He Asks Public for Patience; Bush Considers Cabinet Picks

Taking his case directly to the people, Al Gore asked Americans on Monday night to be patient and suspend judgment as his lawyers went to court to formally contest Florida election results giving the White House to George W. Bush.

The vice president said all he has sought since election day three weeks ago is “a complete count of all the votes cast in Florida. Not recount after recount, as some have charged. But a single full and accurate count. We haven’t had that yet.”

Speaking from the living room of his home in Washington, standing before a backdrop of American flags, Gore portrayed his quest for the presidency in patriotic, even selfless terms.

“I believe our Constitution matters more than convenience,” Gore said in his five-minute prime-time address, intended both to justify his continued legal fight and dispel any assumption the race is over. “So, as provided under Florida law, I have decided to contest this inaccurate and incomplete count in order to ensure the greatest possible credibility for the outcome.”

Gore’s speech capped a day in which the two rivals worked furiously on both the legal and public-relations fronts to advance their distinct--and contradictory--claims.

While the Democratic candidate Gore vowed to fight on, Republican nominee Bush proceeded as if the election was over, meeting with aides in Austin, Texas, to discuss his intentions for his Cabinet and White House staff.

In Washington, running mate Dick Cheney outlined his plans for running the transition from the Clinton to the Bush administration.

But in Florida, matters seemed far from settled.

Gov. Jeb Bush signed the paperwork officially certifying his older brother the winner of Florida’s 25 electoral votes, putting him one vote over the 270 needed to win the White House.

But shortly after noon, attorneys for Gore filed a lawsuit contesting the election and Bush’s scant 537-vote margin.

Specifically, the vice president challenged the tabulations in three counties--Miami-Dade, Palm Beach and Nassau--flatly stating, “The vote totals reported in the election canvassing commission’s certification of Nov. 26, 2000, are wrong.

“They include illegal votes and do not include legal votes that were improperly rejected,” the suit alleges.

At the same time, the GOP-run state Legislature prepared to hold its first hearing today on the prospect of unilaterally awarding the state’s 25 electoral votes to Bush, regardless of whether Gore prevails in his legal fight.

“If this controversy is . . . unresolved by Dec. 12”--the federal deadline for appointing the state’s electors--”the Legislature has the authority and may have the responsibility to step in,” Senate President John McKay said.

Both sides, meantime, plan to file written arguments today with the U.S. Supreme Court, which takes up the unprecedented legal battle for the White House on Friday. Bush is contesting the Florida Supreme Court ruling that allowed the hand counting of presidential ballots to continue past the state’s usual seven-day postelection deadline.

Gore Reschedules His Address to Nation

Gore rescheduled his address for the evening from 9 a.m. PST to reach the widest audience.

He spoke of his years-long quest for the White House in dispassionate, almost impersonal terms. “A vote is not just a piece of paper,” he said. “A vote is a human voice, a statement of human principles. And we must not let those voices be silenced. . . . If the people, in the end, do not choose me, so be it. The outcome will be fair and the people will have spoken.”

Alternatively, Gore said, “if they choose me, so be it. I would then commit and do commit to bringing this country together. But whatever the outcome, let the people have their say.”

Bush himself mostly stayed out of sight Monday, offering no response to Gore’s remarks. “We don’t believe that Vice President Gore said anything new,” said Dan Bartlett, a Bush campaign spokesman. “He wants recount after recount in selected Democratic counties until he gets the result he likes.”

A day after using his own nationally televised address to declare himself the next president, the Texas governor worked on a mix of transition issues and state business, including signing the papers to certify the presidential results in Texas, which Bush won handily with 59% of the vote.

Arriving at his statehouse office, Bush ignored reporters’ shouted questions, including one that asked, “Mr. Bush, what are we supposed to call you?”

Cheney was not so coy. As designated head of transition efforts, he called a Washington news conference to outline his plans, even as the Clinton administration continued to withhold its cooperation.

“We believe it is time to get on with the business of organizing the new administration,” Cheney said, looking hale after suffering what was described by doctors as a mild heart attack last week.

Private Funds to Be Used for Transition

Bush has been denied, for the time being, $5.3 million in federal financing and 90,000 square feet of transition office space. So Cheney said the Bush camp would begin its operations with private funds.

“It would be irresponsible for us not to move as quickly as possible,” Cheney said, noting that nearly three weeks of the 10-week transition period have already passed.

