Bush Demonstrators Gather Outside Texas Governor's Mansion
GENE RANDALL, CNN ANCHOR: Now we join our correspondents with the presidential campaigns. Chris Black is here in Washington outside the vice president's residence, and Eileen O'Connor is in Austin, Texas tracking the Bush campaign. Eileen, we begin with you.</s>EILEEN O'CONNOR, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Gene, as you can hear there's a fairly noisy demonstration going on behind me. There's been several hundred people circling this block for the last couple hours. This is one of the larger demonstrations that's been taking place in the last couple of weeks. They've been chanting, No More Gore" and they also have a lot of placards about stealing the election. So, tensions are running a bit high, emotions running high here in Austin. Governor Bush is not in the mansion right now. He's still in Crawford, Texas at his ranch. He is expected to return today in order to be here when that recount is completed at 5:00 p.m. tomorrow. The Bush lawyers and representatives, lawmakers, Republican lawmakers like Governor Christine Todd Whitman, who you saw earlier, out in force in Florida today making the case for Governor Bush that first of all, this should go before the Supreme Court. That the Florida Supreme Court, they say, has overstepped its authority in mandating these manual recounts be included in the total, saying that the recounts are not fair, that they are not accurate. Also, they have now refiled that court case in order to get those excluded overseas military ballots included. When the judge questioned his jurisdiction over that matter, Republican lawyers decided to withdraw that case, refile it on a county-wide basis into the individual counties. They brought before the press three medal of honor winners who said that it's hypocritical of the Gore campaign to be talking about the technicalities of dimples and pregnant chads when they're willing to exclude some of these overseas military ballots they say on technicalities.</s>RONALD RAY, MEDAL OF HONOR RECIPIENT: We find ourselves trying to use, or people trying to use the letter of the law to deny fellow veterans their voting rights while at the same time, using such standards as clear intent to voters or every vote must count to try to be very intrusive into other areas within our state. These actions are of great concern to all veterans and I believe, to most Americans.</s>O'CONNOR: Now, the demonstrators have also been carrying signs saying, we're not rented. Lieberman, we are not thugs. Basically, that's an answer to Democratic allegations that Republican demonstrators in Florida have been orchestrated by Bush operatives there, and that basically were there in order to stop the manual counts. Getting pretty loud here, Gene, I'll go back to you.</s>RANDALL: Eileen, if you can hear me, thanks very much.