Poignant Gore Tale Stirs Party; Clinton Nominated to 2nd Term

Bringing many in his audience to tears Wednesday, Vice President Al Gore silenced the Democratic National Convention with an achingly personal account of his younger sister’s premature death from lung cancer as he held up the Clinton administration’s campaign against tobacco advertising as evidence of their commitment to defend American families.

Gore’s speech was the prime-time show-stopper as Democrats formally renominated President Clinton for what they hope will be the first two-term Democratic presidency in more than 50 years. The speech and nomination capped a boisterous evening of Democratic celebration for Gore and for Clinton, who arrived here Wednesday evening at the end of a four-day rail trip.

Looking confidently toward the fall campaign, party leaders also pledged to turn away from negative campaigning and project a positive vision for the nation’s future, even as they suggested an image of Clinton’s 73-year-old Republican opponent, Bob Dole, as a man looking backward.

Often ridiculed as a wooden speaker, Gore began his speech with two jokes about his reputation for dullness and then proceeded to bring the delegates to their feet with a speech designed to portray the Democrats as the party of the future and Dole and the Republicans as the party of the past.

Gore portrayed Clinton as a courageous, vigorous president who has stood up against a barrage of Republican proposals on such issues as abortion, affirmative action, public education and environmental protection.

“There is a profound difference in outlook between the president and the man who seeks his office,” Gore told the convention, reminding his listeners of a long catalog of measures Dole had opposed, from Medicare and Medicaid in the 1960s to Clinton’s national service initiative in the last few years.

“He even voted against the funds to send a man to the moon.”

“In his speech from San Diego, Sen. Dole offered himself as a bridge to the past,” he said. “Tonight, Bill Clinton and I offer ourselves as a bridge to the future.”

In keeping with the Democrats’ pledge to mount a positive campaign, Gore praised Dole for the service he provided to the country as a disabled World War II veteran and a longtime political leader. But in doing so, he also cast Dole as a member of a generation who long for a time that has passed and who view the future with pessimism.

“The president’s opponent . . . is a good and decent man,” he said. “We honor his service to America and his personal courage in fighting back from injuries sustained in battle. Though we disagree with his ideas, only the unknowing would deny him the respect he deserves.”

But, he added, while “it is easy to understand the nostalgic appeal of the party of memory and the men who lead it . . . the future lies with the party of hope--and the man from Hope [Ark.] who leads it.”

After the partisan jabs, however, Gore silenced the convention audience by recalling the day he was summoned to the hospital room of his sister, Nancy Gore Hunger, shortly before she died in 1984 at age 46.

As his parents, former Sen. Albert Gore Sr., and wife, Pauline, looked on with tears in their eyes, the vice president told the story of how his sister’s habit began at age 13, before the hazards of cigarettes were fully known.

As she lay dying in her hospital bed, his sister looked up at him as he entered the room, Gore recalled, and, though she was heavily sedated with pain killers, “from out of that haze her eyes focused intensely right at me.”

“She couldn’t speak, but I felt clearly I knew she was forming a question: “Do you bring me hope?”

“All I could do,” he continued, his voice barely under control, “was say back to her with all gentleness in my heart, ‘I love you.’ ”

“Tomorrow morning another 13-year-old girl will start smoking. I love her, too. Three thousand young people in America will start smoking tomorrow. One thousand of them will die a death not unlike my sister’s.”

“That is why, until I draw my last breath, I will pour my heart and soul into the cause of protecting our children from the dangers of smoking.”

One Wept Openly

The normally restive delegates were riveted by the tale. Like many, Joshua White, a 64-year-old Long Beach business consultant, wept openly, his shoulders shaking, while another delegate patted his back. He later explained that the story reminded him of his twin brother, who suffers from emphysema and chronic pulmonary disease.

