Northbound

I knew that November 7, 2000 was going to be a long day around about lunchtime. I went with my boss [at the Texas Governor’s Committee on People with Disabilities] up to the Arboretum for a business lunch with some of the Austin technology crowd at the trendy Chinese place; had the lunch special of honey sesame chicken with rice noodles. The chicken was crispier and hotter than what you get at my favorite cheap non-trendy Chinese place downtown, but the sauce wasn’t as good. (Not that you could have eaten there anyway; I understand that all of my favorite greasy-spoon diners on Congress were jam-packed with media types.)

The sky begin to thunder
Wind begin to moan
I hear a voice above me sayin’, girl you better get back home
But I feel lucky
Oh, oh, oh I feel lucky, yeah
No tropical depression’s gonna steal my sun away
Mmmmmm, I feel lucky today

Mary Chapin Carpenter, I Feel Lucky

About the time that the waiter took my soup, the rain began to fall in torrents. Although it slacked off some by the time that the fortune cookie got there, it was still awfully wet outside. The GWB campaign had previously announced that in case of rain, the party was moving to the Erwin Center (the University of Texas basketball arena). Hopefully, we drove down Red River past the Erwin Center, hoping to see lots and lots of activity, lots and lots of media crews setting up inside. No such luck.

I knocked off work at 5:00 and went over to the conference room in my office, where we’d set up snacks for election-watching. Basically, since my office is so near the Capitol, and because parking was going to be at a premium for the event, it was easier just to sit around and watch election returns and eat chips and salsa than it would have been to go home and come back later. (I’d already voted absentee, by the way.) Most of my co-workers wandered in and out, while I sat and made fun of Jeff Greenfield and Chris Matthews, and especially and always Bill Schneider.

My first jolt of the evening wasn’t Florida (although that was coming); it was when CNN announced that the Georgia and North Carolina races were, ahem, “too close to call”. My blood ran cold. If the Governor lost Georgia, and North Carolina, well, I’d skip the party and go see the new Jackie Chan movie or something. Blessedly, it didn’t take too long for the networks to call those states for Bush, and the race was on.

I switched my channel back to CNN and I lit another cigarette.

Mary Chapin Carpenter, I Take My Chances

I was still in the office when CNN called Florida for Gore, so I can’t report to you what the crowd did and said at that moment. I acted like I’d been hit in the gut with a pool cue, I can tell you that. It wasn’t long after that – after I’d heard that the mariachi trio had departed the stage – that I headed on down to the main event.

The Bush 2000 Victory Party was held on Congress Avenue where it dead-ends into 11th Street, just south of the State Capitol in Austin. A big, fancy stage (with pink-granite facings, no less) was set up on the north sidewalk of 11th Street; there was a big empty podium in the middle and a smaller stage area to the right. To the left was a large DiamondVision TV screen showing CNN, and facing south. There was a second screen facing east and a third screen facing west. I was standing in the Texas Department of Transportation parking lot on the southeast corner of 11th and Congress, right in front of the towering second screen, and with a good view of the podium and the Capitol behind it.

If you saw the Capitol for the first time on your TV screens that Tuesday night, the first question you may have is whether it is always that color. It is not. The Capitol is a great big pink-granite Victorian monstrosity that is aging rather nicely after a complete restoration a few years back. The campaign put colored floodlights all over the main part of the building and in the archway at the center of the building below the dome. However, they decided not to haul the lights up to the roof, so the dome stayed its natural pink color. You had a great big building with a pink dome over a purple-colored building with an inset blue archway, and the colors changed back and forth all night. (At one point, the whole building was burnt orange, a site to warm the heart of even the most reluctant Texas-Ex.) At some points, the Capitol looked like Mardi Gras in New Orleans, at other times, Dracula’s castle. It was the perfect eerie accompaniment to a completely surreal evening.

Right after I got settled, Pat Green started playing. Green’s been kicking around the Austin music scene the past year; he’s one of those unlucky folks to be playing unconventional country music at a point in time where country radio stations will only play conventional sludge. He played a song called “John Wayne and Jesus”, but substituted in George Bush for John Wayne, and it sounded very strange indeed. (There was a line about “taking Al Gore to Sunday School” that got a bit of scattered applause.) I would have liked to have heard more of his hymn to my hometown, Interstate 35, but the set was interrupted by the news that Bush had taken a couple of more states.

What has happened down here is the wind have changed
Clouds run in from the north and it start to rain
It rained real hard and it rained for a real long time
Six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline

Randy Newman, Louisiana 1927

I remember the moment the wind changed in downtown Austin, I’ll remember it the rest of my life. I was staring up at the big screen, which was showing CNN. All around me, there were a lot of cold, wet, unhappy people doing the same thing. The CNN talking heads were bloviating left, right and center (mostly left, of course) about Bush’s failure to win Florida, and were talking in graveyard tones about his chances.

