World News 30-10-2000 Election Race Turns Bitter who: Al Gore and George W. Bush what: Campaign results be decided by a few thousand voters when: Next week snippet: George W Bush and Al Gore`s US presidential election campaigns turned nasty this weekend as pundits predict the closest race for generations when the parties go to the polls next Tuesday. The Democrats "essentially accused George W. Bush, the Republican candidate, of manslaughter," says Nancy Dunne in The Financial Times, "while Republicans linked the policies of Al Gore, the Democratic candidate, with a potential nuclear attack against the US". Gore`s telephone marketing campaign used the statement of a widow who blames Texas governor Mr Bush for the death of her husband in a nursing home. Meanwhile, supporters of Mr Bush ran a TV spot accusing the government of "making the US vulnerable to nuclear attack from China by trading away national security in return for campaign contributions". "Polls showed Mr Bush with a lead of between one and eight points," says The Telegraph, "but advisers to both campaigns continued to stress that the contest was the closest since 1960, when a swing of just 17,000 votes could have led to Richard Nixon defeating John F Kennedy". "Mr Gore won the most prestigious of an avalanche of weekend newspaper endorsements," says The Guardian`s Martin Kettle, "when the New York Times gave him its support in an editorial headed simply `Al Gore for president`." But the race is only just heating up, warns political analyst Darrell West in The Mirror. "It`s like two tarantulas in a bottle," he says. "You have to strike before you get hit yourself." [... more]

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