Gore faces uphill battle after Bush wins Florida

publiziert: Montag, 27. Nov 2000 / 08:22 Uhr

Washington - Vice President Al Gore now faces a treacherous uphill legal and public relations battle to convice the American people and members of his own Democratic party why he must continue to fight for the presidency after his rival George W. Bush was certified as the winner of Florida's crucial election.

As Florida's Sunday vote count deadline passed with him trailing, Gore was hunkered down at his residence on the grounds of the National Observatory in Washington as raucous demonstrators faced off on opposite corners of Massachusetts Avenue in front of the closely guarded property.

If Gore had stepped out to the street, he could have witnessed Americans hurling bitter invectives at each other as they brandished Bush or Gore placards, including the increasingly prominent "Sore Loserman", mocking Gore-Lieberman campaign signs. Gore could witness first-hand how the nation has become increasingly divided as the presidential uncertainty has dragged into third week since the November 7 election. Gore and his advisors must now calculate how much longer they can afford to press their case - that the Florida vote tally was unfair by allegedly ignoring thousands of ballots cast for the Democratic candidate. He needs to weigh his own conviction that he won the election, lacking proof, against the divisiveness and bitterness further legal wrangling would engender. With his slender 537-vote margin, Texas Governor Bush can take a much more direct road to the White House. He only needs to hammer on the Florida certification, repeating over and over that he won the state and its crucial 25 electors after three counting procedures.

Despite losing the national vote tally by about 325,000 votes, Bush can expect popular opinion to swing strongly in his favour after the Florida certification. So much attention has been focussed on the Sunshine State that whoever pulled ahead there would gain tremendous legitimacy as the presumptive president-elect. For Gore to continue his fight he must overturn a legally certified vote count in Florida. While "contesting" the vote, he will have to avoid the view that he is throwing a legitimate election into the courts and leaving democracy in the hands of high-priced lawyers. Gore's running mate, Senator Joseph Lieberman, laid out the Democratic strategy in a hasty statement read immediately after the Florida certification. Lieberman said the vote count was, "by any reasonable standard, incomplete and inaccurate". The Gore legal team began laying out a strategy to contest the vote in three Florida counties when it became obvious over the weekend that the hand recounts in South Florida would not gain him enough votes to overtake Bush.

Gore's hope is that his lawyers can find judges willing to accept the election contest on grounds that thousands of ballots were either ignored or were counted inaccurately by machines. The lawyers, led by super-attorney David Boies, were expected to focus on ballots that were not counted initially, especially some 10,000 ballots in Miami-Dade County that were discarded when counting machines could not read them.

Bush's allies will begin the celebration, start the transition to a second Bush presidency - after George Bush senior held the office from 1989 to 1993 - and denounce the legal action by the Democrats. Bush said he was beginning a transition to the presidency and he called on Gore to "reconsider" whether to take further legal action in Florida. "This has been a hard-fought election, a healthy contest for American democracy. But now that the votes are counted, it is time for the votes to count," Bush said. "The vice president's lawyers have indicated he will challenge the certified election results. I respectfully ask him to reconsider." James Baker, the lead Bush lawyer and spokesman in Florida, also called for Gore to drop any legal actions by pointing out that no U.S. presidential election had ever been contested in court. He said it would be an "extraordinarily unusual" action to take. But Baker said Republican legal efforts would continue as long as the Gore team remained on the field.

Ironically, the Bush team gave Gore some breathing room when they brought an appeal of the hand recount in Florida to the U.S. Supreme Court. The court's hearing Friday on whether the hand recount is legal essentially gives Gore another week to make his case before a final judgement is rendered.

(sda)

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