Not Your Sweetie

A bid to get Gore to run again for the White House

By JAMES W. BROSNAN
Scripps Howard News Service
January 21, 2003


Washington - Some die-hard Al Gore fans don't really believe it when he says he doesn't want to
run for
president again in 2004.

So the Draft Gore 2004 group is taking out a full-page ad in Wednesday's Carthage (Tenn.)
Courier urging
the former vice president to accept a draft for the Democratic nomination. Gore has homes in
Carthage and
Nashville, Tenn.

"You are the only Democrat who can represent us in what may be one of the most crucial
elections in
American history," says the ad.

Efforts to reach Gore for comment were unsuccessful.

When Gore announced his decision Dec. 15, he said that he still had the energy and desire to be
president,
noted Monica Friedlander, chairman of Draft Gore 2004.

"It sounded like he just doesn't think he'll have the support from the Democratic Party. I think we
can prove to
him that the people support him," said Friedlander, 42, a writer at the Lawrence Berkeley
National
Laboratory at the University of California-Berkeley.

Gore also said he didn't want the 2004 race to be a rehash of the disputed 2000 election and
"distract from
the focus on the future." He wrote earlier to another support group, AlGore04.com, that he
would rather "fight
for the right result," and would endorse another Democratic candidate.

But Friedlander said that other Democratic hopefuls were too accommodating to President Bush
on Iraq
and the economy.

Another member of the group, David Van Os, chairman of the Northeast Bexar County
Democrats in San
Antonio, Texas, said Gore "is the only Democrat of national stature who has repeatedly
challenged George
Bush's wrongheaded policies for the past year."

Friedlander, who volunteered in both Clinton presidential campaigns and in Gore's 2000 run, said
the group
has grown to about 500 through a Web site, draftgore.com., since Gore announced.

"I know we're going against the odds," said Friedlander, "But we're hoping to persuade him."