Bush Talks Transition; Gore Surrogates Say it's Not Over Yet
GOV. GEORGE W. BUSH (R-TX), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I understand there's still votes to be counted, but I'm in the process of planning in a responsible way a potential administration.</s>JUDY WOODRUFF, CNN ANCHOR: George W. Bush keeps talking transition while his undecided race against Al Gore becomes even more of a political football.</s>JAMES BAKER, FRM. SECRETARY OF STATE: What's happening now, if I may say so, is not in the best interest of our country.</s>BERNARD SHAW, CNN ANCHOR: Bush surrogates warn the Florida recount could spin out of control and prompt tit-for-tat battles in other states.</s>WILLIAM DALEY, GORE CAMPAIGN CHAIRMAN: Calls for a declaration of a victor before all the votes are accurately tabulated are inappropriate.</s>WOODRUFF: Gore surrogates defend the recount process and remind Americans that it is not over yet.</s>ANNOUNCER: This is a special edition of INSIDE POLITICS with Judy Woodruff in Washington and Bernard Shaw at election headquarters.</s>SHAW: Thanks for joining us. In the absence of a final, official vote count from Florida, both the Bush and Gore camps rushed again this day to fill the void with political spin. George W. Bush's chief observer in Florida drew something of a line in the sand. But, as our Candy Crowley reports, Bush himself, tried to send a more presidential message: that he is getting ready for the White House without jumping the gun.</s>CANDY CROWLEY, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): George Bush is working in two tenses: the uncertainty of what is; the possibility of what will be.</s>BUSH: I understand there's still votes to be counted, but I'm in the process of planning in a responsible way a potential administration.</s>CROLWEY: At the governor's mansion in Austin, the potentials sat beside him: Vice-Presidential Nominee Dick Cheney; Larry Lindsay, chief economic adviser; Condoleeza Rice, chief foreign policy adviser; and Andrew Card, said to be bush's first choice as chief of staff. The Gore camp calls this transition talk presumptuous. The Bush camp calls it planning.</s>BUSH: There's been a series of ongoing meetings that the secretary and I've had on a variety of subjects, so that should the verdict that has been announced thus far be confirmed, we'll be ready. And I think that's what the country needs to know, that this administration would be ready to assume office and be prepared to lead.</s>CROWLEY: The picture and the words seem designed to send out a signal of certainty and serenity. The rough stuff was left to Bush's man on the ground in Florida.</s>BAKER: If we keep being put in the position of having to respond to recount after recount after recount of the same ballots, then we just can't just sit on our hands, and we will be forced to do what might be in our best personal interests.</s>CROWLEY: To wit, there are other squeaker states out there that can be brought back into play. Under scrutiny by Republicans: New Mexico, where Bush campaign officials are on the ground; Oregon, the Republican National Committee has personnel there; Iowa where two Republican lawyers are awaiting a final count; and Wisconsin, where Governor Tommy Thompson is the designated point man. We hope Florida ends this, said one aide to Thompson, but if it doesn't, all bets are. Right now it's saber rattling, an effort to push back the talk of legal action from the Gore team. Republicans in touch with the Bush camp say no decisions have been made about other challenges. And the decisions will be up to Bush. They hope Florida, after the overseas vote, will end it, and the Gore team will drop legal threats. Our first hope, said one top Republican official, is that we do not have to rip the skin off the electoral process for the outcome to be satisfactory to everyone. When you get into legal disputes about the outcomes of elections in every single county in American, it's nothing less than mutually assured destruction.</s>CROWLEY: In two cases, Iowa and Wisconsin, any kind of demand for a recount would have to be filed before the overseas votes have been counted in Florida. As one Republican put it, we could always put the process in place, and then draw it back -- Judy.</s>WOODRUFF: All right, Candy Crowley, in Austin. As for Vice President Gore, his strategy today involved some pulling back and loosening up without ceding any ground to Governor Bush. Here is CNN's John King.</s>JOHN KING, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): "Relax, what's the rush?" was the vice president's unspoken message. This leisurely family outing was designed to portray an image of calm. But the Gore team is also adjusting its strategy to calm jitters among fellow Democrats: focusing more on the Florida recount and stepping away from aggressive talk of challenging the results in court.</s>DALEY: I hope that our friends in The bush campaign will join us in our efforts to get the fairest and most accurate vote count here in Florida.