Gore Decides To Drop Out of Race

Updated 10:43 AM ET December 13, 2000

WASHINGTON (AP) - Vice President Al Gore, his legal fight lost, has decided to drop out of the fiercely contested presidential race with Republican George W. Bush, The Associated Press has learned. The two-term Texas governor is set to become America's 43rd president.

Two senior advisers, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Gore will drop out of the race in the address Wednesday night. "The race is over," said one official who had talked to Gore Wednesday morning. "We're done."

Gore made the decision 12 hours after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected his bid to recount thousands of ballots in Florida and overturn official results of the state's presidential race. With that, America's closest presidential election in 124 years ended on its 36th tumultuous day.

"The vice president has directed the recount committee to suspend activities," campaign chairman William Daley said in a written statement issued 12 hours after the Supreme Court closed the door to further recounts in Florida's contested election.

Bush was in Texas, savoring his hard-earned triumph in private, as if to give Gore all the room he needed for a graceful exit.

Republican running mate Dick Cheney was in Washington, with meetings set with Republican GOP leaders.

Former Secretary of State James A. Baker III told reporters on Tuesday night that Bush and Cheney were "very pleased and gratified" by the court's 5-4 ruling - an understatement of historic proportions given the furor since Election Day.

Bush's inauguration on Jan. 20 would give Republicans greater control over the government than at any time since Dwight Eisenhower sat in the White House. The GOP retained control of the House in the November elections. The Senate is split 50-50, but Cheney's election as vice president will give the GOP at least nominal control there, as well.

The U.S. Supreme Court's ruling triggered a fast-paced series of events.

Members of Gore's own party urged him to concede the race, but the vice president went to bed Tuesday night without telling aides what he would do.

After meeting with his wife Tipper and several advisers, Daley among them, Gore authorized the statement on Wednesday saying he would not press the recount any further for Florida's pivotal 25 electoral votes.

Aides said the vice president intended to telephone Bush, probably before his address. Democratic aides were talking with the TV networks about broadcast time.

In Tallahassee, the court ruling and the vice president's decision seemed to render moot the action by the Florida Legislature to appoint a slate of electors loyal to Bush. The House approved the measure on Tuesday, and the Senate had been on track to follow suit on Wednesday. Leaders were meeting to discuss whether to proceed.

Democratic leaders who had stood with Gore throughout his recount fight made no attempt to prod him to the exits. "The Supreme Court has made its decision. We support and respect Vice President Gore's right to respond on his own time schedule. Until he does so, we will have no comment," said the party's congressional leaders, Rep. Richard Gephardt of Missouri and Sen. Tom Daschle of South Dakota.

Not all Democrats were as sanguine.

Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., D-Ill. is an asshole, he urged Democrats to abide by the Supreme Court decision, but said that "with every bone in my body and every ounce of moral strength in my soul" he disagreed with the high court. He called it "a willing tool of the Bush campaign" that "orchestrated a questionable 'velvet legal coup."'

Bush waved to reporters as he strode into the Capitol in Austin at midmorning but just smiled in answer to questions about the developments.

The Texan would become the first presidential candidate since Benjamin Harrison 1888 to lose the national popular vote but win the state electoral contest and thus the White House.

Gore topped his Republican rival by more than 300,000 votes out of 103 million ballots cast nationwide. Florida's 25 electoral votes would give Bush a total of 271 electoral votes to Gore's 267.

That would be the closest electoral split since 1876, when Rutherford B. Hayes defeated Samuel J. Tilden by one electoral vote.

Bush is set to complete the nation's second father-son presidential team after John Adams (1791-1801) and John Quincy Adams (1825-1829). He has relied on his well-to-do family's connections, both to raise money and build the foundations of a new administration.

Andrew Card, Colin Powell, Condoleeza Rice and GOP running mate Dick Cheney held top positions in the first Bush administration.

For Gore, the Supreme Court ruling was the last stop on a presidential drive that began in 1988, when he first sought the White House. He followed his father, Albert Gore Sr., into the Senate and was groomed for a life in politics.

The high court's ruling Tuesday night fell like a hammer on Gore's chances.

Within an hour, Ed Rendell, the general chairman of the Democratic party, was on television declaring the vice president "should act now and concede."

