Al Gore presidential campaign, 1988
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Al Gore campaigned for President of the United States as a Democrat twice. In 1988, he lost the primary to Michael Dukakis. He was selected by Bill Clinton as his running mate in 1992 and was elected Vice President in 1992 and re-elected along with Clinton in 1996. In 2000, Gore won the popular vote, but lost in the electoral vote to George W. Bush.
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[edit] Making the decision to run
Because Al Gore had been a popular figure in the Senate and successful as a legislator, many in the Democratic Party began to mention him as a possible candidate for president in 1988. Gore saw 1988 as an opportune time to become a candidate. He believed the Democratic field, headed by Gary Hart, Michael Dukakis, Richard Gephardt, and Jesse Jackson was overloaded with liberals and vulnerable to attack from the political center, which he represented. Another factor which may have led Gore to decide to run for president was that his father had presidential aspirations when he served in Senate, but was unable to fulfill those dreams.
[edit] Gore as "anti-Jackson" candidate
During the 1988 Democratic presidential primary campaign, when "Rainbow Coalition" candidate Jesse Jackson was the leader in delegates (Jackson had won 55% of the vote in the Michigan caucuses and appeared on the covers of Newsweek and Time magazines in April 1988), some officials in the Jackson campaign accused Senator Gore of focusing on the South as part of a concerted stop-Jackson effort by the Democratic Party leadership to diminish Rev. Jackson's showing there. Rev. Jackson himself accused Gore operatives of employing a subtly racist strategy in the South, and a blatantly racist strategy in New York, where Gore's most prominent backer, New York City Mayor Ed Koch, said that Jews would be "crazy" to vote for Jackson. Additionally, in 2000, Gore was accused of initiating the infamous "Willie Horton" talking point, later used against Michael Dukakis in the general election, while stumping in New York, although Gore denied the charge. Roger Wilkins was among those who denounced what they saw as the racially polarizing tactics of Gore's campaign. Despite this ill will on the 1988 campaign trail, Al Gore was eventually able to mend fences with Jesse Jackson, who supported the Clinton-Gore ticket in 1992 and 1996, and who also campaigned for the Gore-Lieberman ticket in 2000.
[edit] Failed candidacy
Gore's campaign started slowly and failed to win many of the early primaries, mainly because of his decision to put little emphasis on the two openers, the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire Primary. This would prove to be fatal to his campaign. Although Gore succeeded in winning six states (Arkansas, Kentucky, North Carolina, Oklahoma and Tennessee) of the Super Tuesday primaries (held on March 8th), this success was not enough to win Gore the nomination due to his lack of a national base. He made virtually no showing in the Illinois primary only a week later. His wins in the South were not enough to overcome the early loses and convince Democrats in other regions that he should be the Democratic nominee.
Another problem for Gore was that all of the other Southern states of Super Tuesday went to Jesee Jackson. Gore and Jackson, in effect, had split the Southern vote. If one of these two candidates not been in the race, the other would have undoubtably been in better shape to challenge the front-runner Dukakis. It was for this reason that Gore became the "Anti-Jackson" candidate.
By the New York primary on April 19, the Democratic field was down to the Dukakis (now the presumptive nominee), Gore, and Jackson. Gore continued to fight hard, and argued that Dukakis was too liberal to win the general election. Gore won only 10 percent of the vote, far behind Dukakis and Jackson. With this defeat, Gore's hopes of winning the nomination were crushed, and he dropped out of the race. Although Jackson would remain in the race to try to win as many delegates as possible, the New York primary won Dukakis the nomination.
[edit] Son's accident and effect on 1992 presidential campaign
On April 3, 1989, Gore's six-year-old son Albert was nearly killed in an automobile accident while leaving the Baltimore Orioles opening game. Because of this and the resulting lengthy healing process, his father chose to stay near him during the recovery instead of laying the foundation for a presidential primary campaign. Gore started writing Earth in the Balance, his book on environmental conservation, during his son's recovery. Earth in the Balance became the first book written by a sitting senator to make The New York Times best-seller list since John F. Kennedy's Profiles in Courage.
