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Tuesday, December 5, 2000
ELECTION 2000, Day 29
Why Gore lost Tennessee
Tennessee cops, media credit Al's defeat in home state to WND investigative
series
By Charles C. Thompson II and Tony Hays
� 2000 WorldNetDaily.com
SAVANNAH, Tenn. -- Vice President Al Gore is tortured by the fact
that he lost Tennessee, say friends. After all, had he won his home
state -- the state he represented all his years in Congress -- he would
now be President-elect Gore, with or without Florida.
"I know that's one thing bothering him the most, that he lost
Tennessee," said close friend Steve Armistead, who spent his summers
with Gore while growing up in Tennessee, according to a
New York
Times report. "The other night he asked me, 'What happened in
Tennessee?'"
Although the media have accurately reported that Tennessee's 11 electoral
votes would have put Gore at 271 and thereby made him the next president
of the United States, most have missed the reason Gore suffered his first-
ever defeat in Tennessee.
Indeed, 24 years ago in his first run for Congress, Gore won an overwhelming
94 percent of the vote. His dominance was such that he ran unopposed for
his next two House terms. And when he ran for his second term in the
Senate a decade ago, Gore became the first statewide candidate in
Tennessee's history to take all 95 counties.
So why did Gore lose Tennessee on Nov. 7 -- the first time a presidential candidate
has failed to win his own state since George McGovern lost his native South Dakota in
1972?
The usual press analysis is that Tennessee's demographics have changed, sending the
once-Democratic stronghold tipping to the Republican Party. Sen. Fred Thompson and
Gov. Don Sundquist have echoed this idea, while Rep.
Bill Jenkins, from historically Republican upper east Tennessee, noted in an
Associated Press report that "Tennessee didn't leave Gore. Gore left Tennessee." He
pointed to Gore's changing stance on gun control and abortio
n as bellwethers.
Yet, while these issues may have played a role, the answer is far more fundamental
than that.
"It was the character issue," says popular Nashville radio talk host Phil Valentine.
"Thanks to talk radio and sources like WorldNetDaily getting out the truth, I believe
it tipped the state to Bush."
Valentine initially broke a
story on Gore's ties to alleged
criminal figures in Wilson County, Tenn., next door to Gore's home county. Shortly
after that, WorldNetDaily ran a series of investigative reports detailing Gore's
involvement in and interference with criminal investigat
ions linked to his uncle,
retired judge Whit LaFon and top campaign fundraisers like
Clark Jones, of Savannah, Tenn. According to Valentine, it was stories like those
that spelled Gore's defeat.
"They [the stories] stayed under the radar nationally," he said, "but around here they
were on everyone's lips."
Charlotte Alexander, editor of the Decatur County Chronicle in Parsons, Tenn., agrees.
"Absolutely, it was the integrity issue," she affirms. Alexander's paper ran the
WorldNetDaily series of articles profiling Gore's seamy political dealings in
Tennessee.
"We sold out of every edition that carried those stories. People literally drove in
from hundreds of miles away to buy 25, 50, 100 copies, whatever they could afford, to
take back with them," she said. "We had well-known
Democrats come in here after reading those stories and say out loud that they
couldn't be associated with somebody that behaved as Gore had." Alexander even had
additional copies printed, but the public soon gobbled tho
se up as well.
"Those [WorldNetDaily] stories coming out about Gore involving himself in criminal
investigations were just too much," says former Tennessee Bureau of Investigation
agent Milton Bowling. "I'm a Democrat, but I couldn't g
et past that. I know plenty of people who felt the same way. It was never a matter
of party in Tennessee; it was always about character and integrity. Gore flunked that
test."
The WND articles clearly had a major impact in Tennessee's legal community, especially
those reports dealing with Gore's ties to Tennessee Bureau of Investigation Director
Larry Wallace. According to former TBI director a
nd now District Attorney General John Carney, at a recent meeting of the Tennessee
District Attorney Generals Conference, the articles were widely discussed, yet only
one DAG took issue with them, and that was longtime Wa
llace friend and Gore supporter Gus Radford of the 24th Judicial District.
"Gus was the only one trying to undermine them [the WND articles]," said Carney.
Carney is now looking beyond the election toward bringing reform to the Tennessee law
enforcement community after eight long years of Clint
on-Gore influence. "Something needed to be done," Carney said flatly. "That's the
message that went out in the communities. It's time this mess got cleaned up."
Is Tennessee turning Republican? Not really. Tennesseans have been conservative
politically for decades. Since 1968, Tennessee has been a swing state in presidential
politics, usually voting Republican, but giving its
electoral votes to Democratic neighbors like Jimmy Carter in 1976 and Bill Clinton in
1996. The fallacy of the establishment media's argument -- that the state's political
demographics have changed -- becomes clear upon
examination of the way Tennesseans voted in their congressional races this year.
