Homo Politicus by Dana Milbank: Katherine Harris

Excerpts: Katherine Harris

Potomac Man admirably tolerates those of deviant characters even at substantial personal risk. For example, Potomac Republicans openly welcomed Katherine Harris as a congresswoman from Florida even though there were voluminous signs of trouble in her mental state. This resulted in a particularly embarrassing episode on an August day in 2006 when she held a campaign rally in Orlando.

Harris, heroine of the 2000 Florida recount before getting elected to Congress in 2002, was battling for the Republican Senate nomination. She sent out fliers announcing the airport rally and included the names of nine prominent state officials who would endorse her candidacy. But when the event came, none of the nine was in attendance. Worse, there were only 40 people in the cavernous hangar for the "rally" – and most of those were reporters or campaign workers. The best known "official" was a state representative who had been out of office for four years. When she finished her speech, red, white and blue balloons fell, political convention style, on a completely empty stage.

Evidently embarrassed by all the no-shows, announced that so few of her supporters were there because, at the last minute, a tree had fallen on the hangar where the event was supposed to be held. "There was a last-minute change in location," she announced. But there was a problem with that explanation: Airport officials said none of its hangars had been damaged by a fallen tree, and the hangar used was the one that was originally reserved. Then it turned out that one of the nine officials listed on the Harris flier was actually supporting one of her opponents.

The Orlando Sentinel unkindly pointed out that Harris had previously claimed the endorsements of four U.S. representatives, the Florida GOP chairwoman and Governor Jeb Bush. But none of them had backed her and some had actively discouraged her from running.

This began to explain why Harris's chief strategist, who like most of her staff quit the campaign, compared working for Harris to "being in insanity camp." The first of the three campaign managers to quit set his cell phone to play "The Exorcist" theme when Harris called.

And yet, Harris, a two-term congresswoman, had become a prominent figure in Potomac Land. President Bush praised her legislative work, Vice President Cheney heralded her "long record of public service," and both men stumped for her election to the Senate. She was occasionally mentioned as a vice presidential possibility in 2008.

How did somebody so loony rise so high? The answer is found in Potomac Man's legendary tolerance.

Six years earlier, Harris had been introduced to the nation as a caricature. The Washington Post's fashion critic Robin Givhan, in a critique that became known as the "Mascara Smear," described her this way: Her lips were overdrawn with berry-red lipstick--the creamy sort that smears all over a coffee cup and leaves smudges on shirt collars. Her skin had been plastered and powdered to the texture of pre-war walls in need of a skim coat. And her eyes, rimmed in liner and frosted with blue shadow, bore the telltale homogenous spikes of false eyelashes. Caterpillars seemed to rise and fall with every bat of her eyelid, with every downward glance…They were cartoon lashes. Lashes destined for a 'Saturday Night Live" skit.'"

Givhan proceeded to observe that Harris "seems to have applied her makeup with a trowel" – presciently predicting that she might not be the delicate touch needed to resolve the disputed election results satisfactorily.

It quickly turned out that Harris's problems weren't just skin deep. Though Florida's Secretary of State, she had spent almost no time before the election working on electoral issues, leaving understaffed and ill-equipped underlings to devise the ballot format that would cause the election-day chaos. Harris's office left each of Florida's counties running their elections with different, and in some cases conflicting, standards.

But Harris, by her performance in November and December of 2000, won a place in the hearts of hard-core conservatives across America. Republicans in Potomac Land privately acknowledged she was a bit odd but dared not question her rise so as not to offend the conservatives who adored her. Running for Congress in 2002, she directed those introducing her to read a text. "It is my pleasure to introduce, in my opinion, an American Heroine," the script said, adding that during the recount, "she stood her ground with grace and courage."

The hardcore conservatives loved her, and her election was pre-ordained. "She's going to be the next congresswoman from this area, like it or not," the managing editor of the Sarasota Herald Tribune wrote to a reader complaining about the lack of coverage of her Democratic opponents. "I blame our culture for craving as its public figures, women like Katherine who are very pretty, hard-working and without original ideas that I can find." The editor quit before she could be fired. But her prediction was correct about Harris's easy victory.

Harris, though a darling of conservative bloggers and talk show hosts, proved unremarkable as a legislator in Potomac Land. Months after arriving, she drew attention to herself when she was trying to parallel park her SUV and smashed another car's taillight; she got out of the car in a white tae kown do outfit. One of her most noteworthy acts was attempting to get a $10 million grant for a the felonious military contractor Mitchell Wade after he took her to the $2,800 dinner and arranged for $32,000 in illegal contributions to her campaigns. Harris at first insisted she paid her share of the dinner, then confessed that Wade had. Three months after submitting the spending request, she told the Tampa Tribune she knew little about the project.

