Dart and George Ann Way used to have a normal life near Ocean City. Now, they live in a Holiday Inn in Timonium and work 16-hour days for no money.
All on behalf of Ellen R. Sauerbrey.
A month after the Nov. 8 gubernatorial election, the Ways and hundreds of other volunteers are working harder than ever to find victory for the GOP candidate.
Led by a veteran hired gun from New Jersey, the volunteers are in the throes of an intensive, round-the-clock search for evidence that Democrat Parris N. Glendening's victory was tainted by fraud.
Mrs. Sauerbrey says she is still not sure if she will challenge the election, which was formally certified yesterday. But all signs suggest she will file a legal appeal before the Dec. 27 deadline.
"We are very encouraged by what we are seeing, which has indicated many, many, many, many irregularities," Mrs. Sauerbrey told Republican lawmakers Tuesday.
In the hunt for fraud, Mrs. Sauerbrey's campaign staff has taken a back seat to John M. "Jack" Carbone, 47, a lawyer and election specialist from Ridgewood, N.J., who was called a "bulldog" by one former adversary.
While Mr. Carbone won't give many details of the effort, he says the strategies are "obvious."
In election after election, he has cast a suspicious eye at many of the same things: polls that opened late or early, problems with voting machines, dates on absentee ballots, signatures on voter authority cards, addresses on voter cards.
The Glendening-Sauerbrey race, he said, "had the smell of excitement and the aura of fraud."
He has set out to document irregularities -- and ultimately, prove fraud -- in the three jurisdictions carried by Mr. Glendening -- Baltimore, Prince George's County and Montgomery County.
Yesterday, in the Sauerbrey campaign headquarters in a Cockeysville office park, a group of 20 volunteers, many of them retirees, methodically compared information from voting records with phone directories, looking for discrepancies. Others scanned records of voters compiled by precinct election judges, looking for curious patterns.
In addition, Mr. Carbone said, the Sauerbrey organization has purchased computerized databases to compile demographic information about voters. Workers will use computers to find "anomalies" in the information, Mr. Carbone said.
At the same time, an investigative team made up largely of former police officers and retired military people is prowling Baltimore, preparing reports on alleged voting irregularities.
Workers have photographed several boarded-up buildings listed as homes of voters in city records, Mr. Carbone said. Sauerbrey workers are still copying documents at the election offices in Baltimore and Prince George's County.
The Republican contingent barely acknowledged yesterday's formal certification of election results by the Board of State Canvassers, which showed Mrs. Sauerbrey losing, 702,101 to 708,094 -- a 5,993-vote margin in favor of Mr. Glendening.
"Until this process is complete there is no winner," Mrs. Sauerbrey said in a statement.
Maryland election officials have said they have seen no concrete evidence of fraud or widespread irregularities.
But not to be outflanked, lawyers for Mr. Glendening have filed protective lawsuits challenging absentee ballots in a dozen counties.
Most of the Sauerbrey troops are hunkered down in her Cockeysville campaign headquarters, which has an odd mix of expensive computers and homemade decorations.
"It Smells Fishy," reads one hand-painted sign.
Empty pizza boxes are stacked in one corner. A cot and some sleeping bags are crammed into another. Conservative talk-show host Rush Limbaugh is on the radio.
Nearly 800 volunteers have put in some time since the election investigation began. Many drive across the state to work, leaving only to sleep in a nearby hotel.
George Ann Way, their unpaid coordinator, has been back to her home outside Ocean City only a couple of times in the last three weeks to check on her real estate business.
"I've been up here 11 or 12 days," Mrs. Way said. "It all starts to blur."
She and her husband, a retired Army officer, typically work from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. "We're here to work," Mrs. Way said. "There's no point to being in the hotel."
Mr. Carbone marvels at the Sauerbrey fervor.
"Usually we have to pay people," Mr. Carbone said. "Here, they just crawl out of the woodwork."
Eve Lallas, a 57-year-old retired biology teacher and classmate of Mrs. Sauerbrey's at Western Maryland College, has been volunteering six or seven days a week. During the thick of the vote count in Baltimore, she put in 16 1/2 hours straight.
"I wouldn't be here unless I believed this election definitely has to be looked into," she said.
Kim and David Stone of Lutherville heard about the need for volunteers at their church and reported for duty the next day. Now they generally alternate shifts at the headquarters with taking care of their three boys, ages 4, 12 and 15.
"We wouldn't take a nickel," Mrs. Stone said. "Every penny needs to go back into this."
Mrs. Sauerbrey stops by once or twice a day to greet and thank the volunteers.
But calling the shots in the investigation is Mr. Carbone, a trial lawyer who sheds his suit coat and tie and becomes more rumpled as his day wears on.
At times, he displays the well-practiced demeanor of a fast-talking litigator. At other times, he is guarded, adding an air of mystery to what he says -- or doesn't say.
Mr. Carbone estimates that he has handled 200 election cases since 1974, when he was hired to help in a contested city council race for a candidate in his hometown of North Haldon, N.J. Since that success, he says, the number of cases he's lost "I can count on my one hand."
Among Mr. Carbone's victories are two govneror's races in which the Republican candidate was seated. The first was the 1981 recount of Thomas H. Kean's narrow victory over James J. Florio. The following year, he represented Gov. James R. Thompson when Democrat Adlai E. Stevenson III unsuccessfully challenged the outcome.
Most recently, he was an adviser last year to New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman -- Mrs. Sauerbrey's role model.
"I don't know any other lawyer who knows more about election law than he does," said Dennis J. Oury, a Hackensack, N.J., trial lawyer who has worked with and against Mr. Carbone in election cases.
"He is tireless, and when he gets his teeth into a case, he's like a bulldog with it," Mr. Oury said.
Mr. Carbone is a registered Republican, but his past clients have included both Republicans and Democrats in local and state races in New Jersey, New York, Illinois and Texas.
Another veteran assisting in the Sauerbrey effort is John D. "Jack" Connors, deputy general counsel for the Republican National Committee, who was deployed to Maryland a month ago.
Last year in Philadelphia, Mr. Connors helped Republican challenger Bruce S. Marks unseat incumbent state Sen. William G. Stinson after massive voter fraud was uncovered.
Since the middle of last month, more than $100,000 has been raised for the Election Inquiry Fund, a separate committee set up by the Maryland Republican Party to raise money for the investigation, Mr. Carbone said.
He declined to say how much of it is coming his way. "Let's just say it's large enough that I can come to Maryland, bring a staff and rent a home in Guilford."
A chunk of the money, $10,000, came from GOPAC, the political organization of incoming Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, who is expected to drop by next week to boost morale.
Even with the flood of volunteers, Mrs. Sauerbrey said this week that she could use even more.
"We're in crunch time now," she said. "Time is running out. Time is our worst enemy."