Gore confident of victory

David Espo

Wednesday, Nov. 29, 2000 | 11:15 a.m.

Al Gore declared today "I certainly believe that I did" win the White House, while his lawyers pressed urgently in the courts to let him try to prove it. George W. Bush worked in the privacy of his Texas ranch on a transition to the job he said is his.

Gore, interviewed on NBC, tempered his own claim somewhat, saying, "I understand that there's considerable doubt about" the outcome of the Nov. 7 election -- one of the few understatements uttered by either side in the nation's overtime campaign.

Gore was talking privately of potential administration appointments, while Bush was working more publicly on a transition to power.

"We've spent quite of bit of time talking about a White House staff," said Andy Card, Bush's choice to become chief of staff in a new administration, and GOP running mate Dick Cheney scheduled a midafternoon news conference to discuss the transfer of power.

Other officials said the Texas governor had been in touch with GOP congressional leaders in recent days to talk about getting down to work. House Majority Leader Dick Armey said he and Bush had talked about an agenda, starting with education. "He speaks of that first," the fellow Texan said, as well as "some good tax relief."

Gore and Democratic running mate Joseph Lieberman talked of possible new-administration appointments at White House lunch meetings with transition director Roy Neel, Labor Secretary Alexis Herman and Kathleen McGinty, former head of the Council on Environmental Quality in the Clinton White House.

Talk of governing blended with continued legal sparring in Gore's challenge of Bush's certified win of Florida on Sunday night.

The vice president's lawyers, turned down on Tuesday in a lower court, weighed whether to appeal to the state Supreme Court in their effort to gain the immediate recount of contested ballots in two counties. They argue these ballots were never counted; Republicans say they contain no vote for president, just for other races.

In a long hearing on Tuesday Judge N. Sanders Sauls agreed only to have 14,000 questionable ballots shipped to Tallahassee from Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties.

The Bush legal team responded today, saying that "fairness requires" that Sauls expand his order to include all the votes cast in the two counties on Election Day -- more than 1 million in all.

Members of a Florida Legislature special committee met for the second straight day, majority Republicans weighing a special session to pass legislation creating a slate of electors for Bush. Gov. Jeb Bush, brother of the GOP presidential hopeful, spoke favorably of the idea, but refused to state whether he would sign such a bill.

"I would sign it if I thought it was the appropriate thing to do," he said.

Gore's appearance on NBC's "Today" program marked his latest attempt to keep public opinion from demanding an end to the contested election before his case can be heard in court.

Asked whether he had won the election, he replied, "I certainly believe that I did."

Asked whether he believes he should be called "president-elect," he said, "No, because the votes haven't been counted." He said he believes the controversy will be settled "by the middle of December," although he did not directly respond when asked whether Dec. 12 was a deadline.

That's the day Florida's electors are supposed to be slated, six days before the Electoral College meets to pick the next president.

Florida's 25 electoral votes are crucial to the outcome, since neither Gore nor Bush can command an Electoral College majority without them.

Bush was certified the winner of the state by 537 votes on Sunday by Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, a supporter of the governor. Gore took the unprecedented step of challenging Harris' certification in court.

Increasingly, the lawsuits filed by both sides generated a momentum of their own.

"There are cases pending in the Supreme Court of the United States, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, the Florida Supreme Court" and various lesser courts in Florida, Joseph Klock, a lawyer representing Secretary of State Katherine Harris told a judge in a Tallahassee courtroom on Tuesday.

"And we ... are party to every one," Klock said. "And we, your honor, do not have 500 lawyers."

Supplying legal talent wasn't likely to be a problem for either Gore or Bush. "Both sides here have a lot of lawyers," said David Boies, one of several lawyers that Gore brought in to help represent his interests.

Even so, Boies didn't get far on Tuesday when he pressed Sauls to order a manual recount immediately of 14,000 ballots from Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties where voting machines found no vote for president, either on Election Day or in a statewide machine recount.

The Gore campaign says the ballots never have been counted; Bush partisans argue they contained no valid vote for president, only for other races being contested on Nov. 7.

Sauls agreed to have thousands of questionable ballots and a sampling of voting machines brought to Tallahassee, but no more.

"I have no idea what we're going to do concerning ballots counting or not counting of ballots," he said, and set a hearing for Saturday.

That was more than Bush wanted, less than Gore sought, and Sauls observed wryly he was trying to be "equally unfair" to both sides.

When Sauls noted the earliest counting could start would be Saturday, three days after Gore's proposed timetable, Boies said that was "tantamount to denying substantive relief."