Final Push Puts Tight Race Into Hands of Voters

Scrambling from one must-win state to another, Al Gore and George W. Bush battled through the eleventh hour and beyond as the tightest presidential campaign in decades hurtled today to a dramatic close.

As the candidates raced time and faced exhaustion, the major parties and their allies were mounting the most extensive, most expensive get-out-the-vote drive in the nation’s history.

Sound trucks prowled streets in black neighborhoods across the country, urging support for Gore and his fellow Democrats. Gun control opponents in Atlanta were raffling a shotgun to spur turnout for Bush and the GOP. VIPs, from Barbara Bush to Whoopi Goldberg, were featured on telephone recordings flooding millions of homes nationwide.

“Generally, the importance of turnout is a cliche, but it’s no cliche this time,” said Andy Kohut, an independent pollster. “It’s down to a ground war.”

Across the country, control of the House could turn on a handful of closely fought seats, including several in California. Control of the Senate--though a longer shot for Democrats--is also up for grabs.

In the nation’s highest-profile Senate contest, First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton is vying against Republican Rick Lazio in New York.

In California, Democrat Dianne Feinstein is defending her Senate seat against Republican Tom Campbell. Half the state Senate and the entire Assembly will be selected, along with California’s 52-member congressional delegation.

State voters also will decide on eight statewide ballot measures, on issues from school vouchers to property taxes to campaign-finance reform. Polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. PST.

Despite the suspense surrounding the presidential race, experts predicted a turnout nationally ranging from a ho-hum 46% to 51% of the voting-age population--not much better than the 49% in the lopsided 1996 contest.

Elsewhere across the country, voters in 42 states will consider more than 200 initiatives and referendums, including efforts to legalize marijuana in Alaska, curb development in Colorado and end dog racing in Massachusetts. Eleven states will choose governors.

The first votes in the stubbornly unpredictable presidential race were cast early today in two tiny hamlets of New Hampshire, the state where the year’s first primary was held on a cold day nine months ago. Bush won in both Hart’s Location and Dixville Notch.

Now, with the end upon them, Gore and Bush exhorted their faithful to the polls, mindful that a relative handful of votes could be key to picking the nation’s 43rd president. Each pared his message to bare-boned brevity.

“It’s time for new leadership,” Bush told a crowd of about 5,000 cheering supporters packed into an airport hangar in Chattanooga, Tenn. “It’s time for someone who’s going to bring people together to get the people’s business done.”

In St. Louis, Gore rallied a luncheon crowd of about 2,000 by proclaiming: “I will work hard for you every day and will never let you down. And I will fight for you with all of my heart.”

The Green Party’s Ralph Nader made his own sprint across the Northeast, alternately combative and wistful as he expressed hope his candidacy would inspire a wave of citizen activism.

“Winning is pushing the agenda toward the interests of the people,” Nader said in New York City. “Winning is bringing hundreds of thousands of people into progressive political activity.”

Rallies From Morning to Night

Bush spent Monday tweaking the opposition by stumping not only in Gore’s native Tennessee but President Clinton’s home state of Arkansas. The race in both states is neck and neck. Bush also touched down in Iowa and Wisconsin--which Clinton and Gore carried in 1992 and 1996--before wrapping up with a nightcap rally at his hometown airport in Austin, Texas.

“I didn’t seem that long ago that Laura and I got on an airplane out of here and headed up to Iowa and New Hampshire,” Bush told the crowd of about 1,000. “Here we are, 17 months later, coming. I’ve got a report from the field: We have just seen thousands of fellow Americans. We’ve laid the groundwork and if the people do what I think they’re gonna do, you’re looking at the next president of the United States.”

For the most part, Bush stuck to the Cliff Notes version of his standard speech in a series of rapid-fire events. At a morning gathering under threatening skies in Chattanooga, he characterized Gore as a man who has “strayed from his Tennessee roots,” underscoring what he sees as a fundamental difference in today’s election.

“We stand squarely side by side with the people of Tennessee . . . because we trust the people. We feel differently about government than my opponent does,” Bush said. “He forgot his roots. He forgot where he’s from. He trusts Washington. We trust the people.”

Bush repeatedly promised to bring a fresh approach to the White House. “People here know there’s a better day ahead with my leadership in Washington, D.C.,” he told a crowd of about 6,000 people who turned out in Bentonville, Ark., on a cold, rainy night for the governor’s last stop outside his home state.

Bush’s running mate, Dick Cheney, started his day in Las Vegas, then stopped in Oregon and Washington before returning to his home state of Wyoming.

He pounded out his stock speech at every stop, criticizing Gore on taxes, Social Security reform and military preparedness as crowds shouted, “‘One more day!” and “Help is on the way!” The latter was Cheney’s signature line in his acceptance speech at the GOP convention in Philadelphia.

