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After this steer-wrestling session ended, the room settled into a jittery hush. Sister Vicky Bergkemp of the Adorers of the Blood of Christ took the microphone next. She gave a short speech about AIDS and asked the management of Coke to inform the stockholders of the business effect of the AIDS pandemic on Coca-Cola. Since AIDS had nothing to do with Coca-Cola’s business, management agreeably supported this proposal. Then shareholders introduced other proposals having to do with their view of excessive compensation given to management. The company recommended votes against all of these.

At last, the results of the election of directors were reported. This was the moment Buffett had been dreading. “Each of the nominees for election of director have received over ninety-six percent of the votes,” said the general counsel, “with the exception of Mr. Buffett. Mr. Buffett received over eighty-four percent of the vote.”19

Being singled out in public as the least-wanted director at Coca-Cola was humiliating. Never before had a group of shareholders rejected him. Even though CalPERS and ISS accounted for virtually all of the sixteen percent of the votes against him, and institutional investors had for the most part ignored CalPERS and ISS and championed him, it didn’t feel like a triumph. Rarely had Buffett regretted serving on boards as much as he did at this moment. However, there was little time for him to dwell on it, because Daft opened the microphone to shareholder questions, and the Reverend Jesse Jackson promptly stood up and hijacked the meeting.

“Mr. Daft, and members of the board,” he began in rolling tones, “let me say at the outset…that while many disagreed with the first person making a comment…his violent removal…was beneath…the dignity…of this company. It was…an overreaction…. It was…an excessive use of power…. I…would like to know,” Jackson asked rhetorically, “if there is a person of color…in the mix under consideration for the job” of CEO. The college students’ complaints about Coke on campus and accusations that the company had murdered union leaders in Colombia now seemed anticlimactic. Daft struggled to conclude the most disastrous shareholder meeting in Coca-Cola’s history, as board members vowed to themselves that the way this meeting had escaped the CEO’s control must never be repeated.

After the fiasco, the search for a CEO took on the feeling of an emergency. Steve Heyer, the internal candidate, had been ruled out at the last board meeting and was heading off to pursue other business interests at Starwood Hotels, complete with a huge and controversial severance package that would, once again, embarrass Coca-Cola. Finally, the board reached out to another candidate they had been discussing, sixty-year-old Neville Isdell, who had retired after being clotheslined years before by Doug Ivester. A tall, charismatic Irishman who had been raised in South Africa, Isdell was popular with the board. By then, however, Coca-Cola could do nothing to please its audience. “Bringing in the old guys” was the reaction. “They hired another Daft.”20 Isdell was already presumed a future victim of the board’s ax, for the board had earned a fearsome reputation for irksomeness and whimsical behavior.21

Yet this was the same board that had sat primly for years as if it were Goizueta’s footstool. It was only after Goizueta’s untimely death left the leadership in shambles that the board, which for the most part consisted of the same people who had served under Goizueta, had split in two. During the six-year interregnum, a small group of directors had grabbed for the reins of the Real Thing’s runaway stagecoach. All the while, the company missed consumer trends and made strategic mistakes. To catch up and correct the problems, Coca-Cola needed a determined and tough CEO who could tame the faction on the board that became overbearing when deprived of a dominant leader to keep them in line. How long Isdell would survive would depend on how strong a leader he turned