On November 1, I headed into the homestretch of...
On November 1, I headed into the homestretch of the campaign with a morning rally at Santa Barbara City CollegeOn a warm, sunny day, a large crowd gathered on the campus hillside overlooking the Pacific OceanSanta Barbara was a good place to end the California campaign, a once solidly Republican area that had been trending our way

From Santa Barbara, I flew on to Las Cruces, New Mexico, then to El Paso and the biggest crowd of the campaign, as more than forty thousand people came out to the airport to show their support, and finally to San Antonio and the traditional rally at the AlamoI knew we couldnt win Texas, but I wanted to honor the loyalty of the states Democrats, especially the Hispanics who had stuck with me

As we headed into the last three days of the campaign, I had a choice to makeSenate candidates from several relatively small states were asking me to campaign for themMark Penn said that if I spent the last days of the campaign doing that, instead of going to the larger states, I might not get a majority of the vote, for several reasonsFirst, our campaigns momentum had been slowed in the last two weeks by allegations that the DNC had received several hundred thousand dollars in illegal campaign contributions from Asians, including people I had known when I was governorWhen I heard about it, I was angry; my finance chair, Terry McAuliffe, had made sure the chloe paddington handbag contributions to our campaign were reviewed scrupulously, and the DNC was also supposed to have a vetting operation to reject questionable contributionsThere were clearly problems with the DNC clearance proceduresAll I could say was that any unlawful contributions should be returned immediatelyRegardless, the controversy seemed certain to hurt us on election daySecond, Ralph Nader was running on the Green Party ticket and would take some votes away from me on the leftThird, Ross Perot, who had entered the campaign in October, too late to get into the debates, wasnt doing nearly as well as he had in 1992, but he was ending this campaign as he had the previous one, with vicious attacks on meHe said that I would be totally occupied for the next two years in staying out of jail, and called me a draft dodger who was tainted by ethical lapses, corrupt campaign financing, and a lax attitude toward drug useFinally, voter turnout was likely to be well below that of 1992, because the voters had been told for several weeks that the campaign was over

Mark Penn advised me that if I wanted to win a majority of the votes, I needed to fly into the large media markets in the big states and ask people to go to the pollsOtherwise, he said, with the outcome not in doubt, lower-income Democrats were far less likely than more affluent or ideologically driven Republicans to voteI was already hermes tas scheduled to be in Florida and New Jersey, and on Marks advice we added a stop in ClevelandBeyond that, I scheduled appearances in the Senate race states: Louisiana, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, Kentucky, Iowa, and South DakotaIn the presidential race, only Kentucky was in doubt; I was well ahead in all the others except South Dakota, where I expected the Republicans to come home to Dole at the endI decided to go to these states because I thought it was worth two or three points off my vote total to elect more Democrats to the Senate, and the candidates in six of the seven states had helped me in 92 or in the Congress

On Sunday, November 3, after attending services at StPauls AME Church in Tampa, I flew to New Hampshire to support our Senate candidate, Dick Swett; to Cleveland, where Mayor Mike White and Senator John Glenn gave me a last-minute boost; and to Lexington, Kentucky, for a rally at the state university with Senator Wendell Ford, Governor Paul Patton, and our Senate candidate, Steve BeshearI knew it was going to be tough to hold Kentucky because of the tobacco issue, and I was heartened by the presence on the stage of the University of Kentucky basketball coach, Rick PitinoIn a state where everyone loved the basketball team and nearly half of them disliked me, Pitinos presence was helpful and a gutsy move on his part

By the time I got to Cedar Rapids, coco chanel handbags Iowa, it was 8 pI really wanted to be there for Tom Harkin, who was in a tight race for reelectionTom had strongly supported me in the Senate, and after the 92 primary he and his wife, Ruth, a lawyer who was serving with the administration, had become close friends of mine

The last stop of the night was Sioux Falls, South Dakota, where Democratic congressman Tim Johnson had a real chance to unseat incumbent Republican Larry PresslerBoth Johnson and his chief supporter, Senator Tom Daschle, had been very good to meAs Senate minority leader, Daschle had been invaluable to the White House during the budget fights and the shutdown; when he asked me to come to South Dakota, I couldnt say no

It was nearly midnight when I got up in the Sioux Falls Arena and Convention Center to speak at the last rally of the last campaign I will ever runBecause it was my final speech, I gave them the whole load on the record, the budget fight, and what I wanted to do for the next four yearsSince I was in a rural state like Arkansas, I told them a jokeI said the Republicans budget reminded me of the story of a politician who wanted to ask a farmer to vote for him but was reluctant to come into his yard because a barking dog was thereThe politician asked the farmer, Does your dog bite? No, the farmer repliedWhen the politician walked through the yard toward the farmer, the dog bit himI thought you black and white chanel said your dog didnt bite! he shoutedThe farmer replied, Son, that aint my dogThe budget was their dog

The election went as Mark Penn predicted: there was a record low turnout, and I won 49 to 41 percentThe electoral vote was 379 to 159, as I lost three states I had carried in 1992, Montana, Colorado, and Georgia, and won two new ones, Arizona and Florida, for a net gain of nine electoral votes

Underneath the aggregate numbers, subtle differences in the state totals between 1992 and 1996 revealed the extent to which cultural factors influenced the election in some states, while more traditional economic and social matters dominated in othersAll competitive elections are determined by such shifts, and in 1996 they told me a lot about what mattered to different groups of AmericansFor example, in Pennsylvania, a state with many NRA members and pro-life voters, my winning percentage was the same as it had been in 1992, thanks to a bigger margin in Philadelphia and a strong vote in Pittsburgh, while my vote went down in the rest of the state because of guns and my veto of the partial-birth abortion billIn Missouri, the same factors cut my victory margin almost in half, from 10 to 6 percentI still got a majority in Arkansas, but my victory margin was slightly smaller than in 1992; in Tennessee, the margin was cut from 4

In Kentucky, tobacco and guns cut our margin from 3 to 1 omega watches for sale perc