Harris's true trademark: erratic behavior. In 2004, at a rally for President Bush, she announced that a Middle Eastern man had been arrested in Carmel, Indiana, with hundreds of pouinds of explosives. "He had plans to blow up the area's entire power grid," she said. Asked later for details, she said she had already "said too much." Indeed, she had. Federal and local officials pronounced themselves "dumbfounded" and said no such plot had been foiled.

Things got worse when Harris started her run for the Senate in 2005. When party officials were trying to talk former congressman Joe Scarborough into running, she insinuated that he had killed one of his employees, whispering about "that dead girl." (The staffer had died of natural causes.) She later declared that voters were "legislating sin" if they didn't elect Christians like herself.

Harris's aides grew worried when she told them that God wanted her to be elected to the Senate. They grew more worried when she started ignoring their advice and turning instead for strategic guidance from a "spiritual adviser," a woman who founded the Biblical Heritage Institute in Florida. They tried and failed to convince her that her clothes were too revealing for a senator. Her paranoid rants drove out the three campaign managers, her media consultant, her strategist, her field director and her political director – two dozen in all, some en masse. This only made her more paranoid.

"I didn't know I was going to get the knives in my back from my own party, and I'll be honest, it's infiltrated my campaign staff," she told one campaign crowd. She changed the locks at one of her campaign offices. She spread then retracted an account of a longtime aide leaking a damaging story about her. She announced new staffers who apparently didn't exist. She switched to the first-person plural. "Come Nov. 7, God willing, we'll be the next senator," she said.

One Florida paper decided it was watching a "freak show." Sometime during the show, Florida's GOP governor, Jeb Bush, reached the obvious conclusion that Harris "can't win." But the governor's brother knew better than to alienate the constitutency of passionate conservatives who still backed Harris. He and the vice president both flew to Florida.

"She has our support," Cheney told a Republican rally.

"I, too, encourage you to vote for Katherine Harris for the United States Senate," the president said.

Far from Potomac Land, the voters of Florida had a different view. She lost by 22 percentage points to a plain-vanilla Democrat named Bill Nelson. But she will always be welcome among Potomac Men.