</s>KING: The vice president's team shrugged at suggestions from the Bush camp that if the Democrats that don't concede defeat, Republicans will demand recounts in states narrowly carried by Mr. Gore, like Iowa and Wisconsin. The Gore team's response: Go right ahead.</s>WARREN CHRISTOPHER, OBSERVER FOR GORE CAMPAIGN: It seems to me that the team of Governor Bush has every right to consider challenges in other states if they think that is in their interest to do so.</s>KING: The day's goal was to turn the focus from talk of lawyers and lawsuits to simply making sure the Florida count is accurate.</s>DALEY: I hope all Americans agree that the will of the people, not a computer glitch, should select our next president.</s>KING: The Florida results have not been certified, and won't be for at least another week. And the vice president still leads in the popular vote and the Electoral College count. So the Gore campaign makes the case that Governor Bush has no reason and no right to be in a rush to claim he is the president-elect.</s>DALEY: Waiting is unpleasant for all of us. But suggesting that the outcome of a vote is known before all the ballots are properly counted is inappropriate.</s>KING: Senators Robert Toricelli of New Jersey and John Breaux of Louisiana said publicly what many Democrats are voicing privately: that a long, drawn-out battle is not in the country's best interests. So while not ruling out a legal challenge, the Gore team said it hoped all this could be resolved through the recounts under way in several Florida counties. And House Democratic leader Dick Gephardt stepped up to help the vice president in the public-relations war.</s>REP. RICHARD GEPHARDT (D-MO), MINORITY LEADER: Look, if the shoe were on the other foot, I can assure you the Bush campaign would be making all these points, and, in the end, wanting what everybody should want, which is a competent, successful, conclusive election. We need to know when an election is this close who had the most votes to win the Electoral College.</s>KING: Note that public support from Congressman Gephardt and other Democrats focused on the recount. Democrats will support the vice president pushing for a recount in Florida. Perhaps that will take another week or so, they say. Democrats angry behind the scenes, though: They believe the Gore campaign made a major tactical mistake when it came out of the box yesterday threatening lawsuits.</s>WOODRUFF: John, are you suggesting now, though, that this could end once all the ballots are counted and recounted to everyone's satisfaction?</s>KING: You'll look over the weekend for several steps. There are a couple of counties that have already begun the recounts. The Gore campaign wants to see what the officials in those counties say. Palm Beach will have an experiment tomorrow in which it will do a limited test. And if it sees any missed numbers -- the numbers are so inconsistent with Tuesday's numbers -- they will announce a broader recount. If the answers are consistently no, the Gore people will be under enormous pressure next week, the 17th, when the absentee ballots have to be finished counted, to call it off, if the numbers haven't changed by then. They insist that they believe they will. They think that since they have already narrowed in that unofficial count to 300- something, they believe when you go back and count the bigger counties, that the numbers will change even more. They don't rule out, though, that if that happens -- if Palm Beach and those other counties say there is more votes for Gore and that he pulls ahead -- that the Bush camp will then say: Well, then we want a recount in the Republican counties of Florida. So this could go on a little bit, depending how these recounts turn out.</s>WOODRUFF: But we are looking at least another week -- at least -- are we not?</s>KING: At least another week: but the Gore campaign under heavy pressure from Democrats privately to try to bring it to end by then and to stop talking about going to court. They don't think the American people will support going into court. Now, if some private citizens in Florida are suing -- if they are successful -- that would of course benefit the vice president. But the Democrats are telling the Gore campaign: Stop talking about lawyers and lawsuits. That is not a case to make to the American people.</s>WOODRUFF: All right, John King, reporting on the Gore efforts. Thanks very much. Well, further complicating the efforts to tally the presidential vote, New Mexico's secretary of state announced today that Gore's lead over Bush has eroded there to just 106 votes, making the winner in that state unclear. Another 515 ballots remain to be counted by hand. And 252 ballots, believed to be from a Republican area of the state are missing. A computer glitch apparently resulted in a misleading tally on election night, when Gore appeared to have won New Mexico by a solid margin. Now, as a result of all this, CNN is taking New Mexico and its five electoral votes out of the Gore column in our electoral vote tally, and putting it in the still undecided category. That means Gore now has 255 of the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House. And Bush has 246 -- Bernie.