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Morning News

Election Day 2000: Gore Arrives in Tennessee, Final Stop in Quest for Presidency

Aired November 7, 2000 - 9:55 a.m. ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: Looking at live pictures now from Nashville, Tennessee. Vice President Al Gore has just arrived in his final stop. This is where he will vote and then wait and watch and see who indeed will be the next president of the United States.

Our Jonathan Karl is also on the ground there in Nashville.

Jonathan, are you with us?

JONATHAN KARL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I sure am. This is Vice President Gore's homecoming, the final stop in his quest for the presidency. Of course, Tennessee is the state that sent him into politics 24 years ago when we he was elected to serve in the House of Representatives on that first race in 1976.

Coming back here, this is the end of a very long run for the presidency. As a matter of fact, some people say Al Gore has basically been groomed to run for the presidency by his famous Tennessee father, the former Sen. Al Gore Sr.

Vice President Gore is going to do one more stop before he actually goes to his hotel room to watch those returns tonight. He has to actually vote himself, of course. He'll be doing that out near Carthage, Tennessee, his home town, the town where he grew up when he wasn't in Washington. Of course, George W. Bush likes to say that Al Gore's real home town is Washington, D.C., but he very much considers himself a man of Tennessee.

One other thing about Tennessee is, you know, of course this is one of the battleground states, an unusual situation finding Vice President Gore fighting for support in his home state.

But -- and this is, of course, the end of a 30-hour, non-stop tour for the vice president. He started 30 hours ago in Waterloo, Iowa. And he's been going nonstop throughout the night. Most of his aides and much of the traveling press going along with him look a lot wearier than he looks, clearly feeding on the energy of the crowds. He was in Miami at midnight, big rally in Miami at midnight where he had a bunch of stars with him, including Robert De Niro, Stevie Wonder, Jon Bon Jovi.

His final stop before coming here was in Tampa, Florida, where he stopped by a medical research center and then went one last rally in Tampa. And now he's going to wait here for those returns, and also looking very closely at the returns in Tennessee, because, as we know, it's going to be a very close race in his home state.

KAGAN: Jonathan, do we actually know where the vice president will be watching the returns?

KARL: He's going to be back here in Nashville at his hotel room. He'll be watching his returns with his wife Tipper. And the vice president has been saying all along that this is going to be an extremely close race and that he fully expects that he'll be watching the returns through the night.

I asked him a couple days ago what he would be doing on Wednesday, what his plans were for Wednesday, and he said that the first thing he imagined he'd be doing is having breakfast and waiting for final returns to come in. So he's expecting to be in that hotel room for quite some time.

By the way, his aides, though, some of his top strategists are saying that we may have an earlier indication about how this race is going to turn because so much depends on the state of Florida. That's a state where polls close at 7:00 tonight. And, of course, a lot depends on the state of Pennsylvania. Those are the two largest battleground states, states very much up for grabs. But the vice president's team believes that if he could somehow pull off a victory in both of those states that he'd be on his way to victory. If he loses one of those states, it's going to be an up-hill battle. And if he loses both of them, that may be the end.

But there's going to be a lot of watch -- a lot of watching at those two states in the Eastern time zone.

KAGAN: It will be an interesting night, indeed, no matter how it falls. We'll see how it all works out there.

That's Jonathan Karl in Nashville, Tennessee. Jonathan, thank you very much.

As we understand it, the vice president set to vote in his home state of Tennessee about two hours and 45 minutes from now. We will track it.

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