Historically, the mountainous regions of east Tennessee were staunchly Republican,
while middle and west Tennessee were Democratic strongholds, with only Memphis holding
a substantial Republican bloc. Any Republican candi
date for state office had to come out of east Tennessee with a huge margin to overcome
the Democratic totals in the western two-thirds of the state.
Despite Thompson's and Sundquist's claims to the contrary, the people of middle and
west Tennessee have not changed their politics. In what was basically Gore's old
congressional district, Democratic incumbent Bart Gordo
n trounced his Republican opponent, and outpolled Gore in every county including
Gore's home county, Smith.
In Nashville, long a Democratic base, Rep. Bob Clement, son of a populist Democratic
governor, outpolled the vice president by more than 28,000 votes. And Clement's
district does not include all of the city.
But the 6th District was no exception. In upper and central west Tennessee, home of
the 8th District, Democrat incumbent John Tanner carried every county against a
credible opponent. In Madison County (Jackson, Tenn., a
nd hometown of Gore's uncle, Whit LaFon), Tanner outpolled his party's standard-bearer
by more than 8,000 votes. By the media's yardstick, Tanner, Gordon and Clement should
have felt some of the same heat as Gore -- but
not only did they win convincingly, they outpolled their party's presidential
candidate in his home state.
Republican Rep. Ed Bryant and Rep. Van Hilleary hold seats that span historically
Democratic counties, but in both cases, more than half of their victory margins came
from the traditionally Republican territories in their
districts. Moreover, Tennessee has a habit of returning incumbents, no matter the
party.
Gore carried west Tennessee, but only marginally, and then only because of the Ford
political machine in Shelby County (Memphis). The large African-American family has
controlled Democratic politics in Memphis for decade
s, and Harold Ford Jr., who currently holds the congressional seat in that district,
was Gore's choice to deliver the keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention.
But even the Ford machine couldn't make up the l
osses Gore sustained in what should have been his strongholds, middle and west
Tennessee. And it was voters in those two regions, observers say, that brought
concerns about Gore's character and integrity to the ballot bo
x with them.
The Gore campaign was evidently concerned about the influence of the WorldNetDaily
stories early on. Doug Hattaway, one of Gore's primary campaign spokesmen, personally
called media outlets across middle and west Tenness
ee in late September and early October, pleading with, and in some cases reportedly
threatening, news directors to keep the stories off the air and out of print.
"Doug Hattaway called me," said freelance TV reporter Tommy Stafford. Stafford had
produced a story for WMC-TV in Memphis on the Thompson-Hays articles in WorldNetDaily.
"He hammered at me," said Stafford, "but I told h
im, 'Look, I interviewed these guys. They're credible.'" Hattaway then turned his
attention to the news director at the Memphis station and the story was put on
indefinite hold. "It was that kind of arrogance, plus the
credibility issues, that beat Gore in Tennessee," said Stafford. "Political parties
didn't have anything to do with it."
"It was an uphill battle against news sources like the Tennessean, who refused to tell
the true story," said Valentine. "I think people began to question Gore's character
and integrity here in Tennessee. I think the tru
th came back to bite Gore in Tennessee, and I find it ironic that, if Florida holds
for Bush, it will be Tennessee that was Gore's downfall."
"Whether the mainstream media believed the WorldNetDaily stories were credible or
not," said Alexander, "the voters did. I've never seen articles that attracted the
kind of attention these did. They cost Gore the margin
he needed in middle and west Tennessee. They cost Gore Tennessee's electoral votes.
That's a fact."
If you would like to sound off on this issue, please take part in the
WorldNetDaily poll.
Related stories:
Gore tied to 'Hillbilly Mafia'
Al Gore's Uncle Whit
Gore plays fixer to 'crooked' uncle
Officials say Gore killed drug probe
Gore rep tries to keep media off WND stories
Gore condoned Russian mafia?
Gore's, Talbott's Red Russian roots
Gore's WWI uncle AWOL
Lawsuit, violence rumors over WND stories
Al Gore protects local corruption?
CIA official: Gore compromised by secret past
Al Gore, polluter?
Experts fear Russia to blackmail Gore
Gore brings back $640 toilet seat
Gore book author withdraws support
Al framed councilman for newspaper scoop?
Gore protected military thieves?
Newspaper threatened over WND articles
Charles C. Thompson II is a network news veteran, both as a founding
producer of ABC's "20/20" and as Mike Wallace's producer at
CBS's "60 Minutes."
An experienced print journalist, Tony Hays' recent 20-part series on
narcotics trafficking received an award from the Tennessee Press
Association.
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