Chapter 1
Election Night
It was one of the closest elections in American history, and it wasn’t over yet. After over a year of campaigning, hundreds of stump speeches, and millions of dollars spent on advertising, there was no clear winner. Polls had shown a tight race, but few expected just how close (and just how chaotic) the election would turn out to be. This was quite a surprise on the surface. The incumbent President was riding sky-high approval ratings while the economy flourished. Yet his party’s nominee struggled throughout the race and needed a last-minute comeback to stay alive. His opponent, stung by revelations of drunk driving, was never able to build a comfortable lead. Time after time, he was given opportunities to pull away from his stumbling opponent. Yet every time some controversy or gaffe kept the race close. Third party candidates from both ideological extremes also drew coverage, siphoning key support from both mainstream nominees. The 2000 election was a political circus, from start to finish. But unlike most great shows, this one didn’t know when to end.
The 2000 Presidential race began in June of 1999. The frontrunners from both major parties declared their candidacies that month. Vice-President Al Gore and Texas Governor George Bush entered the election cycle as their parties’ frontrunners. They both commanded substantial war chests, the endorsements of party leaders, and solid leads in the polls. Yet the two men could not have been more different. Gore was an academic who had served in elected office almost his entire life. His father was a Senator from Tennessee, and Gore, Jr. was elected to Congress at the age of 28. He was a pragmatic centrist who took his time in analyzing ever side of every issue. He was meticulous and precise. But Gore was also seen as arrogant and condescending. His incredible intellect was often his worst enemy. Reporters grimaced at having to interview a candidate who was sure to correct them on any mistake or blunder. Al Gore was a braniac, and he made sure everyone knew it.
The Republican nominee, George Bush, was almost the total opposite of Gore. He was charismatic, relatable, and easy-going. Voters felt like he was one of them. Bush spent most of his adult life in business. His successes in the white-collar world were mixed at best, yet he knew his way around both a board room and a baseball diamond (he was a minority owner of the Texas Rangers). His first political campaign ended in defeat, but he came back in 1994 to win the Texas Governor’s mansion. Bush’s politics were a new breed of “compassionate conservatism.” He didn’t offer the tough-love, small government talking points that doomed Newt Gingrich and many other Congressional Republicans. Instead, Bush talked about improving education, freeing up faith-based groups, and unleashing the potential of entrepreneurs and innovators. These were popular policies, and the Texas Governor knew how to sell them. Nonetheless, George Bush had his fair share of problems. For one, he wasn’t the most articulate public speaker. He often misspoke, often comically. More significantly, voters felt as though he didn’t have the necessary experience in international affairs. But George Bush’s biggest problem was one from his past.
Polls showed a narrow lead for Bush heading into November. He had fought a hard race, defeating Arizona Senator John McCain in a brutal contest for the Republican nomination before turning to Gore. On the Democratic side, the primary fight was much less divisive. Gore took his party’s nomination easily. Both candidates raised massive sums of money for the general election. They quickly spent it, buying ads across the country and deploying armies of foot soldiers to deliver their message. Both Bush and Gore made surprising selections for their running-mates. Gore chose Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman, a practicing Jew and political moderate. Lieberman had been a harsh critic of President Bill Clinton during his impeachment trial, and his selection symbolized a major break with the sitting administration. On the Republican side, Bush selected long-time family friend and former Defense Secretary Dick Cheney. His selection surprised many political insiders who expected Bush to choose a member of Congress or sitting Governor. But Cheney would prove to be a major asset on the trail. He lent business and foreign policy experience to the ticket, and bested Lieberman in the debates.
The Presidential debates offered an opportunity for both candidates to improve their standing with the electorate. Bush led in the polls at the time, and had an opportunity to dispel criticisms that he lacked a deep knowledge of the issues. Gore, an experienced debater, had a chance to draw even in the polls. Both campaigns invested time into preparing their candidates in an attempt to win over crucial swing voters. The results proved surprising. For the most part, Bush effectively portrayed himself as a straight-shooter who could get things done. On the other side, Gore appeared arrogant and condescending towards Bush. It was a missed opportunity for the Democrat, one that he could ill afford.
As the election headed into the home stretch, it appeared as though Bush would narrowly defeat Gore in the popular vote. But many Republicans feared that the Vice-President would manage to win in the Electoral College. The Bush campaign went so far as to brief surrogates about the possibility of this result and how to go about challenging Gore’s legitimacy in the media. Meanwhile, the Democrats campaigned desperately in an attempt to pull out a shocking comeback. Turnout efforts were focused in the “rust-belt” states which voted for Clinton in the 1990s, but had supported Reagan in the ‘80s. Gore needed that region to win, while Bush had invested heavily there in an attempt to ensure his victory.
