Inside the Business Anchor’s Studio: Super Tuesday Interview With Neil Cavuto

Frances MartelMar 7th, 2012, 5:20 pm

Cavuto is looking most closely to Ohio tonight, both for the mythology of a Republican not having gone on to win the general without Ohio in many election moons and because it is one of the states hit most heavily by the economy. He adds Tennessee and North Dakota to those states whose economic outlooks significantly affect the vote, but makes no predictions– except for “going out on a limb” and guessing that Mitt Romney would have won Virginia with or without a full ballot (Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich failed to make it on).

“What I promised viewers is that we won’t go off the air until we know who won. Unfortunately, I made that promise in the case of Iowa thinking I’d have them around 9:30-10. Turns out we didn’t have them until 2-2:30, and I was like Jerry Lewis at the end of a telethon.”

“There’s one thing I learned covering not just this election but prior elections,” he adds a bit later, “it never goes to script, never goes to plan. That’s why we never use a script.” That unpredictability in politics has him on his toes, ready for a long night reminiscent of the Iowa caucuses, where results rolled in sometime around 2:30 AM. “During Iowa, I really was getting a little punch-drunk,” Cavuto notes, “everyone put up a lot of hours.” That said, he added that, to him, he thought he had it pretty easy compared to the rest of the team, even if he was expected to be on the air and coherent at 2:30 AM sometimes. “I’m just sitting up here following results that are being fed to me by a staff that’s working a lot harder, and I have the benefit of having people feeding me drinks—non-alcoholic drinks!— but constantly taking care of my every need. I have the gilded life here.”

“Sometimes, on nights, it drags out, or a race is particularly close—and we have ten of them tonight, not all of them are going to go to plan. There are going to be surprises here and there… and that could change the complexion of the evening and the hours we devote to the evening. My best example is Iowa. We have said here that my goal, and what I promised viewers, is that we won’t go off the air until we know who won these states. Unfortunately, I made that promise in the case of Iowa thinking I’d have them around 9:30-10. Turns out we didn’t have them until 2-2:30, and I was like Jerry Lewis at the end of a telethon. And the irony was that Mitt Romney, who we all thought had won Iowa, ended up losing when everything is recounted and recertified.”

Despite the possibility of a nearly endless night of election returns before him, Cavuto seems excited and prepared for the possibility. “It doesn’t change my commitment or my staff’s commitment,” he says, “they’ve all taken their Red Bulls, so they’re ready to cover a long night.”