ELECTION 2000, Day 29
Why Gore lost the
presidency
Tennessee cops, media
credit Al's defeat
in home state to WND
investigative series
By Charles Thompson
and Tony Hays
© 2000 WorldNetDaily.com
SAVANNAH, Tenn. -- Vice
President Al Gore is tortured
by the fact that he lost
Tennessee, say friends. After
all, had he won his home state
-- the state he represented all
his years in Congress -- he
would now be President-elect
Gore, with or without Florida.
"I know that's one thing
bothering him the most, that he
lost Tennessee," said close
friend Steve Armistead, who
spent his summers with Gore
while growing up in Tennessee,
according to a New York Times
report. "The other night he
asked me, 'What happened in
Tennessee?'"
Although the media have
accurately reported that
Tennessee's 11 electoral votes
would have put Gore at 271 and
thereby made him the next
president of the United States,
most have missed the reason
Gore suffered his first-ever
defeat in Tennessee.
Indeed, 24 years ago in his
first run for Congress, Gore
won an overwhelming 94 percent
of the vote. His dominance was
such that he ran unopposed for
his next two House terms. And
when he ran for his second term
in the Senate a decade ago,
Gore became the first statewide
candidate in Tennessee's
history to take all 95
counties.
So why did Gore lose Tennessee
on Nov. 7 -- the first time a
presidential candidate has
failed to win his own state
since George McGovern lost his
native South Dakota in 1972?
The usual press analysis is
that Tennessee's demographics
have changed, sending the
once-Democratic stronghold
tipping to the Republican
Party. Sen. Fred Thompson and
Gov. Don Sundquist have echoed
this idea, while Rep. Bill
Jenkins, from historically
Republican upper east
Tennessee, noted in an
Associated Press report that
"Tennessee didn't leave Gore.
Gore left Tennessee." He
pointed to Gore's changing
stance on gun control and
abortion as bellwethers.
Yet, while these issues may
have played a role, the answer
is far more fundamental than
that.
"It was the character issue,"
says popular Nashville radio
talk host Phil Valentine.
"Thanks to talk radio and
sources like WorldNetDaily
getting out the truth, I
believe it tipped the state to
Bush."
Valentine initially broke a
story on Gore's ties to alleged
criminal figures in Wilson
County, Tenn., next door to
Gore's home county. Shortly
after that, WorldNetDaily ran a
series of investigative reports
detailing Gore's involvement in
and interference with criminal
investigations linked to his
uncle, retired judge Whit LaFon
and top campaign fundraisers
like Clark Jones, of Savannah,
Tenn. According to Valentine,
it was stories like those that
spelled Gore's defeat.
"They [the stories] stayed
under the radar nationally," he
said, "but around here they
were on everyone's lips."
Charlotte Alexander, editor of
the Decatur County Chronicle in
Parsons, Tenn., agrees.
"Absolutely, it was the
integrity issue," she affirms.
Alexander's paper ran the
WorldNetDaily series of
articles profiling Gore's seamy
political dealings in
Tennessee.
"We sold out of every edition
that carried those stories.
People literally drove in from
hundreds of miles away to buy
25, 50, 100 copies, whatever
they could afford, to take back
with them," she said. "We had
well-known Democrats come in
here after reading those
stories and say out loud that
they couldn't be associated
with somebody that behaved as
Gore had." Alexander even had
additional copies printed, but
the public soon gobbled those
up as well.
"Those [WorldNetDaily] stories
coming out about Gore involving
himself in criminal
investigations were just too
much," says former Tennessee
Bureau of Investigation agent
Milton Bowling. "I'm a
Democrat, but I couldn't get
past that. I know plenty of
people who felt the same way.
It was never a matter of party
in Tennessee; it was always
about character and integrity.
Gore flunked that test."
The WND articles clearly had a
major impact in Tennessee's
legal community, especially
those reports dealing with
Gore's ties to Tennessee Bureau
of Investigation Director Larry
Wallace. According to former
TBI director and now District
Attorney General John Carney,
at a recent meeting of the
Tennessee District Attorney
Generals Conference, the
articles were widely discussed,
yet only one DAG took issue
with them, and that was
longtime Wallace friend and
Gore supporter Gus Radford of
the 24th Judicial District.
"Gus was the only one trying to
undermine them [the WND
articles]," said Carney. Carney
is now looking beyond the
election toward bringing reform
to the Tennessee law
enforcement community after
eight long years of
Clinton-Gore influence.
