Most notable among these was Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, who was savaged, not just by Gore, but by his media cohorts as well. This was a despicable display of raw, unchecked, gutter-level politics at its worst.
Another victim of the Gore onslaught was singled out for similar unfair and unjust condemnation. His name is Michael Leach, and for several days his name and reputation were trashed by Gore supporters in the national media.
It was yet another ugly instance of the Gore slime and mud operation: Sully a person so much that he can be portrayed as the demon responsible for some manufactured injustice.
This instance occurred in the case of the Seminole County absentee ballot lawsuit. It is important to note that
Democrat supporters of Al Gore brought a lawsuit to challenge all of the absentee ballots in the county because of alleged questionable treatment of some absentee ballot applications by Supervisor of Elections Sandra Goard, in allowing Republicans to add missing voter ID numbers on the address side of the request forms.
The lawsuit was unsuccessful at trial and before the Florida Supreme Court on appeal.
The Republican Party of Florida had sent out mass mailings to voters that included a tear-off reply postcard that served as an absentee ballot request form. These were signed by the voter and mailed directly to the Seminole County elections board. The mailings were prepared by a direct mail vendor, who inadvertently – through a computer error – omitted the voter ID numbers on the forms.
When the error was discovered, Michael Leach, north Florida regional director of the Florida Republican Party, was permitted access to add the voter ID number on some two thousand forms, including those of nearly 50 Democrats who had returned the Republican-provided form.
The Democrats had a similar direct mail campaign, with an important difference: Their forms were mailed by voters requesting an absentee ballot directly to Democrat Party headquarters, whereupon the requests were then forwarded to the county election board. Were any of these forms corrected after the fact by Democrat workers? Isn’t this an important distinction?
After all, the implicit argument put forth by Harry Jacobs, the wealthy Gore contributor who filed the lawsuit, was that it was improper for the request forms to be handled once they were received by the county.
Many believe the Democrat handling was highly questionable, because there could be no scrutiny by the county immediately after the voter mailed the forms.
Further, Florida election law requires that it must be the voter who submits the request for an absentee ballot. The Republicans complied, while it was the Democrats in clear violation.
Here, then, is when Leach saw his good name and reputation besmirched in the national media by Gerald Richman, a former unsuccessful Democratic candidate for the Florida Legislature and attorney for Jacobs, in an obvious attempt to disqualify tens of thousands of legal votes in order to tip the election to Gore.
And so began the onslaught.
This decent, law-abiding man was portrayed as a criminal and a lawbreaker.
"My background was investigated and my personal finances were explored," Leach told NewsMax.com.
"I was subjected to ridicule and inundated with vicious e-mails – all because Al Gore’s supporters wanted to throw the election by getting legitimate absentee votes disqualified by a court.
"Look, I’m a sworn deputy sheriff and a member of the Air Force reserves. My whole life has been dedicated to upholding the law and serving my country.
"I was thrilled that the lawsuit was dismissed and that the Florida Supreme Court upheld that decision. But this was a civil suit, and I was not a prty to it, so some still question my reputation.
"After the decision of the trial court, the attorney for Mr. Jacobs stepped in front of the microphones and continued to cast aspersions at what I did.
"This is just plain wrong, and I think it's important that the public be aware of the terrible treatment these people inflict on others just for political gain."
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Dan Frisa represented New York in the United States Congress and served four terms in the New York State Assembly.
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• Dec. 20, 8:10 a.m. – WLAC radio in Nashville, Tenn.
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