To the right of me, I heard a faint kind of murmur, which got a little louder, than a little louder, and then a little louder. Obviously, something was going on, but what? There wasn’t anything going on up on the stage, and on the screen… ohmygod, oh-my-god, OH MY GOD, they’ve changed the Gore electoral vote numbers. On the screen, Bernie Shaw put his hand to his ear and said, wait a minute, we’re getting new information, CNN has changed its projection, Florida Is Now Too Close To Call.

A loud scream rose up from the crowd, including me. I don’t think I screamed that loud when Juan Gonzales hit that home run in Yankee Stadium in the 1997 ALDS, or when Larry Brown got that last interception of Neal O’Donnell in the 1995 Super Bowl.

I don’t suppose we should have been that surprised, though. The reported vote totals in Florida were tilting towards the Governor, and GWB had been on CNN just a few minutes before saying that he thought Florida was still in play. But, you know, there’s something so official about the news, something that makes you doubt the evidence of your eyes and the things that people you trust tell you.

The stars were high above them, the moon was in the east
The sun was setting on them when they reached Miami Beach
They got a motel by the water and a quart of Bombay gin
The road goes on forever and the party never ends.

Robert Earl Keen, The Road Goes On Forever

The next few hours are a blur. I remember GWB election guru Karl Rove and Bill Bennett up there on the big screen, sniping at Bernie Shaw for calling the Florida race early, and Mary Matalin chewing great big raw bloody chunks of flesh out of Mike McCurry’s backside from time to time. But other than that, I can’t remember much. What was going on up there, on the screen, was so much more important than what was going on in the crowd or on the stage.

At one point, Wayne Newton and Bo Derek came out, and you could just almost see the collective voices of the crowd saying, “Go away, we want to see who won the Oregon vote.” They came out and did some happy-talk for awhile, and then Newton mentioned that rain, to Native Americans, was considered good luck. After that, he led the crowd in a moment of silent prayer to the Great Spirit or something or other (the closest that the event got to acknowledging the Religious Right, by the way). After that, he and Bo led the crowd in a group-sing of “America the Beautiful”. It was at that point, of course, right between the purple mountain majesties and the fruited plain, that the big screens switched over to CNN, which was announcing a Bush victory in Idaho. Newton and Derek made us sing the song again right after, and then Newton sang a (blessedly abbreviated) version of “Danke Schoen”.

After that, there was a gospel singer of some sort, and there was a moment when a Bush scion (who is reported to be good-looking or something) got out and led the crowd in a half-hearted chant. “We want Florida!” [It was George P. Bush, by the way, and he is still reported to be good looking or something.} After that, CNN was all that there was. During commercials, the screens would flash the Bush-Cheney logo and the speakers would play 80’s pop, and I don’t think I’ll ever hear the Stray Cats again without breaking out into chills.

Around about midnight (I think, my watch stopped), the weather started to get to me. Despite the heavy rainfall earlier in the day, the weather was actually kind of nice for awhile. It was cool, with a very light mist falling; atmospheric weather. (And after the summer we’ve had in Texas, very welcome weather indeed.) I was nice and comfy in my sweatshirt and jeans, until the midnight hour struck, and it started getting chilly.

Unbelievably, no one was selling coffee. NOT that I drink coffee, mind you, but I would have liked to have had a hot cup to warm up my cold hands. All they were selling by this time was cold beer (no, thanks), corn on the cob, and spicy German sausages on a stick. (Not the famous Elgin sausages, mind you, but sausages from a lesser New Braunfels outfit, and for the iniquitous price of four dollars apiece, mind you.) I got two, one for each hand, more to hold than anything else, but they managed to get in my stomach anyway. A hint for all future political event planners; do NOT serve spicy sausages if the election promises to be a tight one; people have enough heartburn as is.

Here comes the rain again
Falling on my head like a tragedy
Falling on my head like a new emotion

Annie Lennox, Here Comes The Rain

Around about 12:30, what had been cool and pleasant and misty had turned chilly and uncomfortable as the mist turned into a downpour. Without any kind of warning, the skies opened up and a hard, cold rain began to pelt down. Some thoughtful soul began to hand out bright Texas Longhorn plastic ponchos. Despite the cheery colors, everyone looked wet and cold and thoroughly miserable. “Like refugees from a garage sale,” my mother would have said if she had seen the crowd.

I think the other moment I will always remember is the moment right after the rains came down, when I was huddled in my poncho, head bowed, almost unable to see the TV screens because of the massed umbrellas, hands folded, asking for nothing else than for something to happen, for the electoral logjam to break, waiting and praying for News, something, anything.

Around this point, it was clear that whoever came out ahead in Florida was going to win the election, and Florida was still too close to call. When Judy Woodruff said that the election officials in Florida expected a final count around 3 AM, a vast collective groan could be heard. About half the crowd gathered up their things and went home at hearing that, and I joined them, trudging back to my car in the rain. I was three or four blocks away from my home when the car radio reported that GWB was the apparent winner in Florida. I honked the horn on my old Tercel in delight, and went home and fell asleep, blissfully unaware of what the morning would bring.