Expansionary Institute

Michael Zey
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WASHINGTON (Nov. 29) - The battle for the U.S. presidency dragged into a fourth week on Wednesday as Democrat Al Gore ratcheted up a public relations blitz to press for new vote counts in Florida and Republican George W. Bush, the self-declared winner, raced to assemble his Cabinet.

Gore, in an interview on NBC's "Today" show, said he believed the majority of people in Florida voted for him and running mate Joseph Lieberman, and he gave himself even odds of prevailing in his contest of the state's election results.

"I believe we are going to win this election," Gore said. "I think (the odds) are still fifty-fifty. I think the law is so clear in Florida that the votes are going to have to be counted."

Florida officials certified Bush as the victor in their state on Sunday by a margin of 537 votes out of nearly 6 million cast. The slim victory gave Bush the state's 25 electoral votes, putting him over the 270 needed to move into the White House.

But Gore is contesting the results in the courts of law and public opinion, arguing that more than 10,000 ballots in three Democratic strongholds in Florida were not thoroughly counted by machine and were never counted by hand.

Bush's father, former President George Bush, appeared on CBS's "The Early Show" as well as NBC's "Today" to support his son while saying he wanted to stay out of the politics of the situation. But he told NBC the Florida contest has had an emotional impact.

"November 7th was a very traumatic night for us," Bush said of he and his wife Barbara. "We heard our son, on all national television, declared the winner and we heard his opponent concede. I didn't hear him, but I was in the house when it happened and it was a moment of euphoria. There has not been a euphoric moment since."

Gore had called the Texas governor on election night to concede, but withdrew it when he learned the results were so close there would be a recount.

LAWYERS GET READY FOR CRUCIAL COURT HEARINGS

Lawyers for Bush and Gore are preparing for key hearings -- in the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday and in a Florida court on Saturday -- that may finally determine the outcome of the Nov. 7 presidential election.

Briefs were due by 4 p.m. EST (2100 GMT) on Wednesday in a third set of cases before the Florida Supreme Court in which the Democrats are seeking a new presidential vote in Palm Beach County because of a confusing butterfly ballot they say cost Gore thousands of votes.

Meanwhile, Florida's Republican-led Legislature began work on a contingency plan to name the state's electors -- just in case all the legal disputes are not resolved by the Dec. 12 federal deadline for all electors to be named.

Gore has accused the Texas governor of trying to "run out the clock" with legal delays to extend the battle over Florida's votes until the Dec. 12 Electoral College deadline. He offered a plan to complete all recounts in seven days.

The Electoral College meets on Dec. 18 to elect the next U.S. president. Both candidates need Florida's 25 votes to win.

COURT DEALS SETBACK

Leon County Circuit Judge N. Sanders Sauls dealt Gore a setback on Tuesday when he refused to accept the vice president's accelerated schedule and set a hearing for Saturday, a day after the U.S. Supreme Court hears arguments on a Bush appeal seeking to invalidate all hand-counted ballots.

With an eye to the mounting time pressure, Sauls did, however, order thousands of disputed ballots to be brought to the state capital, Tallahassee, so they would be secure and ready if they needed to be counted or examined.

"The judge gave us a good step forward in ordering that the ballots be brought to Tallahassee -- obviously not as quickly as we'd like," Gore spokesman Doug Hattaway told MSNBC, adding that the Democratic legal team was assessing the decision.

Bush's vice-presidential running mate, Dick Cheney, spoke of the urgency of concluding the historic electoral impasse, with the president's inauguration set for Jan. 20.

"We've already used up, with the recount process in Florida, the legal challenges, some 30 percent of the available time for the transition. We can't afford to wait any longer," Cheney said on CNN's "Larry King Live" on Tuesday.

Gore adviser and former Secretary of State Warren Christopher warned against any move by the Florida lawmakers and asked Americans to remain patient.

"There is a legal process going forward, and if they try to preempt that and rush in and reach a conclusion, it's going to look unduly political, because, after all, it is a Republican-dominated legislature," he said on the same program.

POLLS SHOW FATIGUE

Gore appeared in public twice on Monday, again on Tuesday, and yet again on Wednesday morning for a television interview -- eager to shore up ebbing support as public opinion polls showed that up to 60 percent of Americans believed he should concede the election to Bush.

But an NBC poll taken on Monday evening after the vice president made a five-minute televised address, while revealing growing impatience with the drawn-out process, showed that number had slipped back down to around 49 percent.

As Gore and his advisers sought to combat the impression that Bush has become the de facto president-elect of the United States, Bush's communications director, Karen Hughes, said the Texas governor had gone back to his secluded Texas ranch to "think and reflect" about the transition to power.

Cheney said decisions could be finalized "fairly rapidly" on some key Cabinet appointments.

Republican sources said among Bush's first appointments would be retired Gen. Colin Powell as secretary of state and Condoleezza Rice as White House national security adviser. But Hughes said Bush was unlikely to reveal his picks this week, given the legal wrangling.

Reuters 09:45 11-29-00

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