How Al Came Back To Life

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But the bad news was still coming. On Labor Day weekend, the campaign discovered that Bradley was not just a theoretical threat. The Boston Globe released a poll showing that Bradley had "vaulted into a virtual tie" in New Hampshire, with many voters "voicing eagerness for political change despite the region's prosperity." Gore's advisers, who had been conducting only nationwide polls, were stunned. They had assumed they were 20 points ahead in New Hampshire. Coelho dispatched field manager Michael Whouley to the state to find out whether the situation was really that bad. Whouley discovered it was worse. Bradley volunteers had been knocking on doors since the summer, while Gore floated through the state in 20-car motorcades, aloof and distant, connecting with no one. Whouley asked former New Hampshire Democratic Party chairman Joe Keefe, a key Gore supporter, to send a memo assessing the problem. Keefe let it rip: Bradley was "on fire" in New Hampshire, he wrote. Where Gore had the endorsements, Bradley had the people who mattered--the activists who had delivered the state to Gary Hart in 1984. Coelho was ready to blame the New Hampshire organization, but Whouley set him straight. "The problem is not the organization," he said. "The problem is the message and the whole way we're campaigning."

For months Gore had been thinking about a dramatic move to shake things up. Now he was ready to make it happen. Leaving a Maryland fund raiser, Gore quietly asked Coelho if he would ride home with him. Back at the residence, they summoned Eskew and roused Gore's new chief of staff, Charles Burson, from bed. Gore wanted to move the campaign to Nashville, Tenn. Setting up his headquarters on K Street in Washington had been a huge mistake--a symbol of a clueless inside-the-Beltway campaign. But the problem was that no one knew how to get out of the two-year, $60,000-a-month lease. That didn't matter, Gore said; they had to move and shed staff on the way. He was ready with a biblical allusion, the admonition of God's messenger to Gideon as he prepared for battle: Your army is too big, so send two-thirds of it home. Keep only those who are thirsty enough to put their faces in the stream.

Burson was dispatched to Nashville within hours to search for new space. Penn was fired. Brazile slashed salaries, including her own, so that the money could be spent on campaign workers in Iowa and New Hampshire. Aides started rooming together on the road and even gave up their catered lunches, making do with cold cuts from the nearest supermarket. The motorcades were scaled back, and Gore switched from photo ops to town meetings, where his command of the issues could shine. Instead of staging events in the afternoon, to make the evening news, he began doing them at night, to make contact with voters. The campaign canvassed New Hampshire by phone and on foot and invited 2,800 undecided voters to the first round of town halls in October. Gore stayed for hours at each one, taking questions for as long as anyone was left to ask them, sometimes after the cleaning crews had begun folding up the chairs. He listened to complaints about cloudy drinking water and theories about government cover-ups of UFOS.