Lawyers Push for Final Appeal, but Gore Passes

As late as 10 p.m. Tuesday, Al Gore thought he still had a chance--a chance that one of the “swing” justices on the Supreme Court might move his way and bring his campaign back to life.

“I’ve been back from the dead a couple of times,” he told an old friend. “Maybe all is not lost.”

But by 2 a.m. EST Wednesday, when Gore went to bed after a harrowing night, the Democratic nominee knew he had almost certainly lost his long battle for the presidency, advisors said.

He let eager lawyers in Tallahassee, Fla., work overnight, looking desperately for what one called “a glimmer of hope,” a way to persuade the Florida Supreme Court to start recounting votes again. But even they could tell that Gore’s thinking was beginning to shift to the endgame.

At dawn, the exhausted lawyers faxed their findings to Washington. About 8 a.m., Gore telephoned campaign chairman Bill Daley at Daley’s apartment in Washington.

It didn’t make sense to prolong the battle further, Gore said, according to aides who were told about the conversation. The odds of success were too low.

At 10 a.m., 12 hours after the Supreme Court issued its opinion, Daley released a laconic public statement: “The vice president has directed the recount committee to suspend activities.”

Al Gore’s presidential campaign was over.

“He was very cool, calm and collected,” said one advisor who spoke with Gore several times. “I’d be a lot angrier if I were in his place.”

Even at the end, Gore’s reactions were characteristically cautious and analytical. “It was a careful exercise,” the advisor said. “He wanted his best legal thinkers to see if anything was there.”

The last 12 hours of the Gore campaign began in confusion, as the vice president and his aides scrambled to figure out exactly what the Supreme Court had said in its ruling.

Gore got the first news from CNN, one aide said--but the network’s correspondents were not sure what the decision meant.

“There was a period of time when no one understood what was going on, including us,” said an aide to Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.), Gore’s running mate.

Gore was inside his 19th century official residence on the grounds of the U.S. Naval Observatory with his wife, Tipper, and three of their four children.

Most of his remaining campaign staff was at Democratic National Committee headquarters on Capitol Hill.

In a series of conference calls that lasted almost 90 minutes, Daley and lawyers Ron Klain and David Boies finally deciphered the decision and delivered their diagnosis to Gore and Lieberman.

“There wasn’t a big, long, drawn-out meeting,” the aide said. “It was clear there was little wriggle room.”

Lawyers See Faint Glimmer of Hope

In Tallahassee, though, the lawyers, led by Klain, begged for one more chance.

They saw a narrow window of opportunity in two sections of the U.S. Supreme Court decision--a “glimmering,” one lawyer said.

Seven members of the U.S. Supreme Court said they were worried about the absence of clear statewide standards for counting ballots in Florida. But, the lawyers asked, what if you could get the Florida Supreme Court to issue such standards?

The court’s majority opinion also argued that recounts could not continue after Tuesday, Dec. 12, because the Florida Supreme Court said that the state’s Legislature intended to end any dispute by that date. But what if you asked the Florida Supreme Court if that really was its reasoning? Maybe the court would say no, and cause the U.S. Supreme Court to rethink.

Even as they started work on these ideas, Gore’s lawyers were divided. Some thought the ideas were simply impractical. Devising a new standard for counting ballots, for example, would probably require the participation of Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, a Republican who opposed any recount.

Besides, another Gore advisor said, even if the Florida Supreme Court authorized a recount under a new standard, George W. Bush’s side would simply appeal it right back to the same U.S. Supreme Court--with the clock still running toward Dec. 18, the day electoral votes must be delivered to Congress, and Jan. 5, the day Congress actually counts them.

But Klain wanted to go ahead, to see, “in a very lawyerly way,” if a respectable argument could be made.

Shortly before 2 a.m., Gore said that he would hold off his decision overnight. But there was little doubt which way he was leaning, several advisors said.

The lawyers worked all night. By dawn, they had produced a brief that, in effect, would ask the Florida Supreme Court for permission to make their new arguments.

But when Gore got up Wednesday morning, it took him little time to decide.

Overnight, a slowly building chorus of Democrats had begun calling on him--both privately and publicly--to withdraw.

“I think the American people are ready for it to end,” Sen. John B. Breaux (D-La.) said.

About 8 a.m., Gore talked with Daley. At 8:30 a.m., Daley called Klain in Tallahassee to “pull the plug,” one aide said.

At 9, Gore’s senior staff conferred in a conference call. There were no arguments against the vice president’s decision, just a discussion of how a public statement should be made.

They recommended a formal statement on prime-time television Wednesday evening, to get the biggest possible audience. But they also decided on a quick statement in the morning--to avoid suffering through a day of speculation over whether Gore was keeping his dying campaign alive.

At 9:30, Gore telephoned the lawyers in Tallahassee to thank them for their work. Some wept.

At 10, Daley issued his statement.

And by 10:15, Gore was on the telephone again--first with President Clinton, who called from Ireland, and then asking friends and allies for advice on his television speech.

The Gore residence was once again full of aides--Daley, political consultants Robert Shrum and Carter Eskew, and speech writer Eli Attie--working on the text.

Improbably enough, the Gores had scheduled a Christmas-season party for Wednesday evening, including rock musician Jon Bon Jovi, a Gore supporter who sang at many of his campaign events.

The party went ahead as planned. That’s why Gore spoke not from his house but from his office in the Old Executive Office Building, next to the White House.

Gore Quotes Douglas’ Advice to Lincoln

Speaking for just under seven minutes, the vice president was eloquent in urging the nation to rally behind his erstwhile foe. He quoted Sen. Stephen Douglas telling Abraham Lincoln, who had just defeated him for the presidency: “Partisan feeling must yield to patriotism. I’m with you, Mr. President, and God bless you.”

“Well, in that same spirit,” Gore went on, “I say to President-elect Bush that what remains of partisan rancor must now be put aside, and may God bless his stewardship of this country.”

Aides and friends insisted that, throughout the last week, Gore never talked about whether he should run again for the presidency in four years.

Others have brought it up, a friend said, saying: “We’ll come back and we’ll take this.”

But Gore has rebuffed them.

“He doesn’t want to talk about it,” the friend said.

“This is really painful,” he said. “And he’s got to take some time off to relax and unwind and enjoy himself, which he hasn’t done for years.”

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Times staff writers Geraldine Baum, Ronald Brownstein and James Gerstenzang contributed to this story.