</s>SHAW: Now, let's get an update on the Florida recount. For that we go to ground zero for the operation: Tallahassee, Florida, and CNN's Mike Boettcher -- Mike.</s>MIKE BOETTCHER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Bernie. Well, here it's a matter of process. And there are three major parts of unfinished business that we must accomplish here. First is the official recount. Today they moved up on the number of counties which have reported officially on the recount vote. We now have 65 of 67. The vote total will change when those other two come in. We know the unofficial total, but that is from the Associated Press. That shows a gap of 327 votes. That's why the official total is very important. The one county missing is one of the big ones, that is Palm Beach County. Now the second item of business: the overseas ballots. In this county alone, which is not a heavily populated military district, 140 of those ballots arrived in the last two days. They're expecting many more up until Friday, a week from today, when they must be counted. And the Republicans in this state say primarily those ballots are weighted towards the Republicans. They have in past elections, although the Democrats say, hold on, let's wait, let's see. Now the third item of business to be accomplished is the matter of the hand count, which is being overseen from here. The hand-count business is a very complicated sort of thing, and there's one person in the state who really knows it well. His name is David Cartwell. If anyone knows it -- he's a former executive director of the election process here. If anyone knows it, he does.</s>DAVID CARTWELL, FORMER FLORIDA ELECTIONS DIRECTOR: Every ballot has to be physically inspected. There are teams of two people each, one from each political party, that would examine the ballot, and they would have to come to an agreement if the ballot is to be registered as a change in the vote. So they will have to go through all the ballots. They can't pull out just the 19,000.</s>BOETTCHER: So it's a very complicated business, the hand counting. Those three things must be accomplished, but they won't be accomplished until next Friday, seven days away -- Bernie.</s>SHAW: Thank you, Mike Boettcher, with the latest on that. Now to Judy.</s>HOPKINS: And now we travel to Palm Beach County, Florida, for the latest on the controversy over the now-infamous "butterfly" ballot. CNN's Martin Savidge joins us from West Palm Beach -- Martin.</s>MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good evening to you, Judy. And now all eyes seem to be focusing on the recount that will take place in Palm Beach County starting tomorrow morning at 9:00 a.m. Actually, it's going to be two recounts. First there is going to be a recount, a partial recount, conducted by hand of about 4,000 ballots. That's about 1 percent of the votes that were cast in the presidential election in this particular county. After that is concluded, then they will do a machine recount of all of the votes that were cast in the presidential election for Palm Beach County. That is expected, the machine at least, is expected to finish up its work after a matter of hours. However, the results of both of those recounts are not expected to be released to the public any time before Tuesday. Meanwhile, Democratic Party officials here, even though it's a holiday, have been very busy working to gather affidavits from people who claim that they believe due to the confusing butterfly ballot that they may have misappropriately or accidentally voted for the wrong presidential candidate. Now there are two sites that have been set up in Palm Beach County where they have been gathering these affidavits, and party officials say so far they believe they have several thousand affidavits in hand from people who believe they made an error. So, that is pretty much how it stands outside here, the elections board. You can see it continues to be a gathering point for many people as they come to express their political opinions. They are still very much, like the rest of the nation, divided at this hour, debating sometimes heatedly, sometimes very loudly among themselves as to what happened and what should happen next. There is one other issue that came out of last night, and that was a West Palm Beach judge that ruled for a temporary preliminary injunction. Now that would basically prevent Florida from certifying officially the results of the election. That injunction will go until Tuesday. The state, of course, has 10 days until after the election, so right now it doesn't seem to play into the official results. However, if the judge were to decide to extend that injunction, well, it could get very interesting, beyond what it already is here -- Judy.</s>WOODRUFF: All right, Martin Savidge in West Palm Beach, thanks very much. Still ahead on INSIDE POLITICS, opposing views on the state of the presidential election and the recount in Florida. We'll talk with Gore adviser Ron Klain and Florida Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough.