livingston
20×102mm Vulcan
Republicans had a secret weapon in the Florida recount fight
How a GOP lawyer managed politics, the law and big egos to defend Rick Scott.
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Jessica Furst Johnson was supposed to fly from Washington to Orlando this week for a post-election Walt Disney World vacation with her husband and their two small children.
Instead, Johnson, the 37-year-old general counsel to the National Republican Senatorial Committee, found herself in Tallahassee, quarterbacking the GOP's legal response to the two-recount Senate contest between the Democratic incumbent, Bill Nelson, and Gov. Rick Scott, his Republican challenger.
Her opposite number in this fight, Democratic super-lawyer Marc Elias, had more than 50,000 Twitter followers, a resume that includes serving as the general counsel on two presidential campaigns and a ream of profiles in national publications. Meanwhile, Johnson operated in relative obscurity.
The main stakes for the two lawyers — and their parties — were always the same: a U.S. Senate seat and the framework that will govern how Florida election laws are applied and interpreted in the 2020 presidential election.
But for Johnson — a Sarasota native, a University of Florida law school graduate and an admirer of Scott's — there was another dimension to the fight.
"This is personal for me," she said in a telephone interview with NBC News on Friday.
more at ...
Republicans had a secret weapon in the Florida recount fight
How a GOP lawyer managed politics, the law and big egos to defend Rick Scott.
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Jessica Furst Johnson was supposed to fly from Washington to Orlando this week for a post-election Walt Disney World vacation with her husband and their two small children.
Instead, Johnson, the 37-year-old general counsel to the National Republican Senatorial Committee, found herself in Tallahassee, quarterbacking the GOP's legal response to the two-recount Senate contest between the Democratic incumbent, Bill Nelson, and Gov. Rick Scott, his Republican challenger.
Her opposite number in this fight, Democratic super-lawyer Marc Elias, had more than 50,000 Twitter followers, a resume that includes serving as the general counsel on two presidential campaigns and a ream of profiles in national publications. Meanwhile, Johnson operated in relative obscurity.
The main stakes for the two lawyers — and their parties — were always the same: a U.S. Senate seat and the framework that will govern how Florida election laws are applied and interpreted in the 2020 presidential election.
But for Johnson — a Sarasota native, a University of Florida law school graduate and an admirer of Scott's — there was another dimension to the fight.
"This is personal for me," she said in a telephone interview with NBC News on Friday.
more at ...
Republicans had a secret weapon in the Florida recount fight