A second delegate, Harriette Ray, 48, of Lillington, N.C., said most of her neighbors grow tobacco. There is third generation tobacco on her farm. She has 40 cultivated acres and mostly grows corn and soybeans. She has less than 2 acres of tobacco.

During Gore’s speech, where he talked about his sister dying, Ray was all torn up.

“I’m very torn. I never smoked because I saw what it did to my momma and daddy. They were always coughing, and I hated to clean up the ashtrays.”

Her father died at 54, her mother at 70, she said, adding that both had heart problems that she attributes to lifelong smoking.

“I’m not going to stand there and tell you it doesn’t kill,” she said, adding of her party’s nominees that “I just hope they realize that farmers and farmworkers are real people with real problems.”

Gore, of course, had a political purpose in mind, and he quickly reminded his listeners in the convention hall and the nation’s living rooms that Clinton earlier this month had become the first president to propose regulations designed to end tobacco advertisements aimed at children.

He did not mention, but presumably knew he did not have to, that Dole had opposed the regulations and, earlier this summer, had ignited a controversy by arguing that cigarettes were, perhaps, not addictive after all.

His sister, Gore said, tried in vain to stop smoking many times.

Dole Is Irked

The speech clearly irked Dole, who quickly responded by telling reporters outside a restaurant in Santa Barbara, where he was vacationing that “I feel sorry for him.”

“Apparently, he’s a hatchet man for the Democrats. He always has been. It’s not unexpected coming from Al Gore. It’s unfortunate, but not unexpected.”

The tobacco regulations were only one item in a catalog Gore presented of administration efforts to provide families tools to help them raise their children--from protection for food and water at the breakfast table, to the proposed “V-chip” to help parents block violent programs from the family television sets.

It was a theme the Democrats have stressed throughout their convention so far, and one hammered home by several other speakers as well.

“Children don’t have high-priced lobbyists to represent them,” California Sen. Barbara Boxer told the delegates, in one such remark. “They are counting on us.”

Dodd Lauds Dole

Like Gore, Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.), in his speech placing the president’s name in nomination, also praised Dole while at the same time portraying him as a remnant of a bygone era.

“It is not Bob Dole’s reputation that I question,’ he said, “it is his agenda for America. Sometimes a fine person has flawed ideas. This is such a time.”

Dodd cited a series of issues, again items consistent with the Democrats’ claim that they are the party most committed to assisting parents in the tough task of raising children in a troubled world.

Dodd noted that Clinton supported the Family and Medical Leave Act, increasing the minimum wage to $5.15 an hour and a woman’s right to have an abortion while Dole opposed each of those items. He added that Clinton opposed abolishing the Education Department and other key programs, while Dole advocated their abolition.

Gore, as the vice presidential nominee, would normally speak on the same night as the presidential contender. In that position, the vice presidential speech is always overshadowed.

By scheduling Gore’s speech on Wednesday night, convention planners appeared to be giving him a small advantage in the yet-unjoined race for the Democratic presidential nomination in the year 2000. The audience’s overwhelmingly positive reaction to the speech clearly also gave the vice president the boost he was seeking in the future race.

Both speeches were consistent with the determination of the Democratic strategists to portray Clinton and Gore as “above the battle” statesmen, rather than partisan leaders. They also were certain to be contrasted with the more partisan speeches at the Republican convention in San Diego earlier this month.

Not Altruistic

Their compliments for Dole were not, of course, purely altruistic. Democrats know that voters’ strongly dislike negative campaigns. But they also know that given Clinton’s large lead in current polls, Republicans have little hope of winning unless they find a way to sharply reduce the president’s currently favorable image with the country.

By portraying themselves as the party with a “positive message,” Democrats may be able to put Republicans in the difficult position of either playing the politically unpopular role of the negative campaigner or of forgoing their most potent weapons--attacks on Clinton’s character.

Speaking also as the chairman of the Democratic Party, Dodd vowed that Clinton and all Democratic candidates would mount a positive, well-intentioned campaign in the fall, rejecting the negativism that has caused so many American voters to become cynical or uninterested in politics.

