Al Gore

V

Presidential Campaign

Gore announced his candidacy for president on June 15, 1999. He was opposed in the Democratic primaries by former New Jersey senator Bill Bradley. Bradley argued that it was time for a fresh face in the White House and that Gore was so tainted by the ethical problems of the Clinton administration that it would be difficult for him to win in 2000. By September some polls showed Bradley in a dead heat with Gore in the New Hampshire primary.

With his presidential hopes in jeopardy, Gore dramatically retooled his campaign. He moved his headquarters from Washington, D.C., to Nashville in an attempt to signal that he had broken from Clinton. Gore also revived his old town-meeting format, appearing before small groups of voters to answer their questions. At the same time he launched a series of attacks on Bradley. He questioned Bradley’s dedication to public service, citing his retirement from the U.S. Senate in 1997. Gore was also critical of Bradley’s plan for universal health insurance. He contended that the failure of Clinton’s 1994 health-care plan showed that coverage had to be extended gradually. Gore proposed a plan that would make insurance available to all low-income children. Bradley accused Gore of distorting his record. In the end, however, Bradley could not make enough of a case to deny Gore the nomination. Bradley failed to win a single primary, and he quit the race in March 2000 when Gore secured the necessary number of delegates to win the nomination.

In August 2000 Gore selected United States senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut to be his vice-presidential running mate. Lieberman, a centrist Democrat, had publicly criticized Clinton for the Lewinsky affair and was the first Jew to be named to a major party’s national ticket. Political analysts viewed Gore’s choice as an attempt to distance himself from the ethical scandals of the Clinton White House.

At the 2000 Democratic National Convention, held in August in Los Angeles, Gore accepted the party’s presidential nomination and outlined the main themes of his campaign. Determined to move out of Clinton’s shadow, he declared that he was his “own man.” He portrayed himself as the defender of the people against large corporations, special interest groups, and the powerful. Gore pledged to extend Medicare to pay for prescription drugs, to work for a universal health-care system, to lower crime rates, and to maintain the strength of the U.S. armed forces.

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After the convention, Gore and Lieberman hit the campaign trail. While campaigning, Gore attacked Bush’s tax plan as benefiting the wealthy; he claimed that his own tax cuts targeted more lower- and middle-class people. Gore also pledged to protect Social Security and to improve public education. He participated in three debates with Bush. In the last few weeks of the campaign, Gore concentrated on swaying undecided voters and winning states such as Florida, Michigan, and Ohio, which were very closely divided between the two candidates.

On November 7, as election returns came in, Gore won 19 states, mainly populous states such as California, Pennsylvania, and New York. However, he lost his home state of Tennessee and some traditional Democratic states such as West Virginia. As the night wore on, it became clear that the presidential race would be extremely close. Eventually Florida—with 25 electoral votes—emerged as the deciding state. Without Florida, neither candidate had the 270 electoral votes necessary to win the election. When Florida’s votes were finally counted, Gore had fewer votes than Bush; less than one-half of one percent of the vote separated the two candidates. Florida law dictates that an automatic recount be performed if the candidates are separated by only one-half of one percent.

The day after the election, Florida began recounting its votes. After the state finished its recount, Gore still trailed Bush, but only by about 300 votes. With the vote so close, Democrats pressed for a manual recount in four heavily Democratic counties, arguing that the machine tallies had failed to accurately record all of the votes cast for president. Florida’s secretary of state set a deadline of November 14 for submitting the recounted votes for certification. However, some counties could not finish their manual recounts by the deadline. Gore went to court to seek to have all the manual recounts included in the final tally. The Florida Supreme Court then ordered the secretary of state to delay the certification of votes until it could hear the case.

On November 21 the Florida Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the manual recounts should be included and had to be submitted to the secretary of state by November 26. Bush disagreed with the decision and appealed the case to the United States Supreme Court. On November 26 Florida certified its election results, including its overseas ballots, and Gore lost the state to Bush by just over 500 votes. However, Gore contended that some votes had not been included in the certified results, and he formally contested Florida’s certified results in court.

On December 4, after considering arguments from both sides, the U.S. Supreme Court asked the Florida Supreme Court to clarify its ruling. The same day, a Florida circuit court judge ruled against Gore’s request for additional recounts, and Gore appealed that case to the Florida Supreme Court.

On December 8 the Florida Supreme Court ruled that the additional recounts should be allowed to proceed. However, Bush appealed the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. Bush also asked the Court to stop the recounts from proceeding until the Court had a chance to hear the case. On December 9 the U.S. Supreme Court issued a stay, stopping all the recounts until after it heard the case, which it did on December 11. On December 12 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Florida recounts were unconstitutional because the recounts violated the equal protection clause of the United States Constitution. The Court argued that not all votes were being treated equally because there was no clear standard for how to do manual recounts. The decision was a blow to Gore. Left with little alternative, Gore officially conceded the race on December 13, five weeks after the election.

VI

Later Years

After losing the presidential race, Gore continued to campaign on behalf of the environment. Through lectures, writings, and a documentary film, he sought to raise awareness of global warming. The film An Inconvenient Truth (2006) gave him a platform for illuminating the dangers of climate change before a wide audience. It received an Academy Award for best documentary.

Gore shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 for his efforts “to disseminate knowledge about man-made climate change.” The Nobel committee cited Gore as “the single individual who has done most to create greater worldwide understanding of the measures that need to be adopted” to halt global warming. Gore shared the prize with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a United Nations (UN) agency comprising more than 2,000 climate scientists and experts. The Nobel committee has increasingly focused on environmental issues in awarding the Peace Prize because the exploitation and control of natural resources, such as petroleum and freshwater, have become conflict issues, as well. The committee noted that global warming “may induce large-scale migration and lead to greater competition for Earth’s resources.” Gore donated his half of the Nobel prize money to the Alliance for Climate Protection.

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