Gore's 'kitchen table' chat takes aim at Bush tax plan

By Glen Johnson, Globe Staff, 10/24/2000

VERETT, Wash. - A buoyant Al Gore said yesterday that the presidential race is moving in his direction, and he accused George W. Bush of ''trying to hold the ball, run out the clock, and hide behind tracking polls.''

''Fifteen days is a long time if you are trying to hide behind tracking polls and not engage on the issues because the people disagree with you on the issues,'' the Democratic presidential nominee said at an airport rally held between the soaring Olympic and Cascade mountain ranges.

Arguing that voters are aching for substance as Election Day nears, Gore also held the first of his daily ''kitchen table discussions.'' He joined his daughter Kristin in a Portland, Ore., coffee shop, and listened as 32-year-old Heather Howitt described how her tea business grew into an $11 million company in six years with the help of a $50,000 loan from the Small Business Administration.

Howitt said she opposes Bush's proposed $1.3 trillion tax cut because she would rather see federal budget surpluses spent on social programs. ''I am so, so absolutely opposed to that,'' she told Gore, who agreed.

The vice president acknowledged the importance of Ralph Nader's political supporters to his prospects, but he said he would not overdo efforts to persuade backers of the Green Party candidate to switch their vote.

''I think that toward the end of the election, it is still likely the vast majority of the people will want to cast a vote that will decide the future of the country, and my task is not to tell those people that a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush. That may be true, but my task is to convince them to vote enthusiastically for me and what I represent,'' Gore told reporters aboard Air Force II.

Noting that much of Nader's support stems from environmentalists, Gore said, ''I will stack my environmental record against anyone, including him.''

Gore, heartened by new polls that suggested a tightening race, conceded that ''polls have some predictive value'' as an election nears. ''All the ones starting out this week show that we have momentum, and that's the important thing going into the final two weeks,'' he said.

The Bush campaign scoffed at the notion that polls show a trend toward Gore.

''Governor Bush is front and center with our nation's best reformers, those being the Republican governors, and is taking his issues directly to the American people,'' said Bush spokesman Dan Bartlett. ''We've always said this is going to be a close race, and it seems like the only one following the tracking polls is Al Gore.''

The vice president is devoting considerable campaign time to the the daily conversations he will have with voters. Today he meets with a Little Rock, Ark., family as they send their children off to school.

Howitt, holding her 14-month-old son Sawyer on her hip, showed Gore around her corporate headquarters in a Portland neighborhood. The vice president sipped an Original Chai tea blend. Later, he sat down with Howitt at a neighborhood coffee shop and visited a bookstore across the street.

''What I'm seeing,'' Gore said, ''is whether it's a young entrepreneur who's now planted the 18th-fastest growing business in America right here in Portland, courtesy of an SBA loan to a woman entrepreneur, or whether it's a coffee shop and a tea shop here, or whether it's this bookstore, they all say the same thing. When the economy is growing and prosperity continues, it's much easier to put people to work and to raise salaries and give them health benefits.''

In Portland on Sunday night and again yesterday in Washington state, Gore played up his environmental credentials. ''When it comes to the environment, I've never given up,'' he told students at Portland State University. ''If you want Portland's skyline to look more like Houston's skyline ... then maybe you ought to vote for my opponent.''

En route from Portland to Everett, Air Force II flew past Mount Rainier, the 14,411-foot peak that Gore and his son, Albert, climbed in 1999. That drew the vice president back to his environmental record.

''I've never backed down on the environment and I never will,'' he said. ''It's a passion for me.''