Friday, October 03, 2008
Lawyers line up at election 'ground zero'
Obama and McCain campaigns say 'election protection' is the motive behind recruiting hundreds of volunteer attorneys
By Julie Kay, National Law Journal
The presidential campaign staff of Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain have lined up a small army of attorneys in Florida to work through Election Day, making sure that nothing goes wrong in what is once again a key battleground state.
Ever since Bush v. Gore in 2000, Florida has been ground zero for presidential elections, renowned for razor-thin victories and voting irregularities.
With the race a nearly dead heat this year in the Sunshine State, both sides are making sure they have adequate legal muscle lined up to bone up, fan out on Election Day and be prepared in case litigation is necessary afterward.
The Obama campaign has 1,000 volunteer lawyers in Florida, in 55 of the 67 counties, said Chuck Lichtman, statewide lead counsel for the Obama campaign. Five thousand are expected to be signed up by Election Day for poll-watching.
In previous Florida elections, there have been reports of people having to wait in line for hours, of voting machines registering the wrong vote and of people being turned away from the polls for not having two forms of identification or for incorrectly being listed as felons.
“We're not hiring litigators,” said Lichtman, a partner at Berger Singerman in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. “The public doesn't want litigation. We're doing election protection. We know election law backwards and forwards and we've been looking at every issue, hard, for the last year.”
The Obama campaign and the Democratic National Committee have also sent 11 out-of-state lawyers to Florida to monitor voting problems. Leading them is David Sullivan, who took a leave of absence from his job as legal counsel for the Massachusetts governor. He has been stationed at Obama Florida headquarters in Tampa since Aug. 11. Sullivan was dispatched to Florida in 2000 and Ohio—another battleground state—in 2004. “Our mission is to protect the vote,” he said.
Also leading up the efforts in Florida are Stephen and Richard Rosenthal, two brothers who are Miami lawyers—one at the law firm Podhurst Orseck and the other leading his own appellate law firm.
Additionally, Mark Herron, a Tallahassee, Fla., election law expert, has been hired as state counsel for the Democratic National Committee. Herron—who was featured in the HBO film “Recount”—gained some notoriety in 2000 after his law firm, Akerman Senterfitt, fired him, allegedly for associating himself with Al Gore.
Now Herron is working for the firm Messer, Caparello & Self, which has no trouble with his working for Obama. “I asked them: What if some of our clients mind,” Herron said. “They said, 'We'll just get new clients.'”
Greenberg Traurig—the firm that won the recount battle in 2000—is again heavily involved on the Republican side. Greenberg partner Hayden Dempsey was named Florida co-chairman of Lawyers for McCain. Dempsey was lead counsel for Gov. Charlie Crist's campaign, deputy general counsel for former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and lead counsel and chairman of Lawyers for Bush-Cheney '04 in Florida. Most recently, he represented newly elected U.S. Rep. Vern Buchanan, whose narrow margin of victory has been disputed by Democratic rival Christine Jennings. According to McCain spokesman Mario Diaz, no out-of-state lawyers have been brought to Florida. The lawyers who are helping out are all volunteers, he said.
Greenberg Chairman Cesar Alvarez and President Richard Rosenbaum both sit on the Lawyers for McCain National Steering Committee. However, that committee is geared more to fundraising than legal strategy or litigation. A spokeswoman for Greenberg said that the firm does not mandate that its lawyers support only McCain, and that some are privately working for Obama.
Ed Pozzuoli, a partner at Fort Lauderdale's Tripp Scott, is also a potential paid legal gun for the McCain campaign. Pozzuoli, who was a lead Florida counsel for Bush in 2000, said his role is currently as a volunteer but “if it gets bad, it won't be. … We were given packets about election law in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Minnesota and asked to bone up.”
Akerman Senterfitt's lawyers are involved on both sides. Tallahassee shareholder Allan Katz is on the rules and bylaw committee of the Democratic National Committee that settled the Michigan and Florida delegate issue. He also served on the platform drafting and national finance committees for the Obama campaign. Frank Sanchez, of counsel at the Tampa office, is national finance committee co-chairman for Obama. Joe Negron, of counsel to the West Palm Beach, Fla., office, was a McCain delegate at the National Republic Convention, co-chairman of the McCain campaign committee for Palm Beach County and a Florida fundraising committee member.
Holland & Knight, another large Florida law firm, allows its lawyers to work for any candidate they like, provided they don't use the law firm's name.
Julie Kay writes for National Law Journal, a Daily Report affiliate.
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