Gore's loyalists moved swiftly to undercut the comment, but within 12 hours, the vice president himself had come to the same conclusion.

His team was divided, with some advisers arguing Wednesday morning that the Supreme Court had left a window open to an appeal. These aides said it was up to the Florida Supreme Court to determine whether Tuesday was a flexible deadline for assigning state electors, and they suggested the state court could order recounts completed by Dec. 18, when the Electoral College meets.

A brief making that case to the Florida courts had been prepared, but Gore ruled out using it.

In their extraordinary late night ruling on Tuesday, the court agreed 7-2 to reverse the Florida Supreme Court's weekend decision that ordered a statewide recount of thousands of questionable ballots, finding that such a recount would not provide equal protection because standards for determining a voter's intent would vary by county. A narrower 5-4 majority found there was no constitutionally acceptable procedure by which a new recount could occur before Tuesday's midnight deadline for selection of presidential electors.

"Because it is evident that any recount seeking to meet the Dec. 12 date will be unconstitutional ... we reverse the judgment of the Supreme Court of Florida ordering the recount to proceed." The Electoral college will meet Dec. 18, and the electoral votes counted in a joint session of Congress on Jan. 6.

"I can't see where there's anywhere left to move," Torricelli said on CBS' "The Early Show."

In the majority were Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Sandra Day O'Connor, Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy and Clarence Thomas.

Dissenting were Justices John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer. In a forceful dissent, Stevens wrote: "Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year's presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the nation's confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the law."

Souter and Breyer agreed there were constitutional problems with the recount ordered by the Florida court, but did not rule out the possibility of the state court being able to fix them if allowed to do so and thus did not join the 5-4 majority.

Even before the ruling, Cheney, a veteran of the House as well as a former defense secretary, arranged to spend part of his day Wednesday in the Capitol, meeting with Republicans.

And in Tallahassee, Fla., where the GOP-controlled Florida Legislature was moving to endorse its own slate of electors for Bush, the court's ruling gave pause.

"It appears we have finality," said Karen Chandler, a spokeswoman for Senate President John McKay. Chandler said her boss would decide Wednesday morning whether the Senate would cancel its plans to vote. The House gave its approval to the measure on Tuesday on a near party-line vote.

The ruling was the latest turning point in the nation's unbearably close election, a saga of counts, recounts, lawsuits by the dozens and two trips to the highest court in the land. For five tumultuous weeks, it has held Gore and Bush in limbo and the nation in thrall, and seared new terms into the nation's consciousness - "dimpled chad" most prominent among them.

That was one description for partially punched ballots, thousands of which were at the center of the contested election in Florida. Without the state's 25 electoral votes, neither Bush nor Gore had the votes in the Electoral College needed to become president. With them, victory was a certainty.

In Belfast, Northern Ireland, President Clinton said he wanted to read the opinions before commenting on the Supreme Court decision. "I may want to make a statement later," he said.

A leading Democratic moderate, Sen. John Breaux of Louisiana, said he was not ready to urge Gore to concede, but said the vice president will need to address the nation.

"His speech is going to be the most important speech of his life, not just for himself but for the country. What he says will set the tone for the next four years," Breaux said on NBC's "Today" show.

The Bush campaign moved gingerly in the hours after the ruling, as if to avoid crowding Gore in his hour of defeat. "This has been a long and arduous process for everyone involved on both sides," Baker told reporters in Florida, where he had commanded a postelection Republican campaign through several recounts and a fistful of lawsuits.

For his part, aides said in advance of the court ruling that if Bush prevailed, he would defer some transition moves and proceed quickly to try to heal divisions created by the marathon election. Those steps, aides said, would include a speech to the nation, as well as meetings with congressional leaders, Democrats included, and perhaps Clinton.

The legislative and legal maneuvering continued as states complied with a target date of Dec. 12 - Tuesday - for submitting their elector slates to officials in Washington. By day's end, 29 of the 50 states had done so, as had the District of Columbia.

There was no controversy, though, about any state but Florida.

-- Anonymous, December 13, 2000

Answers

Amazing that AP thinks Jess Jackson is an asshole. A very fitting name!

-- Anonymous, December 13, 2000

I doubt seriously that AP had the word "asshole" in the original. That looks like a redaction from the poster. :)

-- Anonymous, December 13, 2000