Gore bows out

3:15 PM

WASHINGTON - Democrat Al Gore ended his presidential bid against Republican George W. Bush this afternoon and vowed to work with his former rival to "heal the divisions" of their long and bitter election battle.

Gore, speaking 36 days after the Nov. 7 election and 23 hours after the U.S. Supreme Court denied him a hand count of disputed ballots in Florida, said he had called Bush to congratulate him on becoming the 43rd president of the United States.

"I offered to meet with him as soon as possible so that we can start to heal the divisions of the campaign and the contest through which we've just passed," Gore said in a nationally televised address from his ceremonial office at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, next to the White House.

Gore has argued he likely won the most votes in Florida, which officially went to Bush by a margin of 537 of nearly 6 million votes cast.

But his bid for a hand count to prove it was stopped by a bitterly divided Supreme Court on Tuesday.

Nationally, the vice president outpolled the Texas governor by more than 300,000 votes - 50,158,094 to 49,820,518.

Bush won the White House by capturing the needed state-based 270 electoral votes with Florida's 25 putting him over the top.

- REUTERS

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