The Nine [78]
So it was very much in keeping with the O’Connors’ custom that they spent the night of the 2000 election at a party. The couple was especially close to Lee and Juliet Folger, prominent local philanthropists and modern counterparts to the venerable Washington aristocrats known as the “cave dwellers.” Mary Ann Stoessel, the widow of the prominent diplomat Walter Stoessel and the O’Connors’ host on election night, came from the same milieu. The refined setting of Stoessel’s party and the genteel crowd made the events of the evening all the more peculiar.
Everyone knew the election would be close. The polls showed the contest between Vice President Al Gore and Governor Bush coming down to a handful of states, especially Florida. On the night of Tuesday, November 7, Stoessel had placed televisions all over her house, so the seventy or so guests could follow the results as they moved from room to room. Justice O’Connor settled in the small basement den, where one of the televisions was located, and she saw Dan Rather call Michigan and Illinois for the vice president. Then, at 7:49, NBC called Florida for Gore; CBS agreed a minute later; ABC joined the consensus at 7:52.
Hearing Florida called for Gore, Justice O’Connor looked stricken. “This is terrible,” she said. “That means it’s over.” She then walked away in disgust. Later, after her statements at the party became public, O’Connor gave friends a rather implausible explanation for her behavior. She said she was angry not because Gore had apparently won the presidency but because the networks had called the election before voting was complete on the West Coast. But while the meaning of Sandra O’Connor’s words may have been debatable, the meaning of what John O’Connor had to say that night was not.
John and Sandra O’Connor were both seventy years old and in their forty-eighth year of marriage in 2000; it was hard to imagine a happier union. Through the years, John’s energy had matched Sandra’s, but his was coupled with a madcap sense of humor that never failed to delight his more straitlaced wife. As Justice O’Connor’s biographer Joan Biskupic learned when John was running for president of the Rotary Club in Phoenix, he listed his qualifications as: “Beautiful wife. Rich father-in-law. Pool hustler.” Shortly after Sandra was appointed to the Court, John gave Harry Blackmun a business card that said his skills included “Tigers Tamed, Bars Emptied, Orgies Organized.” John became a prominent lawyer in Phoenix but didn’t hesitate to give up his career to move to Washington after her appointment. Through the years, he spent time with a couple of different law firms in D.C. but never established himself the way he had in Arizona; the possibilities for conflict with his wife’s work were simply too great. But if John worried about living in Sandra’s shadow, he never let on.
In the period leading up to the 2000 election, John’s health deteriorated. He fainted on a visit to Phoenix, and his heart stopped briefly. He had surgery to install a pacemaker. In the past, John had always been extraordinarily discreet about anything to do with the Court. But on election night, John gave an extended explanation of Sandra’s distress. They wanted to retire to Phoenix, but Sandra wouldn’t hand her seat to a Democratic president. A Gore victory meant at least four more years for them in Washington, and they wanted to leave. That’s why,