“When we are sworn in on Jan. 20, we will restore honor and dignity to your White House,” he said over and over.

A buoyant Cheney even inserted a few rare ad-libs, telling a crowd in Portland, Ore., that he missed a fly-fishing expedition because of the campaign; he said his friends promised he could come back next year if he won. “So we absolutely have a lot riding on this campaign,” joked the avid fisherman.

Hours later, at his final stop in Jackson Hole, Wyo., Cheney thanked a crowd of about 300 friends and longtime supporters. “Anything we’ve been able to accomplish,” he said, “we owe very much to you.”

Gore, meantime, embarked on a sleep-depriving grind through the nation’s political heartland, then headed to the crucial state of Florida. He scurried from Iowa to Missouri to Michigan, before a late-night appearance in Miami, where tens of thousands of supporters turned out.

Throughout the day, the crowds grew progressively bigger and more enthusiastic. At his lunchtime rally in St. Louis, Gore dropped his long aversion to mentioning Clinton, touting their economic record of the past eight years. “Listen,” Gore told the crowd, “you gave Bill Clinton and me a chance to bring change to this country.”

He asserted that a “triple-dip recession” experienced when Bush’s father was president was replaced by a tripling of the stock market and boasted that the greatest federal deficits in history gave way to huge budget surpluses and that high unemployment was eliminated by record job growth.

“It’s not good enough,” he roared. “. . . Keep our prosperity growing. Extend it to include everyone in this country.”

At stops throughout the day and into the night Gore repeatedly cited the closeness of the contest.

Speaking to hundreds of cheering General Motors workers packed into a hot and stuffy Flint, Mich., union hall, Gore said: “One of the interviewers on television asked me, ‘What’s the first meal you’re going to order when you win?’ I said, ‘Breakfast.’ ”

The crowd laughed. “Because I think it’s going to be a long night,” Gore went on. “And you may not know until Wednesday morning. It is close, close, close.”

His running mate, Joseph I. Lieberman, barnstormed from the Midwest to a predawn rally scheduled with Gore today in Tampa. Starting in drizzly Minnesota on Monday, the U.S. senator from Connecticut urged Democratic loyalists to go to the polls, saying at one stop after another, “It all comes down to you. You are our family, our army.”

Operating on just a few hours’ sleep, Lieberman was nevertheless jovial as he and his wife, Hadassah, called voters from the Democratic headquarters in St. Paul, Minn. “Hey Marie, believe it or not, this is Joe Lieberman,” he told 85-year-old Marie Connelly. “I’m the guy running for vice president with Al Gore. It really is me. It’s not a recorded announcement.”

As volunteers diligently sorted campaign fliers for a last-minute bombardment, a cheerful Lieberman said: “I’m enjoying this. This makes me feel like I’m actually doing something constructive.”

Later, in La Crosse, Wis., more than 1,500 screaming students greeted Lieberman at Logan High School.

He asked the crowd to pose two questions to any undecided voters they may encounter. “Does America want to go back to the old days with George W. Bush?” he asked.

“No!” hollered the audience.

“Or do we want to keep moving forward to more prosperity?”

“Yes!” they responded.

In New York City, Nader continued his attacks on the two major parties, portraying the Democrats and Republicans as tools for corporate interests. He also vowed to help the Green Party grow after today’s vote. Nader’s goal is to win at least 5% of the popular vote, which would qualify the Green Party for federal campaign funds in the 2004 race.

“We expect the people will build a viable third party that will put the politicians’ feet to the fire and make the two parties more honest and responsive,” said Nader, whose single-digit standing in the polls was just enough to threaten Gore in a handful of important states.

The Reform Party’s Pat Buchanan, meantime, continued campaigning in near obscurity. He conceded to reporters in Michigan that his effort did little to advance his economic, nationalist and anti-abortion causes. “I’ve been able to influence, I think, over my career of 35 years . . . a lot of policies and decisions,” Buchanan said. “But this does not appear to be the best format to do it.”

To guard against improprieties, federal monitors will oversee the voting today in 17 counties nationwide, including Alameda County, Justice Department officials said.

The county signed a consent decree in 1996 pledging to provide voter material in Chinese to assist Chinese American voters.

Monitors will also be on the lookout for discrimination and intimidation against voters who are black, Native American, Arab American and Latino, depending on where the observers are stationed.

Observers were being dispatched to county polling spots in a total of nine states--Alabama, Arizona, California, Michigan, Mississippi, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York and Utah.

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Times staff writers Michael Finnegan, Faye Fiore, Megan Garvey, James Gerstenzang, Matea Gold, Maria L. La Ganga, Eric Lichtblau and Scott Martelle contributed to this story.

* SPLIT DECISIONS

Some happily married couples find themselves head-to-head at the voting booths. E1