"Something needed to be done,"
Carney said flatly. "That's the
message that went out in the
communities. It's time this
mess got cleaned up."
Is Tennessee turning
Republican? Not really.
Tennesseans have been
conservative politically for
decades. Since 1968, Tennessee
has been a swing state in
presidential politics, usually
voting Republican, but giving
its electoral votes to
Democratic neighbors like Jimmy
Carter in 1976 and Bill Clinton
in 1996. The fallacy of the
establishment media's argument
-- that the state's political
demographics have changed --
becomes clear upon examination
of the way Tennesseans voted in
their congressional races this
year.
Historically, the mountainous
regions of east Tennessee were
staunchly Republican, while
middle and west Tennessee were
Democratic strongholds, with
only Memphis holding a
substantial Republican bloc.
Any Republican candidate for
state office had to come out of
east Tennessee with a huge
margin to overcome the
Democratic totals in the
western two-thirds of the
state.
Despite Thompson's and
Sundquist's claims to the
contrary, the people of middle
and west Tennessee have not
changed their politics. In what
was basically Gore's old
congressional district,
Democratic incumbent Bart
Gordon trounced his Republican
opponent, and outpolled Gore in
every county including Gore's
home county, Smith.
In Nashville, long a Democratic
base, Rep. Bob Clement, son of
a populist Democratic governor,
outpolled the vice president by
more than 28,000 votes. And
Clement's district does not
include all of the city.
But the 6th District was no
exception. In upper and central
west Tennessee, home of the 8th
District, Democrat incumbent
John Tanner carried every
county against a credible
opponent. In Madison County
(Jackson, Tenn., and hometown
of Gore's uncle, Whit LaFon),
Tanner outpolled his party's
standard-bearer by more than
8,000 votes. By the media's
yardstick, Tanner, Gordon and
Clement should have felt some
of the same heat as Gore -- but
not only did they win
convincingly, they outpolled
their party's presidential
candidate in his home state.
Republican Rep. Ed Bryant and
Rep. Van Hilleary hold seats
that span historically
Democratic counties, but in
both cases, more than half of
their victory margins came from
the traditionally Republican
territories in their districts.
Moreover, Tennessee has a habit
of returning incumbents, no
matter the party.
Gore carried west Tennessee,
but only marginally, and then
only because of the Ford
political machine in Shelby
County (Memphis). The large
African-American family has
controlled Democratic politics
in Memphis for decades, and
Harold Ford Jr., who currently
holds the congressional seat in
that district, was Gore's
choice to deliver the keynote
speech at the Democratic
National Convention. But even
the Ford machine couldn't make
up the losses Gore sustained in
what should have been his
strongholds, middle and west
Tennessee. And it was voters in
those two regions, observers
say, that brought concerns
about Gore's character and
integrity to the ballot box
with them.
The Gore campaign was evidently
concerned about the influence
of the WorldNetDaily stories
early on. Doug Hattaway, one of
Gore's primary campaign
spokesmen, personally called
media outlets across middle and
west Tennessee in late
September and early October,
pleading with, and in some
cases reportedly threatening,
news directors to keep the
stories off the air and out of
print.
"Doug Hattaway called me," said
freelance TV reporter Tommy
Stafford. Stafford had produced
a story for WMC-TV in Memphis
on the Thompson-Hays articles
in WorldNetDaily. "He hammered
at me," said Stafford, "but I
told him, 'Look, I interviewed
these guys. They're credible.'"
Hattaway then turned his
attention to the news director
at the Memphis station and the
story was put on indefinite
hold. "It was that kind of
arrogance, plus the credibility
issues, that beat Gore in
Tennessee," said Stafford.
"Political parties didn't have
anything to do with it."
"It was an uphill battle
against news sources like the
Tennessean, who refused to tell
the true story," said
Valentine. "I think people
began to question Gore's
character and integrity here in
Tennessee. I think the truth
came back to bite Gore in
Tennessee, and I find it ironic
that, if Florida holds for
Bush, it will be Tennessee that
was Gore's downfall."
"Whether the mainstream media
believed the WorldNetDaily
stories were credible or not,"
said Alexander, "the voters
did. I've never seen articles
that attracted the kind of
attention these did. They cost
Gore the margin he needed in
middle and west Tennessee. They
cost Gore Tennessee's electoral
votes. That's a fact." |