The fate of the American presidency changed in a small town news station in Maine. Erin Fehlau, a reporter for WPXT TV, discovered just a week before the election that George Bush had been arrested for DUI in 1976. The station ran with the story. On November 2, just five days before the election, Bush admitted that the story was true. His top campaign adviser, Karl Rove, had known about the arrest for some time. He urged Bush to come clean shortly after he sewed up the Republican nomination. Bush was leading in the polls and the general election was still months away. Voters would likely forget about such an indiscretion if it was brought up in the early summer. But Bush had refused to disclose the arrest, and now it threatened to cost him. Many social conservatives and evangelicals were turned off by this story, and would chose to stay home on Election Day. It’s quite possible that American history would be very different if Governor Bush had followed his strategist’s advice and been honest when he could afford to. Instead, Al Gore was given just the opportunity he needed to pull even and have a chance to win the White House.
Election Night promised to be a strenuous affair for both candidates. Exit polls showed a dead-heat between Bush and Gore. The American electorate promised to be more divided than in any election since 1976; perhaps even more so when considering the likely geographic and cultural divides in the polls. The 1990s had brought with them the promise of a new American electorate. The Presidency of Bill Clinton had certainly brought change to the Democratic Party, shifting it from the old tenets of the New Deal to the gospel of the Third Way. The Republican Party reacted by shifting to the right, particularly on social issues. Meanwhile, the popularity of Ross Perot and the election of several independent governors across the country raised the possibility of third party success of the national scale. But the 2000 election appeared to have little in common with the decade that preceded it. Democratic gains in Dixie and the Southwest seemed likely to swing back to the Republican camp. Surprisingly, it was the GOP’s candidate who attempted to “triangulate” and shake off the aggressive partisanship of the Gingrich Congress. The candidacy of Ralph Nader (running under the Green Party banner) threatened to siphon votes from Gore, but stood little chance of winning the 5% necessary to receive federal funding. In short, 2000 was more a regression to the mean than a continuation of the ‘90s political evolution.
The first polls closed at 6:00 PM. In the next several hours, the race for the Presidency would take shape. The early states for Bush, unsurprisingly. Some were traditional Republican strongholds like Indiana, while others were more recent conservative converts in the South. But two critical swing states also began counting their results before 8:00. Ohio, the classic bellwether state, appeared to be trending Bush. But the polls were far too close for the networks to call the state. Further south, the Sunshine State of Florida was finally wrapping up what had been a chaotic campaign season. Both the Bush and Gore campaigns had invested heavily in the state. Anticipating losing many of the Southern states Clinton had won, Gore needed Florida to reach 270 electoral votes. For the Bush campaign, Florida was important, though perhaps less so than for the Democrats. Led by strategist Karl Rove, the Republican nominee invested a great deal of time in traditionally Democratic states like California, Michigan, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. Nonetheless, Florida was very close to Bush’s heart. His brother, Jeb, was Governor of the State. A tightly fought Senate race would also draw voters to the polls. Florida was the crucial state in the election, one that both candidates had spent millions to win.
It was surprising to many that the Associated Press called Florida for Gore before 8:00 PM. Most expected the Sunshine State to be one of the last to be decided. The Gore camp was ecstatic. Unless Bush was able to steal a Democratic-leaning state in the Midwest or Northeast, Gore was likely to be the next President. But down in Austin, the Bush team was furious. The polls hadn’t even closed in the Panhandle. That was Bush Country, the most reliably Republican region in the state. Karl Rove was on the phone instantly, berating news center pollsters, telling them their information was wrong and that they were suppressing turnout in the precincts that were still open. But for over an hour, the networks didn’t budge. State after state came in, some to Bush, some to Gore. The Vice-President got big wins in Michigan and Pennsylvania, two states Bush would need to mitigate the loss of Florida. As many in the country went to bed, it appeared that the Democratic hold on the White House would continue for four more years.
Then everything changed. Just before 10:00, the networks took Florida off the Gore tally. It was undecided, exactly where most pollsters expected it would be. The air went out of the Gore campaign. The race was suddenly wide open. With big Bush victories in Arkansas and Tennessee, the Texas Governor only needed Florida to win the Presidency. For the next four hours, the networks sat on their hands as the votes were counted. Then, at 2:00 AM, the state was called for Bush. He had gone from being the night’s first big loser to seemingly the clear winner. He held a 50,000 vote edge over Gore, one that was seemingly insurmountable. At 2:30, the Vice-President of the United States called the Governor of Texas to concede. A half-an-hour later, he made his way to the War Memorial Plaza in Nashville to publically admit that George Bush, not Al Gore, would be the next President of the United States.
But something was wrong. In Gore campaign headquarters, staffers noticed that Bush’s lead was rapidly shrinking. Just as Gore’s lead had shrunk at the results flowed in, so too did Bush’s. Florida was still too close to call, especially with the election on the line. Panicked, the Gore campaign staffers scrambled to get a hold of their candidate. Just as the Vice-President made his way to the podium, he was stopped and told what was happening. Gore, never one to admit he was wrong, picked up the phone and called George Bush. The race wasn’t over, and Al Gore was going to fight to keep it that way.