The 1988 presidential campaign of Al Gore, U.S. Senator of Tennessee and former House Representative began on April 11, 1987. He campaigned for President of the United States as a Democratic candidate in the 1988 presidential election, against Democratic candidates Joe Biden, Dick Gephardt, Paul Simon, Jesse Jackson, and Michael Dukakis (who eventually won the Democratic nomination).
Age 39 at the time, Gore was described as the first serious young presidential candidate since John F. Kennedy in 1960. He was characterized as a political centrist aligned with many other Southern Democrats. Despite eventual defeat, Gore, who came in third place, was one of the front-runners that year. Gore, at that time, represented the Southern Democrats and some of the Conservative Democrats of the 1980s.
Before formally entering the race, Gore had already become the focus of national speculation as a possible young Southern Democrat who could compete both inside and outside the South. On April 10, 1987, The Washington Post reported that Gore had reversed an earlier decision not to run after encouragement from major Democratic fundraisers and after Senator Dale Bumpers declined to enter the race, leaving the field without an obvious Southern candidate. Gore said at the time that the issues he would stress included ending the arms race, improving American economic competitiveness, cleaning up the environment, and strengthening education.
Gore was further described by The New York Times as a long-shot for the nomination but a potentially attractive, moderate Southern running mate for another candidate. At the time of the announcement, Senator Gore was 39 years old, making him the "youngest serious Presidential candidate since John F. Kennedy."
On June 29, 1987, Gore formally launched his campaign in Carthage, Tennessee, his hometown, at the Smith County courthouse. In his launch speech he declared, "I am not running as a Southern candidate but as a national candidate from the South and proud of it," while also vowing to "restore the rule of law and respect for truth and common sense to the White House."
On April 11, 1987, Senator Gore of Tennessee announced his candidacy. He stated that he believed he could offer "clearer goals" than the other candidates.
At the time of the announcement, Gore was the youngest candidate in either party. In comparing himself to Kennedy's 1960 candidacy, he argued that, after Ronald Reagan, Americans might again be willing to "turn to youth, vigor and intellectual capacity."
According to CNN, Gore ran his campaign as "a Southern centrist, [who] opposed federal funding for abortion. He favored a moment of silence for prayer in the schools and voted against banning the interstate sale of handguns." He positioned himself as a centrist alternative to fellow leading candidates Jesse Jackson and eventual primary winner Michael Dukakis. Gore also emphasized defense and foreign policy more heavily than most of his Democratic rivals, and in Alabama Senator Howell Heflin endorsed him as "the only Democratic candidate in this race who can carry the South in November."
Environment was also part of Gore's campaign message from the beginning. In his April 1987 entry into the race, he listed cleaning up the environment among his major campaign issues, and after the unsuccessful 1988 campaign the U.S. Senate's official biography states that he turned his focus even more intensely toward environmentalism. Gore later stated that he had made numerous speeches concerning global warming and the greenhouse effect on the campaign trail that received minimal media attention.
Gore's strategy increasingly centered on the South. Contemporary reports described his calculation that the March 8, 1988, Super Tuesday primaries and caucuses in Southern and border states offered his clearest path to national viability. By March 1988, The Washington Post wrote that Gore had "staked his candidacy on a Super Tuesday strategy in the South."
CNN notes that "in 1988, for the first time, 12 Southern states would hold their primaries on the same day, Super Tuesday." As the only other Southern candidate, Gore chose to criticize Jesse Jackson often. Gore began to criticize Jackson for his Middle East policies. In particular, "Albert Gore Jr. assailed Mr. Jackson's foreign policy views and said he was 'dismayed' by Mr. Jackson's 'embrace of Arafat and Castro'." Jackson responded by stating that, "The issue is not whether the Israelis and Palestinians are moral equivalents. Both of them are human beings and both are trapped in the cycle of death and pain. And they are trapped in the cycle of mutual annihilation. I wanted to offer leadership that will move from mutual annihilation to coexistence to break the cycle of death."
Gore was heavily criticized for his attacks against both Jackson and Dukakis. Jackson also retracted some of his previous statements.
It was Gore who first mentioned the Massachusetts furlough program Dukakis had supported as Governor by asking him questions in a debate right before the 1988 New York primary, about "weekend passes for convicted criminals"; this later developed into the Willie Horton pro-George H. W. Bush attack ad. However, unlike commonly believed, Gore did not mention Horton by name. In the April 1988 debate Gore asked Dukakis whether he would advocate a similar program "for federal penitentiaries," and Dukakis replied, "Obviously not."
During the Democratic debate, Gore argued that his foreign policy platform was different from his rivals, but they disagreed. "'I reject GoreâÂÂs efforts to try to pin labels,' Representative Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri told reporters after the event."
Jackson defeated Gore in the South Carolina Primary, winning "more than half the total vote, three times that of his closest rival here, Senator Albert Gore Jr. of Tennessee." Gore next placed great hope on Super Tuesday where they split the Southern vote: Jackson winning Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and Virginia; Gore winning Arkansas, North Carolina, Kentucky, Nevada, Tennessee, and Oklahoma. Gore had already won the Wyoming caucuses before Super Tuesday, giving him seven statewide victories in all.
The Gore campaign came to a close after Dukakis won the New York primary with 51% of the vote, followed by Jackson at 37%, and Gore only received 10%. The New York Times argued that he lost support due to his attacks against Jackson, Dukakis, and others, as well as for his endorsement by Koch. Contemporary reporting also described Koch's endorsement as, at best, uncertain help and, according to some New York observers and later recollections, possibly counterproductive.
Gore suspended his campaign on April 21, 1988, but retained his delegates. He said, "I want no part of a stop-Jackson or stop-Dukakis movement. The only man I want to stop is George Bush." Gore largely bypassed Iowa and New Hampshire and built his entire campaign strategy on a strong showing in the March 8 "Super Tuesday" primaries and caucuses in his native South. He won six states on Super Tuesday, but his campaign almost immediately began to come apart.
Gore was eventually able to mend fences with Jesse Jackson, who supported the ClintonâÂÂGore ticket in 1992 and 1996, and who also campaigned for the GoreâÂÂLieberman ticket during the 2000 presidential election. According to some, Gore's policies had changed in 2000, reflecting his eight years as Vice President.
South: Tennessee, Kentucky, North Carolina, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Nevada
Outside the South: Wyoming
47th Texas Governor, Republican Rick Perry, who at the time was a Democrat in the Texas State House, campaigned for Gore during the primaries.
Gore was later endorsed by New York Mayor Ed Koch, who made statements in favor of Israel and against Jackson. These statements further cast Gore in a negative light. Some contemporaries and later observers suggested that Koch's intervention may have hurt Gore in New York, where he received only 10% of the vote in the primary.
After an unsuccessful attempt to secure the Democratic nomination for president in 1988, Gore turned his focus more intensely to environmentalism. He proposed the World Environmental Policy Act in 1989 and was a founding member of the first Interparliamentary Conference on the Global Environment in 1990.
Gore's 1988 campaign also helped establish him nationally as a future presidential contender. As he withdrew, he remarked that "there will be other days for me," and his suspension was widely interpreted at the time as preserving his standing for a later national race.