		Excerpts: Katherine Harris Potomac Man admirably tolerates those of deviant characters even at substantial personal risk. For example, Potomac Republicans openly welcomed Katherine Harris as a congresswoman from Florida even though there were voluminous signs of trouble in her mental state. This resulted in a particularly embarrassing episode on an August day in 2006 when she held a campaign rally in Orlando. Harris, heroine of the 2000 Florida recount before getting elected to Congress in 2002, was battling for the Republican Senate nomination. She sent out fliers announcing the airport rally and included the names of nine prominent state officials who would endorse her candidacy. But when the event came, none of the nine was in attendance. Worse, there were only 40 people in the cavernous hangar for the "rally" – and most of those were reporters or campaign workers. The best known "official" was a state representative who had been out of office for four years. When she finished her speech, red, white and blue balloons fell, political convention style, on a completely empty stage. Evidently embarrassed by all the no-shows, announced that so few of her supporters were there because, at the last minute, a tree had fallen on the hangar where the event was supposed to be held. "There was a last-minute change in location," she announced. But there was a problem with that explanation: Airport officials said none of its hangars had been damaged by a fallen tree, and the hangar used was the one that was originally reserved. Then it turned out that one of the nine officials listed on the Harris flier was actually supporting one of her opponents. The Orlando Sentinel unkindly pointed out that Harris had previously claimed the endorsements of four U.S. representatives, the Florida GOP chairwoman and Governor Jeb Bush. But none of them had backed her and some had actively discouraged her from running. This began to explain why Harris's chief strategist, who like most of her staff quit the campaign, compared working for Harris to "being in insanity camp." The first of the three campaign managers to quit set his cell phone to play "The Exorcist" theme when Harris called. And yet, Harris, a two-term congresswoman, had become a prominent figure in Potomac Land. President Bush praised her legislative work, Vice President Cheney heralded her "long record of public service," and both men stumped for her election to the Senate. She was occasionally mentioned as a vice presidential possibility in 2008. How did somebody so loony rise so high? The answer is found in Potomac Man's legendary tolerance. Six years earlier, Harris had been introduced to the nation as a caricature. The Washington Post's fashion critic Robin Givhan, in a critique that became known as the "Mascara Smear," described her this way: Her lips were overdrawn with berry-red lipstick--the creamy sort that smears all over a coffee cup and leaves smudges on shirt collars. Her skin had been plastered and powdered to the texture of pre-war walls in need of a skim coat. And her eyes, rimmed in liner and frosted with blue shadow, bore the telltale homogenous spikes of false eyelashes. Caterpillars seemed to rise and fall with every bat of her eyelid, with every downward glance…They were cartoon lashes. Lashes destined for a 'Saturday Night Live" skit.'" Givhan proceeded to observe that Harris "seems to have applied her makeup with a trowel" – presciently predicting that she might not be the delicate touch needed to resolve the disputed election results satisfactorily. It quickly turned out that Harris's problems weren't just skin deep. Though Florida's Secretary of State, she had spent almost no time before the election working on electoral issues, leaving understaffed and ill-equipped underlings to devise the ballot format that would cause the election-day chaos. Harris's office left each of Florida's counties running their elections with different, and in some cases conflicting, standards. But Harris, by her performance in November and December of 2000, won a place in the hearts of hard-core conservatives across America. Republicans in Potomac Land privately acknowledged she was a bit odd but dared not question her rise so as not to offend the conservatives who adored her. Running for Congress in 2002, she directed those introducing her to read a text. "It is my pleasure to introduce, in my opinion, an American Heroine," the script said, adding that during the recount, "she stood her ground with grace and courage." The hardcore conservatives loved her, and her election was pre-ordained. "She's going to be the next congresswoman from this area, like it or not," the managing editor of the Sarasota Herald Tribune wrote to a reader complaining about the lack of coverage of her Democratic opponents. "I blame our culture for craving as its public figures, women like Katherine who are very pretty, hard-working and without original ideas that I can find." The editor quit before she could be fired. But her prediction was correct about Harris's easy victory. Harris, though a darling of conservative bloggers and talk show hosts, proved unremarkable as a legislator in Potomac Land. Months after arriving, she drew attention to herself when she was trying to parallel park her SUV and smashed another car's taillight; she got out of the car in a white tae kown do outfit. One of her most noteworthy acts was attempting to get a $10 million grant for a the felonious military contractor Mitchell Wade after he took her to the $2,800 dinner and arranged for $32,000 in illegal contributions to her campaigns. Harris at first insisted she paid her share of the dinner, then confessed that Wade had. Three months after submitting the spending request, she told the Tampa Tribune she knew little about the project. Harris's true trademark: erratic behavior. In 2004, at a rally for President Bush, she announced that a Middle Eastern man had been arrested in Carmel, Indiana, with hundreds of pouinds of explosives. "He had plans to blow up the area's entire power grid," she said. Asked later for details, she said she had already "said too much." Indeed, she had. Federal and local officials pronounced themselves "dumbfounded" and said no such plot had been foiled. Things got worse when Harris started her run for the Senate in 2005. When party officials were trying to talk former congressman Joe Scarborough into running, she insinuated that he had killed one of his employees, whispering about "that dead girl." (The staffer had died of natural causes.) She later declared that voters were "legislating sin" if they didn't elect Christians like herself. Harris's aides grew worried when she told them that God wanted her to be elected to the Senate. They grew more worried when she started ignoring their advice and turning instead for strategic guidance from a "spiritual adviser," a woman who founded the Biblical Heritage Institute in Florida. They tried and failed to convince her that her clothes were too revealing for a senator. Her paranoid rants drove out the three campaign managers, her media consultant, her strategist, her field director and her political director – two dozen in all, some en masse. This only made her more paranoid. "I didn't know I was going to get the knives in my back from my own party, and I'll be honest, it's infiltrated my campaign staff," she told one campaign crowd. She changed the locks at one of her campaign offices. She spread then retracted an account of a longtime aide leaking a damaging story about her. She announced new staffers who apparently didn't exist. She switched to the first-person plural. "Come Nov. 7, God willing, we'll be the next senator," she said. One Florida paper decided it was watching a "freak show." Sometime during the show, Florida's GOP governor, Jeb Bush, reached the obvious conclusion that Harris "can't win." But the governor's brother knew better than to alienate the constitutency of passionate conservatives who still backed Harris. He and the vice president both flew to Florida. "She has our support," Cheney told a Republican rally. "I, too, encourage you to vote for Katherine Harris for the United States Senate," the president said. Far from Potomac Land, the voters of Florida had a different view. She lost by 22 percentage points to a plain-vanilla Democrat named Bill Nelson. But she will always be welcome among Potomac Men. Copyright 2007-2008 by Dana Milbank
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