Gore voters drown out voice of dissent

By DAVID USBORNE Herald correspondent

LAUDERDALE-BY-THE-SEA - Matt Overby was pummelling wax into the bonnet of a white sports coupe yesterday as he pondered Al Gore's position in the fight for the White House.

Overby, a fulltime car polisher, had a message for the Vice-President: "Drop it."

Here was one Democrat - he voted for Gore on November 7 - who no longer has the stomach for post-election legal wrangling that is now entering a whole new phase.

"This is getting like that Elian Gonzalez thing. It just drags on and on and I think Gore should just get on with it and let Bush have it," he said.

It is people like Overby that Gore was trying to hold on to when he presented his case for carrying on his quest for the presidency on television yesterday.

How hard that task will be remains difficult to tell. This is deepest Democrat country. Too many Overbys and the Vice-President might be cooked.

However, a totally unscientific canvassing of Democrats in this low-rent oceanside town, north of Fort Lauderdale, suggests that Gore still has plenty of support for his strategy.

Among a sample of voters here, Overby was the lone dissenter.

At the busy Walgreen's Liquor Shop, the mood was as defiant as that of the Vice-President himself.

"I don't think he should give it up," insisted Dan, aged 28, who was working the till. "He has to let the legal system follow its course."

Dan, who withheld his last name, said he felt that way even though he doubted that Gore could win.

"I think he should keep doing what he is doing," agreed Emily Noce, aged 77, who lives in Lauderdale-by-the-Sea for half the year with her retired husband. "I'm tired of the whole thing and I wish it would end, but I also want it to end fairly."

Many people voiced outrage that the Florida Secretary of State, Katherine Harris, had cut off Palm Beach County just two hours before it had finished its hand count. "They worked so hard and for so long and now those votes are down the tubes," Noce remarked. "They should have allowed them to finish their counting."

Catherine Cunningham, aged 48, voted for Gore, but in Boston where she normally lives.

"He has the right to fight on, because so many of the ballots here seem still to be missing. They still can't tell who voted for which candidate," she said. "We're talking about the biggest job in the land here, so they had better get it right."

With her is Dorothy Clougherty, also a Bostonian. "The whole purpose of the election was to allow people to vote. So if you don't know how they voted, why cut it short?" she asked.

"I think they should just have a revote in Palm Beach County so long as they make sure it is only the people who voted before who get to vote again."

Suzanne Jones, aged 31, who works as a hotel maid in Fort Lauderdale, went even further. "They should let the whole state work again and I bet Al Gore would win."

As for the certification of George W. Bush as the winner, she said: "Al Gore should fight and he should fight all the way."

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