Unfavorite son
Winning his home state of Tennessee is a big goal -- and surprising challenge -- for Al Gore.

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By Jake Tapper

May 30, 2000 | NASHVILLE -- It don't hardly feel like it's Gore Country here.

Here's Al Gore, smiling, laughing, taking a few minutes for a photo op in the kids gym at a Nashville YMCA. About to deliver a speech on "after-school initiatives to help working families and children," Gore talks to the kids about their after-school activities at the Y.

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Seconds later, he strolls into a meeting to chat with their parents and a number of other local officials about the initiative. The events and photo ops are fine, as scripted and precise as almost every single thing in Al Gore's carefully controlled world.

But to be perfectly frank, today's activities -- the 30-second foray into the kids' basketball game; the forum with the parents, a former governor and the cameras -- could be taking place anywhere. Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, California. There's nothing in any of it that makes it seem as though Al Gore has come home.

Sure, folks here like Gore fine -- most of 'em. Some of 'em. A lot of 'em, if you're out near Carthage, where his parents grew their crops. But in Nashville, the only politicking I see is a guy sporting a George W. Bush baseball cap in the airport. Of course, near the Gore for President headquarters on Charlotte Avenue, there are the standard-issue blue Gore signs, but even those are shouted down by billboards from the Tennessee Republican Party that damn their unfavorite son. They include a pro-Clinton rah-rah quote from the loyal Gore around the time of impeachment, as well as an accusatory, primaries-era sneer about Gore's truth-telling abilities attributed to the since-vanquished Bill Bradley.

"Tennesseans unite!" is the call of the Tennessee GOP. "Beat Al Gore and send him home -- to Washington, D.C.!"

Now, this isn't entirely fair. Albert Gore Jr. lived and worked in Tennessee after college and before representing the state in the House (1976-1984) and the Senate (1984-1992). His childhood summers were spent here, his family is from here and he seems to regard this as home. And a lot of candidates -- Missourian Bill Bradley, who represented New Jersey; Panama Canal-born D.C. Navy brat John McCain, who represents Arizona; Connecticut-born Yalie George W. Bush, now governor of Texas -- aren't pure products of their home states. (Bush went to Phillips Andover Academy in Massachusetts for high school as his bio conveniently forgets to mention, instead noting that he "grew up" in Midland and Houston.) Gore's ties to his home turf are at least as strong as those of plenty of other pols.

So why are he and Bush running neck-and-neck in Tennessee? A March Mason-Dixon poll had Gore with 47 percent, Bush with 40 percent. In Bush's home state of Texas, an American Research Group poll from May had the governor pummeling Gore, 70 percent to 23 percent.

But Gore's struggles with Tennessee voters are not, as Republicans would have you believe, because he's wanting as a guy or even as a politician. The problem is simply, innocently, because the state has been trending Republican for a spell now. So despite his family ties, or the fact that he represented the state in both chambers of Congress, or attended Vanderbilt Law School and Divinity School (not completing either program) -- and even though last summer he moved his presidential campaign headquarters here from Washington and has been here 10 times since he declared his candidacy, it's anything but a given that he'll win Tennessee in November.

Tennessee hasn't been Gore country in a long while. If Clinton hadn't tapped Gore to be his VP in '92, it's not even a certainty that Gore would have been able to keep hold of his Senate seat up until now.

Next page | Buying a hometown victory for Al Gore
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