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Friday, November 04, 2004
Bush wins; Kerry yields
WASHINGTON -- President George W. Bush won a second term, his promise of steady wartime leadership trumping Sen. John F. Kerry’s fresh-start approach to Iraq and joblessness.
After a long night of vote-counting, the Democrat called up Bush to concede Ohio and the presidency, the Associated Press and major American networks reported.
Kerry ended his quest with a call to the president shortly after 11 a.m. Eastern time, according to two officials familiar with the conversation.
The victory gave Bush four more years to pursue the war on terror and a conservative, tax-cutting agenda, and probably the opportunity to name one or more justices to an aging Supreme Court.
He also will preside over expanded Republican majorities in Congress.
“Congratulations, Mr. President,” Kerry said in the conversation described by sources as lasting less than five minutes.
One Democratic source said Bush called Kerry a worthy, tough and honorable opponent. Kerry told Bush the country was too divided, the source said, and Bush agreed. “We really have to do something about it,” Kerry said according to the Democratic official.
Make or break
Kerry placed his call after weighing unattractive options overnight. With Bush holding fast to a six-figure lead in make-or-break Ohio, Kerry could give up or trigger a struggle that would have stirred memories of the bitter recount in Florida in 2000.
One senior Democrat familiar with the discussions in Boston said Kerry’s running mate, North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, was suggesting that he shouldn’t concede.
The official said Edwards, a trial lawyer, wanted to make sure all options were explored and that Democrats pursued them as thoroughly as Republicans would if the positions were reversed.
Advisers said the campaign just wanted one last look for uncounted ballots that might close the 136,000-vote advantage Bush held in Ohio, which has 20 electoral votes.
An Associated Press survey of the state’s 88 counties found there were about 150,000 uncounted provisional ballots and an unspecified number of absentee votes still to be counted.
Ohio aside, New Mexico and Iowa remained too close to call in a race for the White House framed by a worldwide war against terror and economic worries at home.
Long wait
Months of campaigning and millions spent all came down to a heart-stopper in the heartland, the battle over Ohio.
“We are convinced that President Bush has won reelection,” said White House chief of staff Andy Card.
Republican Party Chairman Marc Racicot said the president put off his victory statement as a courtesy to Kerry, “to allow the opportunity to look at the situation in the cold hard light of day.”
Before both sides retired for an hour or two of sleep, one top Kerry adviser said the Democrat’s chances of winning Ohio, and with it the White House, were difficult at best.
“We will fight for every vote,” Edwards told supporters in Boston in the wee hours Wednesday in the first stirrings of a legal struggle. “We’ve waited four years for this victory. We can wait one more night.”
After winning Nevada in the wee hours Wednesday, Bush had 254 electoral votes, 16 shy of the 270 required for a second term. Kerry stalled at 252 electoral votes after narrowly winning Wisconsin.
A candidate needs at least 270 electoral votes to win the White House.
Republicans win
Continuity was the result elsewhere in government, with the Republicans padding their Senate majority—knocking out Democratic leader Sen. Tom Daschle of South Dakota in the process—and easily hanging on to the House.
Glitches cropped up in overwhelmed polling places as Americans voted in high numbers, fired up by unprecedented registration drives, the excruciatingly close contest and the sense that these were unusually consequential times.
“The mood of the voter in this election is different from any election I’ve ever seen,” said Sangamon County, Illinois, clerk Joseph Aiello. “There’s more passion. They seem to be very emotional. They’re asking lots of questions, double-checking things.”
Exit polls found the electorate split down the middle or very close to it on whether the nation is moving in the right direction, on what to do in Iraq, on whom they trust with their security.
Florida fell to Bush again, close but no argument about it.
And so all eyes turned to Ohio.
In Ohio, Kerry won among young adults, but lost in every other age group. One-fourth of Ohio voters identified themselves as born-again Christians and they backed Bush by a 3-to-1 margin.
No more ads
A sideline issue in the national presidential campaign, gay civil unions may have been a sleeper that hurt Kerry—who supports that right—in Ohio and elsewhere. Ohio voters expanded their law banning gay marriage, already considered the toughest in the country, with an even broader constitutional amendment against civil unions.
Nationwide, with 98 percent of the precincts reporting, 112 million people had voted, up from 105 million in 2000.
Bush also led the popular vote by around 3.6 million, or 51 percent to Kerry’s 48 percent.
Voters welcomed an end to the longest, most expensive presidential election on record. “It’s the only way to make the ads stop,” Amanda Karel, 25, said as she waited to vote at a banquet hall in Columbus, Ohio.
Both sides spent a combined $600 million on television and radio ads, more than twice the total from 2000. (AP)
(November 4, 2004 issue)
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