ALLAHASSEE - Stationed anywhere Al Gore takes a stand, they say they aren't budging.
Outside the Leon County Courthouse and the Florida Supreme Court, they rebuff his calls for a ballot recount with sloganeering, songs, and insulting signs. A week ago, they were doing the same in Palm Beach and Broward counties. One afternoon in Miami, a group of protesters pushed through tight security to get into a room where votes were being tallied.
Republicans are furiously standing firm for George W. Bush.
Grandparents, parents, college students, and teenagers too young to vote turn out daily for demonstrations that are as much anti-Gore as they are pro-Bush. They insist that their man won. They demand nothing less than a full
and immediate concession. Yesterday, protesters alternated their anti-Gore chants with verses of ''Silent Night'' and invocations of Jesus.
The other side has been harder to spot - a handful of Democrats here, a klatsch of them there, always outnumbered and outshouted. Early on, they rallied with Jesse Jackson in Palm Beach. But until Friday, when hundreds of Gore supporters suddenly materialized at a Miami protest and outside the US Supreme Court in Washington, the image of the election aftermath had been mostly one-sided.
On Saturday, pro-Gore placards were again few and far between. The Gore campaign appeared to be faltering, both in the courtrooms and on the streets. Meanwhile, the well-mobilized Bush supporters maintained their momentum.
As Wilma Hall, a 57-year-old homemaker and Republican campaign volunteer who drove 50 miles to hoist an official Bush-Cheney sign in Tallahassee, put it, ''I'm here to say he's right, he won, and we want him as president. When I believe in something, I work for it. I don't stay home.''
That sort of fervor is evident anywhere Bush supporters gather, sometimes of their own accord, sometimes bused in by the Bush-Cheney campaign. Republicans say they are unwilling to accept the results of another recount. ''Hail to the Thief,'' read some of yesterday's signs.
Still, Bush supporters insist they would have accepted a Gore presidency had he been declared the victor in Florida. Wearing T-shirts reading ''Sore-Loserman,'' they say Gore's ongoing efforts only prove he is unworthy. In the unlikely event he triumphs, they say, he would have no legitimacy in office.
''George Bush is already acting presidential, getting on with business,'' said Jim Stelling, vice chairman of the Florida GOP and chairman of the party in heavily Republican Seminole County, where a Democratic activist is seeking to have all 15,000 absentee ballots voided because Republican workers helped fill out 4,700 incomplete applications from party members.
''Gore is on TV whining about needing a fair count while his minions are out there trying to stop every overseas military ballot from counting,'' Stelling said.
For their part, Democrats say anger at Republican intransigence motivated them to participate in demonstrations in recent days. Unlike many Republicans, most don't say they adore their candidate. They say they don't necessarily need Gore to win, they just want to be sure he lost fair and square. Sounding already defeated, they say Gore has to try.
They also say Bush is the one who is frustrating justice, the candidate who can't allow himself to let the courts decide the next step. Waiting for the ballots trucked in from Miami to arrive the other day, Sandra Ward-Angell, a 46-year-old animal hospital receptionist and first-time demonstrator from Tallahassee, said the Bush side is not allowing the process to happen.
''Al Gore asked us not to come out, to let the courts work it out,'' said Ward-Angel, her Gore-Lieberman sign held high. ''But day after day, Bush has refused to let that happen. This is the way I voted, this is the way I feel, and this is why I had to be here today.''
One reason Democrats have taken to the streets so rarely, some political observers say, is that in the first weeks after the election, they had nothing to protest. Hand recounts were occurring. No presidential winner had been declared. The courts had agreed to get involved. The political process was working as they wanted.
''Both sides have generated so much rhetoric, but I have to say the Republicans have done a much more effective job of making their case,'' said Lance deHaven-Smith, a political scientist at the Florida Institute of Government in Tallahassee. ''The Democrats could be saying there was collusion or raise all these doubts about [the role of Florida Governor] Jeb Bush, but they've really tried to hold the high ground and not stir things up.''
Republican leaders, however, wanted the process stopped before it even started. Told that Bush had won, political observers say, party members were psychologically unable to accept defeat. The recounts became an affront. Judges ruling in Gore's favor were seen as Democratic activists. Any decision against them was perceived as wrongheaded. And they say the Bush campaign, deriding the state's highest justices, only served to fuel the anger.
The Republican leadership ''has tried to delegitimize the process, the counters, the courts, etc.,'' said James Fendrich, a professor of sociology at Florida State University in Tallahassee. ''That may make many Republicans feel the election has been stolen, whether it has been or not. That can lead to reactionary and irrational sentiments.''
Fendrich credited Democratic leaders as being ruled more by reason than emotion in the days following the Nov. 7 election. But Toni Colandreo and Kathie Venet, among the few Democrats facing off against more than 50 Republicans Saturday at the Leon County courthouse, offered a more disillusioned view. Colandreo called Democratic voters lazy. Venet called them apathetic. Both said Democrats tend to be less easily inspired to act than Republican true believers.
''I figured we had to come here because we can't let the Bush family act like a crime family,'' said Colandreo, 35, a songwriter who drove six hours from New Orleans.
Added Venet, a 28-year-old chef who rode with her, ''When push comes to shove, politics is only a conversation for a lot of my friends. It's not that way with Republicans.''
Almost two weeks ago, outside the Broward County Courthouse where ballots were being hand-counted, Bush campaign spokesman Ken Lisaius took note of the hundreds of Republicans shouting behind the barricades. He credited them with understanding the gravity of the situation in Florida and the importance of being heard.
''To say we're upset with what's gone on is an understatement; we're outraged,'' said Steven Brownson, 46, a sales engineer from Miami who stood with the Republicans.
From the Democratic side of the barricades, real estate agent Susan Aston said: ''All we're asking is to know the truth. And we're growing. There were three of us a couple of hours ago. Now there are lots more.''
But the Republicans still outnumbered the Democrats, 4 to 1 or more, a ratio that is not expected to shift significantly any time soon.
