All Goes Right for Gore at Cable TV Battleground : Politics: Nominee visits N.C. hamlet victorious in epic fight. He assails Bush for saying he will veto regulatory bill.

For Al Gore, it doesn’t get much better than this. On Monday he had the right issue in the right place at the right time. It was hardly a coincidence, but such are the makings of a dream event for any politician.

Earlier this year, this North Carolina hamlet of 16,000 won an epic, six-year battle against the nation’s largest cable TV company, booting out Tele-Communications Inc. after a $750,000 battle that also saw the corporate behemoth wage an unsuccessful campaign to oust the mayor and a city councilman.

Now, with President Bush expected to veto a popular bill to regulate the cable TV industry and stimulate competition, Tennessee Sen. Gore--a co-sponsor--lambasted Bush for siding with big business and called on hundreds of sympathetic local residents to help “veto” a second term for the Bush Administration.

“Other communities should not be forced to endure the hardships that Morganton has gone through,” Gore said.

The Democratic vice presidential nominee’s message struck a decidedly populist note, thus stepping up a new emphasis by the Clinton-Gore ticket of late to portray the Democrats as ready to take on big business. Last week, in talking about health care reform, Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton vowed to take on the health insurance industry and stop it from making huge profits.

Gore, spending a full day in this key battleground state, also appeared at Brenner Children’s Hospital in Winston-Salem, where he met with young parents of sick children and promoted the ticket’s health-care proposals.

His appearance in Morganton was well planned. Before Gore and his entourage arrived, a top campaign aide made himself available to traveling reporters to ensure that the event’s significance would not elude them.

In 1985, Morganton decided not to renew TCI’s monopoly franchise, largely because of widespread complaints about its poor service and rising fees, three to four times above the inflation rate.

The firm, which serves one of every five American cable users, responded by filing a $35-million lawsuit against the city. TCI pursued the case all the way to the state Supreme Court, but lost. It also pursued its case in federal court, to no avail.

During the litigation, TCI spent $140,000 to sponsor a local referendum designed to prevent the city from canceling TCI’s contract. It lost by a 2-1 margin, and Morganton is now constructing a state-of-the-art cable system.

“Morganton finally is in control of its cable destiny,” Mayor Mel Cohen said.

Gore told a cheering crowd in an auditorium of the historic Burke County Courthouse: “Napoleon had his Waterloo and TCI had its Morganton.”

Gore noted that both houses of Congress recently passed the Cable Television Consumer Protection and Competition Act by healthy margins, and said he is confident that both chambers could override a veto. The bill would open the way for the first price controls on basic cable service in eight years.

Bush, in a letter to Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) earlier this month, said he intended to veto the measure.