The Story Behind the Near-Concession
By SANDRA SOBIERAJ
.c The Associated Press
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (Nov. 8) - Al Gore set aside the stoic valedictory written
for him by an aide and picked up the phone. George W. Bush did not take his
call happily. ''You don't have to get snippy about this,'' Gore spat.
The acid of their yearlong fight - character assaults and name-calling,
layered onto the Clinton-Gore defeat of Bush's father in 1992 - boiled over
as Gore, in an underground office at the War Memorial, insisted that
Florida's decisive 25 electoral votes remained in limbo.
''Let me make sure I understand,'' protested Bush, his victory speech in
hand. ''You're calling me back to retract your concession?''
Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, chastened on Election Night when it appeared Bush had
lost the state, had just assured his brother it was a done deal. And the TV
networks had already declared Texas Gov. George W. Bush the 43rd president of
the United States.
''Let me explain something,'' Gore lectured in a stony tone, ''your YOUNGER
brother is not the ultimate authority on this.''
The conversation, quoted to The Associated Press by a person in the room with
Gore and confirmed by a Bush aide, ended abruptly.
Outside, thousands of supporters, sick from the night's roller-coaster drama,
shouted ''Stay and fight!'' and ''Recount!''
While campaign chairman William Daley took the stage to announce, ''Our
campaign continues,'' the vice president marched unseen from the Memorial
through a side exit. Stranding dozens of friends, family and VIPs in the
drizzle, he ordered his motorcade back to the hotel suite where no more than
60 minutes earlier he had telephoned his congratulations to Bush.
''He's fine,'' said Gore's brother-in-law, Frank Hunger, on the sidewalk and
looking for a ride.
On Wednesday, the picture of morning-after confidence, Bush invited news
photographers into the dining room of the Governor's Mansion as he, wife
Laura, running mate Dick Cheney and Cheney's wife, Lynne, sat down to a lunch
of chilled soup.
He recalled his exchange with Gore: ''I felt like I was fully prepared to go
out and give a speech and thanking my supporters. ... I thought it was an
interesting comment he made and listened to what he had to say and didn't
have much to say.''
Gore and most of his family stayed in bed well past noon then waited out the
day at a hotel across from Vanderbilt University, where years ago he enrolled
in Divinity school to sort out inner conflicts over the five months he served
as an Army journalist in Vietnam.
Son-in-law Drew Schiff slipped out with the vice president's 16-month-old
grandson for some air. ''It's been so emotionally draining,'' Schiff said.
With most of his aides barred from the ninth floor, cordoned off for the
family and under watch as always by the Secret Service, no one knew for sure
what Gore was thinking or planning.
Chief strategist Carter Eskew announced Gore would go to headquarters to
thank the crew then escape to nearby Center Hill Lake for several days while
lawyers sifted through the Florida recount. Press secretary Chris Lehane and
others said nothing had been decided. The Secret Service ordered a hotel
banquet room cleared for bomb-sniffing dogs and an imminent Gore news
conference. They called it off within minutes.
At mid-afternoon, former Secretary of State Warren Christopher, summoned to
help oversee the Florida recount, slipped toward the elevators and up to meet
with Gore, running mate Joseph Lieberman and Daley.
They monitored recount reports from the legal team dispatched to Tallahassee,
Fla., by charter jet that morning.
The night before, it was a pager vibrating on the belt loop of Gore aide
Michael Feldman that set the Election Night drama careening toward dawn:
''Call switchboard. Call holding with Mike Whouley. ASAP.''
Feldman was several vans behind Gore's limousine in the ''mournful
motorcade'' to the vice president's concession speech. On his cell phone,
Feldman patched Whouley through to Daley in yet another van.
Hunkered down at headquarters, in a command central dubbed The Boiler Room,
field commander Whouley was watching the Florida election commission Web
site. Gore's 50,000-vote deficit in the decisive state had suddenly narrowed
to 900 votes, then 500.
For a seemingly interminable space of minutes, the entourage of family,
friends and staffers huddled beneath the Memorial's towering stone pillars
while Daley conferred with Gore in a small office.
''We had no TVs. Everyone was on their cell phones,'' recalled policy adviser
Greg Simon. ''People were calling us from everywhere, telling us, 'Don't
concede.'''
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