Bush and Gore race to photo finish

This story appeared in the Antelope Valley Press November 8, 2000.

By Valley Press wire services

Republican George W. Bush appeared to be the winner of the American presidency early today, in a race so close that Democrat Al Gore was refusing to concede.

Bush's apparent victory slimmed as the hours dragged on and the apparent success of congressional Republicans in retaining control of the House and Senate means that both branches of government will be under Republican control for the first time since the Eisenhower administration in 1952.

Bush, the second-term governor of Texas, appeared to have won with 271 electoral votes from 30 states, including the battleground state of Florida, but early today it was too close to call. Gore, the vice president, had 249 electoral votes from 18 states and the District of Columbia.

Oregon and Wisconsin remained too close to call but their electoral votes were not enough to change the outcome.

Some local reaction from Valley Press newsmakers:

"A Bush victory is something we all worked very hard for," said GOP activist and former state party chairman Frank Visco.

Visco and others worked tirelessly to raise funds and anchor victory for Bush and Cheney Victory 2000.

Jim Root, in a tight race for the Palmdale City Council, reflected on the narrow presidential victory.

"The best part of the election being so close is it's going to remind people how important each vote is," Root said.

Palmdale Mayor Jim Ledford said, "It's been a very close election and very exciting to participate in and watch as it unfolds. I'm also very proud of our local effort, more specifically with our Palmdale headquarters and team of volunteers. They did an admirable job."

"This is exciting," said Assemblyman George Runner, R-Lancaster. "We would have preferred for Gov. Bush to have won a long time ago. Quite frankly that would have been better for us in California."

Nader's role was typified by the results in Florida, where Bush defeated Gore by 55,000 votes. Had some of Nader's almost 94,000 votes gone to Gore, the vice president might have won Florida and the election. Gore also trailed Bush in Oregon where Nader's strength would have been enough to award the state to Gore, as well.

With 90% of the nation's precincts reporting, Bush led Gore 49% to 48% in the popular vote, with 44.7 million votes to 44.3 million for Gore. Nader had 3% of the vote nationwide, or 2.4 million votes, less than the 5% showing that he needed in order for the Green Party to qualify for federal election funding in 2004.

In a sign of the nip-and-tuck contest, the news media's vote-counting consortium initially awarded Florida and the Sunshine state's 25 electoral votes to Gore based on early exit polls. Later Tuesday evening, the consortium reversed its decision, and listed Florida as "too close to call" later in the evening.

Bush had campaigned for the presidency by calling for a "fresh start" for Americans, bipartisan cooperation, a 10-year across-the-board $1.3 trillion tax cut, privatization of part of the Social Security retirement system and restoration of "integrity" to the Oval Office.

Bush, in his maiden presidential campaign, won back at least 10 states that had voted Democratic in 1996. Bush scored two in-your-face triumphs, handing Gore his first defeat in nine elections in Tennessee and winning neighboring Arkansas, the home state of President Bill Clinton, who ousted Bush's father, President George Bush, from the White House in 1992.

Gore, waging the fourth presidential campaign of his 24-year career, won the GOP strongholds of Pennsylvania and Michigan - states led by popular, pragmatic GOP governors who helped mastermind the Texas governor's campaign. Gore also prevailed in New York and California, a state that had been reliably Republican in six straight presidential elections until the Clinton-Gore team wrested the state into the Democratic column in 1992.

But Gore could not withstand Bush's nationwide strength that stretched along the Rocky Mountains to Texas and east across the South to Florida and the Atlantic. Gore had belittled Bush's qualifications to be president and insisted that the nation's longest economic boom in history would be jeopardized by a Bush presidency.

The closeness of the presidential race invigorated voter turnout in some states, raising hopes of greater participation than the 49% of eligible voters who cast ballots in 1996 - the lowest turnout since 1924.

The electoral duel was the closest since 1976 when former Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter ousted President Gerald Ford by an electoral vote of 297-240. The popular vote contest was the closest since 1960.

- Valley Press staff contributed to this story.