Florida House OKs Slate of Electors Beholden to Bush

A plan by Florida’s Republican-controlled Legislature to appoint 25 GOP members to the electoral college easily passed the lower house Tuesday, but several lawmakers in the upper chamber signaled they are not ready to take such swift action.

The state House of Representatives approved the resolution, 79 to 41, after two Democrats crossed the aisle. The state Senate is scheduled to vote on the same measure today, but Senate leaders indicated that the U.S. Supreme Court’s action late Tuesday would make a vote unnecessary.

“It appears that we have finality,” said state Senate President John McKay. “And perhaps our cautious approach has paid off. But to make sure, we will review the opinion in the morning and come to a definitive conclusion.”

Earlier Tuesday, Senate Republicans had said that if the nation’s highest court ruled in favor of Republican George W. Bush by stopping all further ballot recounts, the state Legislature might pull back.

Never in American history have state lawmakers intervened so directly in selecting presidential electors.

“The U.S. Supreme Court has a whole lot more credibility in the eyes of this country than this Legislature,” Tom Lee, a Republican state senator, said before the Supreme Court had ruled. “And a lot of the issues in front of us are the exact same ones they are mulling over right now.”

One issue before the Supreme Court was the role of the state Legislature in presidential elections. Florida lawmakers said they were hoping the court would guide them as to what action, if any, to take.

Overall, the Florida Senate has been more moderate, more cautious and more difficult to predict than the lower house since the election dispute landed in Tallahassee.

The deadline for the Florida Legislature to act is Monday, Dec. 18, when the electoral college meets to cast votes for president, legal scholars have said. States were supposed to forward results to the electoral college by Tuesday, but Democrats and Republicans have concluded that deadline is not binding.

The concurrent resolution passed by the state House says that Florida’s 25 electoral votes will go to Bush no matter what happens in court. If passed by the state Senate, the measure sets the stage for a possible showdown in Congress.

Republican lawmakers have argued that the election court battles “tainted” Florida’s electoral votes and that they need to act to cement the slate officially certified for Bush by state officials on Nov. 26.

Even on the eve of their scheduled session, several Florida senators said they still hope they won’t have to intervene.

“I just wish the Supreme Court would unilaterally slam dunk this thing so we could all go home,” Jim Horne, a Republican from Orange Park, said earlier Tuesday. “Politicians all want to be famous, but I don’t think any of us want to be reading about ourselves in the history books.”

But it was exactly that sense of history, that sense of being on the verge of something momentous, that seemed to excite many members of the House, half of whom are freshman lawmakers.

During a five-hour debate over the resolution Tuesday, some legislators prayed and invoked the Bible, told stories about their children, or waxed poetic about the Civil War and football games long past.

Rep. Mark Weissman, a Democrat from Deerfield Beach, compared the tumult over the state’s electors to the debate held 140 years ago in the old Capitol over Florida’s secession from the Union at the start of the Civil War.

“We will remember this vote to the end of our days,” he said.

Rep. Eleanor Sobel talked about tyranny.

“My grandparents came to this country crammed into tight ship quarters from Czarist Russia because they believed this was the country where their votes would be counted,” said the Democratic lawmaker from Hollywood, Fla.

Two conservative Democratic representatives broke ranks and joined the Republican majority in passing the resolution. Will Kendrick and Dwight Stansel are both from North Florida districts that voted heavily for Bush. No Republican voted against the resolution, though several come from districts that voted overwhelmingly for Gore.

Republicans also control the Senate, 25 to 15, and party lines are expected to prevail if a vote is taken today. Some Democratic state senators have talked of floating an alternative resolution to split the state’s 25 electoral votes 13-12, Bush-Gore. That would give Gore the presidency. No one seemed to think such a measure has a modicum of hope.

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Times staff writer Hector Tobar contributed to this story.