“On this August evening,” Dodd said, “in this hall, I ask each and every one of you to pledge with me that this campaign will be worthy of the people we seek to lead, and of the land we love. Let us do our part to restore civility to America’s political discourse. . . . The American people are fed up with relentless assaults on people’s reputations.

“This has to stop--and stop now.”

And Dodd called on the Republicans to do the same.

“Stop attacking the president’s family,” Dodd urged, a line that brought Chelsea Clinton, among many others in the hall, to her feet applauding.

“Stick to the issues,” he said. “We may at times oppose on another, but we must always respect each other.”

In essence, Dodd was calling on the Republicans to stop attacking Clinton where he is vulnerable--on issues related to character, the Whitewater scandal and the alleged misdeeds of First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Dodd’s call for Democrats to disavow negative campaigning in the fall was echoed in many of the speeches of Democratic candidates for Congress, including a number from California, who spoke to the convention earlier in the day.

“Make no mistake,” said Peter Navarro, a Democratic congressional challenger running in San Diego, “there are big differences between Democrats and our opponents. And as we debate them, we owe it to the voters to keep our campaigns on the high road.”

Speaking as Moms

After the members of Congress, delegates heard from California’s two senators, part of a larger convention segment devoted to Democratic women in the Senate, who underscored the party’s commitment to helping families. Both Boxer and Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) emphasized that they--like so many other American women--had experienced the trials of raising children while working for a living.

A new grandmother, Boxer declared: “We come before you not just a senators, but as grandmothers and moms and sisters and daughters, as wives and aunts, as women and Americans concerned about the future of our children and the future of our country.”

Boxer illustrated her speech with a film clip of an interview with the father of Erick Meuller of California, who was killed by e-coli bacteria that he consumed when he ate a fast-food hamburger. The clip was intended to demonstrate how families depend on government regulation and other federal programs.

“When a mother fills her infant’s bottle with water to make formula, she shouldn’t have to worry about toxics harming her baby,” Boxer said. “When our families drive to our majestic parks, they should see a welcome sign, not a for sale sign. When our children splash around at our nation’s beaches, they shouldn’t be surrounded by garbage or oil spills. And when a dad takes his kids out for a burger, he shouldn’t be afraid.”

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who became mayor of San Francisco after her predecessor, George Moscone, was killed in a shooting inside San Francisco City Hall in 1978, spoke of how the incident convinced her to draft a ban on assault-style weapons--another in the list of issues Clinton likes to describe as distinguishing him from his opponent.

All five women senators--including Sens. Barbara A. Mikulski of Maryland and Carol Moseley-Braun of Illinois--praised Clinton for his commitment to these issues that are of concern to American women and families from coast to coast.

Roll Call of Votes

The speeches finally closed with the traditional state-by-state roll call of votes. In the past, that has been one of the more colorful pieces of convention practice. But in the end, it conveyed all the drama of garbage time in a Chicago Bulls blowout. Once Ohio gave Clinton the number needed for nomination--and the giant video screen in the hall showed him giving a thumbs up--most delegations began to stream for the exits, leaving behind those yet to announce their votes.

Delegations were urged by the convention secretary, Kathy Vick, to cut short their flowery speeches invoking the patriotic history of Pennsylvania, the natural wonders of Wyoming and so forth. When the advice was ignored, as it often was, delegations still waiting their turn would begin to chant: “Just vote. Just vote.”

Shortly before midnight, the littlest delegations like the Virgin Islands and American Somoa--”America’s best kept secret,” as the delegation leader intoned--delivered their unanimous support for Clinton and thus concluded the principal business of the convention. By the end, all the cameras had been flicked off and the hall was all but empty.

Times staff writers Peter H. King, Judy Pasternak, Stephen Braun and Doyle McManus contributed to this story.

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