Word: feeney
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...peril in leading George W.'s postelection fight, Jeb recused himself, leaving the heavy lifting to his secretary of state, Katherine Harris, who relished the task and delivered the goods. But last week Jeb emerged from his self-imposed exile to comment on the effort by house speaker Tom Feeney, his friend and former running mate, to summon the legislature into special session, perhaps as early as Wednesday, to name pro-Bush electors. There may be no need to do that, but with the entire press corps in Tallahassee, no branch of government worth its salt wants to be left...
Since his angry press conference last week, Feeney has softened his tone. Legislative veterans were quick to tell him that he was not risking just his own political hide but the careers of his colleagues too. So while stressing that he is keeping all options open, Feeney's focus now is on the lawsuit before the U.S. Supreme Court. He had the legislature hire three constitutional experts, including Harvard's Charles Fried, to argue that the Florida Supreme Court unconstitutionally rewrote Florida law and usurped executive power. He has also set up a joint task force made up of eight...
Will the Florida legislature step in? It's likely, but not a foregone conclusion. House Speaker Tom Feeney says "the House is prepared to act" and order up a special session to mull naming a slate of electors if Al Gore's contest runs long in the courts. His counterpart, Senate President John McKay, says "the Senate will not be rushed to judgment... We have only one chance to get things right...
...Feeney isn't exactly quaking in his boots. Known as a sharp-witted, backslapping arch-conservative - think Tom DeLay with a winning personality - he's a hard charger who only snickers when he gets blasted in the papers. He was also Jeb Bush's running mate in his failed 1994 gubernatorial race - and his hard-right ideology was widely implicated in the loss. But if Feeney is afraid of playing the same p.r. albatross to Jeb's brother, he doesn...
...McKay, who needs to sign on for a special session to happen, is more the deliberative type, in a traditionally more deliberative body, and spotlight-shy. Like Feeney, he's new to his post. "All I wanted was the next two years for people to get along," McKay lamented recently, according to his majority leader, Jim King. "Now, I'm in the position of being in the most partisan battle in our history...