campaign knows what you like, what you share, what you buy—maybe even what you think.”

  A wave of suspicious boos cascaded across the convention center.

  “Now, no candidate, no matter how strong his social-media campaign, can trick five million voters in fifty different states into voting for him.”

  “Five million matter!”

  “But what if he can win the White House simply by convincing eight thousand voters in Central Florida to hate me enough to vote for him?”

  “Five million matter!”

  “When the votes of five million Americans are ignored—and when a presidential election is won with hate-filled e-mails strategically targeted to eight thousand voters in Polk County, Florida—something is wrong!”

  “Five million matter!”

  “When five million votes are ignored—and when the White House is won with bald-faced lies strategically targeted to scare the living crap out of eight thousand voters in rural Brevard County—something is wrong!”

  “Five million matter!”

  “No, Mr. MacLeod. I will not apologize. Nor will I concede. This fight is not over! Not over by a long shot! Hashtag ‘Five Million Matter!’”

  The roar became a crescendo, and the confetti that had been intended for the victory celebration fell by the bucketful from the rafters.

  Jack watched in amazement. Not since the Pope’s first visit to Miami had he seen such mob hysteria, when the Hispanic faithful unleashed their wrath against an unwitting street vendor for hawking T-shirts that should have said el papa—the Pope—but instead said, la papa—the potato.

  The noise inside the convention center was deafening, but Jack could see his father’s lips moving. Maybe Jack heard what he was saying, or maybe he just intuited what his father was thinking.

  “It’s political Armageddon” was what Jack thought he had heard.

  Chapter 5

  It was 2:00 a.m. when Jack texted his wife. He didn’t intend to wake her, but she answered his text with a call.

  “Looks like I’ll be with Senator Stahl at his house the rest of the night,” said Jack.

  Andie yawned into the phone. “Isn’t it victory parties that go into the wee hours of the morning?”

  “So hilarious,” said Jack.

  Immediately after the non-concession speech in Miami Beach, Candidate Stahl—he was still a candidate—convened his inner circle at his house. This time, Jack was not merely his father’s guest. He and the senator were in the kitchen with Matthew Kipner, a gray-haired Washington lawyer and nationally recognized expert on election law. Jack’s father and the rest of the Stahl team were brainstorming in the living room.

  “I want you involved in this,” said Stahl.

  The framed needlepoint on the wall, home is where the heart is, made Jack wonder how Mrs. Stahl was handling all “this.”

  “Involved how, exactly?” Jack asked, though he had a general idea.

  The 130 million Americans who voted on Election Day didn’t actually vote for Stahl or MacLeod. They voted for a slate of electors chosen by the respective political parties. By law, the nation’s 538 members of the Electoral College were scheduled to convene in their respective state capitals on December 14 and vote. Until that happened, there was no president-elect.

  “Right now we have 265 Democrats in the Electoral College,” said Stahl. “That leaves us thirty-nine days to convince five Republican electors to break ranks and vote for the winner of the popular vote—yours truly.”

  Jack paused. It seemed like high time to clear the air. “Maybe my father hasn’t told you, but I’m—”

  “An independent,” said the senator. “I know.”

  “I’m sorry you lost. But if you’re asking me to lean on my father to help you change the minds of Republican electors, I’m not your man.”

  The senator took a seat at the barstool, looking at Jack from the other side of the granite-top island. “This isn’t about politics.”

  Jack couldn’t count the number of times he’d heard those words from a politician. But he let the senator finish.

  “If we find Republican electors willing to break ranks and vote for me, it’s going to be an epic legal battle. MacLeod and his team of lawyers will come down on them like a sledgehammer. Matt can tell you. He’s the expert.”

  Kipner elaborated. “Most states require their electors to vote by party line. That means if voters in the November election went Republican, the entire slate of Republican electors is expected to vote for the Republican candidate in December. The same is true in states that went Democratic. Any elector on the slate who crosses over to the other party is considered a ‘faithless elector.’”

  “I’m familiar with the concept. My dad and I have had umpteen arguments about the Electoral College since Gore v. Bush.”

  “Then you’re aware that when it comes to binding its electors to vote along party lines, Florida has a strange law.”

  “Why would Florida be anything but strange?” said Jack, and the remark required no explanation. From “hanging chads” and Cocaine Cowboys, to the Versace killer and the “CNN-Sucks” Bomber, Florida was a sanity-deprived society, the continued existence of which defied evolutionary theory.

  “Amen to that,” said Stahl.

  Kipner went to the coffeemaker on the counter and poured himself a fresh cup. “Our legal position is that Florida’s statute allows electors to vote their conscience. They don’t have to vote on party lines. But the statute is goofy enough for MacLeod to make a persuasive counterargument.”

  “Are you asking me to be part of your legal team?” asked Jack.

  “Not exactly,” said Stahl. “Matthew is my lawyer.”

  “Then where do I fit in?”

  Kipner answered. “We don’t know where we’ll find our so-called faithless electors. It could be Florida. It could be Alaska. Michigan. Nebraska. Wherever we find them, those electors
will need their own local lawyer.”

  Stahl leaned forward, making “the ask” more personal. “Can I count on you, Jack? If there’s a fight in Florida?”

  “Can I ask why you want me?”

  “Obviously you’re a very talented lawyer,” said Stahl. “I also like that you’re an independent. No affiliation with either party blunts the claims of partisanship.”

  “And?” Jack prodded.

  “Kipner finished the thought. “Let’s be straight: your name carries weight in any lawsuit in Florida with political implications. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

  “I appreciate your honesty,” said Jack. “But I’ve never accepted a case because of my last name.”

  “Senator Stahl needs a go-to lawyer whom he can trust, and we need that person in place, ready to step in on a moment’s notice.”

  “So, what do you say, Jack?” asked Stahl.

  Jack considered it. “If there’s a faithless elector in Florida who wants to hire me, and if I think I can help, there would be no reason for me not to take the case. But I would be the lawyer for the elector and only for the elector. I won’t take directions from the campaign.” Jack looked straight at Kipner. “Or from the candidate’s legal counsel.”

  Stahl glanced at his lawyer. “That good enough for you, Matt?”

  If Jack was reading Kipner’s expression correctly, his response was well short of “good enough.”

  “Jack, you don’t seem to understand,” said Kipner. “This battle is going to be high profile. Lawyers will be begging to play on this national stage.”

  “And I’d love to be involved—on my terms. I won’t be offended if you steer the case to someone else.”

  “Hold on,” said Stahl. “Take a minute to talk to your father, Jack. Then give us a decision.”

  “I call my own shots when it comes to my law practice. What do you want me to ask him?”

  The question was directed to the senator, but Kipner took an assertive step forward. He seemed ready to move down the list to one of those lawyers who would “beg” for the job.