“These days of transition . . . are of great importance,” Cheney added after chiding Gore for his refusal to concede. “The quality of the transition has a direct bearing on the quality of the administration that follows it.”

At the White House, President Clinton said the decision to withhold transition funds was made by officials at the General Services Administration, the government’s landlord, based on “what they think the law requires.”

But speaking to reporters at the top of a meeting with Cabinet officials, Clinton offered an implicit endorsement of Gore’s refusal to capitulate to Bush, as long as doubts remain over the Florida results.

“In all this interplay, it is easy to lose what is really important, which is the integrity of the voter,” Clinton said. “ . . . So they have to sort that out in Florida--whose votes should be counted, can every vote be counted. . . . I think those are the things that will be resolved in this election challenge.”

Asked about Florida’s certification of Bush as the winner, Clinton said: “It’s not up for me to accept or reject. There is a legal process here. And both of them have filed lawsuits. . . . Let’s just watch this happen. It’ll be over soon, and we’ll be ready for the transition.”

But there were signs before Gore’s speech that the public’s patience may be wearing thin, as the postelection impasse nears its fourth week.

An overnight poll by ABC and the Washington Post, released Monday, found that 60% of those surveyed thought the vice president should concede. Thirty-five percent said he should not.

Separately, a CNN/USA Today/Gallup overnight poll found that 56% of Americans said Gore should concede the election compared to 46% who said that last week.

However, snapshot polls such as these must be taken advisedly because they often measure people’s immediate response to an event they have just seen. In this case, both surveys were taken after Bush was certified the winner in Florida and before Gore had given his speech. But there were other signs that even some fellow Democrats were growing weary of the standoff.

Rep. Julia Carson (D-Ind.) broke with the party line by suggesting Gore “let it go.” Robert B. Reich, former Labor secretary in the Clinton administration, also expressed “great doubts” about the prolonged legal wrangling.

But the Democratic leaders of Congress, Sen. Tom Daschle of South Dakota and Rep. Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri, went out of their way to emphasize their support for Gore, flying to Florida and staging a nationally broadcast conference call with the vice president and his running mate, Joseph I. Lieberman.

The vice president emphasized the legal steps his campaign has taken--including his lawsuit contesting the certification that was filed in Leon County Circuit Court in Tallahassee--were spelled out under Florida law and followed a timetable set by the state Supreme Court.

His emphasis on the legality--indeed the appropriateness--of such a course seemed intended to further dispel any sense that he and Lieberman were refusing to accept the will of voters.

Elsewhere in Florida, the litigation ground on, distinct but hardly separate from the political machinations.

In West Palm Beach, a state appeals court sent yet another presidential election case to the Florida Supreme Court, this one seeking a new Palm Beach County election.

State High Court Gets ‘Butterfly Ballot’ Case

A group of Gore supporters claims the county’s “butterfly ballot” led thousands of county residents to either vote mistakenly for Reform Party candidate Pat Buchanan or improperly vote for two presidential candidates, thus invalidating their ballots.

A judge in West Palm Beach last week rejected the claim and an appeal was pending before a three-judge panel. Instead, the panel referred the case directly to the state’s high court.

Hours later, a spokesman for the Supreme Court said the justices were still deciding whether to accept the case and had asked both sides to file legal arguments today.

Meanwhile, a spokeswoman for Palm Beach County said the results of the county’s manual recount of thousands of presidential ballots do not match up with figures from the last machine count. Denise Cote said “unaudited figures” from the manual recount were sent to state election officials for certification, though that doesn’t mean the numbers were wrong.

In a housekeeping matter, attorneys for Bush and Gore agreed to move a Democratic lawsuit over Seminole County’s absentee ballots to Circuit Court in Tallahassee. Democrats seek to disqualify at least 15,000 absentee votes cast in the Orlando, Fla., area because the county’s Republican election chief let GOP workers correct thousands of ballot applications improperly filled out by party loyalists.

In still other legal action, the Rev. Al Sharpton filed a lawsuit in federal court in Miami alleging civil rights violations in connection with certification of Florida’s results.

Meantime, a federal appeals court in Atlanta deferred until at least Dec. 5 any oral arguments in a case Bush brought over the hand counting of ballots in Florida.

*

Times staff writers Edwin Chen, Michael Finnegan, James Gerstenzang, Scott Gold, Robert A. Rosenblatt, Richard A. Serrano and researcher Edith Stanley contributed to this story.