New York Times, 11/9/2000
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How Gore Stopped Short On His Way to Concede

By KEVIN SACK and FRANK BRUNI

When his limousine arrived at War Memorial Plaza in Nashville, where a few thousand depondent, rain-soaked supporters awaited his concession, Vice President Al Gore assumed he had lost the election. He had called Gov. George W. Bush at the mansion in austin and extended his congratulations. He had written a short and gracious speech about moving the country forward and cooperating with the victor.

But several vans back in the motorcade, Michael B. Feldman's Skytel pager vibrated with a message from the White House switchboard to call Michael Whouley, a top Gore strategist who was monitoring Florida results at Gore headquarters. Mr. Feldman, a senior adivser to Mr. Gore, quickly called the switchboard on his cell phone and was patched through to Mr. Whouley.

'I'm looking at the Florida secretary of state's Web page,' Mr. Feldman recalls Mr. Whouley saying. 'It looks like we're down to less that 6,000 votes,' a precipitous drop from the much larger margin that had prompted the networks to call the election [for Bush].

Mr. Feldman said he told him the motorcade was a few blocks from the plaza, then he got William M. Daley, the Gore campaign chairman, who was in yet another van, in a yet another van, in a conference call with him and Mr. Whouley.

About a half hour later, after a flurry of phone calls. Mr. Gore placed his second call of the evening to Mr. Bush, this one at about 2:30 am central time. In a holding room with family members and dozens of exhausted, red-eyed aides listenign, Mr. Gore told Mr. Bush that circumstances had changed in the last 45 minutes, that the race was now too close to call, that there would be an automatic recount in Florida, and that he was going to wait it out."