Copyright 2000 / Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles
Times
View Related Topics
September 23, 2000, Saturday, Home Edition
SECTION: Part A; Part 1; Page 15; National Desk
LENGTH: 612 words
HEADLINE:
CAMPAIGN 2000;
GORE SLINGS OIL ISSUE AT GOP RIVALS
BYLINE: JAMES GERSTENZANG, TIMES STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VANPORT, Pa.
BODY:
Sensing a welling of voter anger over
rising oil prices, Vice President Al Gore sought Friday to tar
his opponents as "apologists for big oil."
On the day that the Clinton
administration announced that it was taking the very step Gore had recommended
Thursday--the release of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve--the
Democratic presidential candidate visited a community where residents, paying
double what they paid a year ago for home heating oil, have grown deeply fearful
of the approaching winter.
Gore did not mention his Republican opponent,
Texas Gov. George W. Bush, by name. He didn't need to. A member of the audience
at a meeting hall of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers did it
for him. Since Bush was a "big oilman," said Ramona Wachter, a former Texan, he
"isn't going to do too much" about rising gas prices. "No
comment," Gore said, after a strategic pause.
Bush, however, took
immediate issue with the idea of tapping the petroleum reserve. "The Strategic
Petroleum Reserve should not be used as a short-term political fix for somebody
whose administration has been asleep at the switch," he said at an airport rally
in Sarasota, Fla.
Bush has said the gas crisis could be addressed by
more aggressive negotiations with the Organization of Petroleum Exporting
Countries and opening up the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling.
Gore said the best way to gain leverage against OPEC is to expand the
United States' use of renewable energy resources, such as wind power. He opposes
drilling in the Arctic refuge.
Gore, looking to justify the release of
oil, said, "I've been a part of the discussions on strategic reserve since the
days when it was first established. . . ." It was unclear what role, however, he
played, because the reserve was established in 1975, before he was first elected
to Congress.
Meanwhile, aides to Bush's running mate, Dick Cheney,
rebutted an assertion made by the Gore campaign that Cheney, as a former CEO and
current stockholder of an oil firm, would profit from higher oil prices. Gore's
camp cited an April 1999 quote from Cheney, which appeared to praise OPEC after
the Middle East cartel tightened oil supplies.
"I'm struck by the extent
that OPEC has gotten its act together," Cheney had said.
Cheney's aides
said he was only expressing surprise that OPEC's oil ministers were cooperating
with each other again. He was not praising the cartel for restricting oil
supplies, they said. At the time, Cheney was concerned that the price of oil was
too low and was unsustainable, his campaign said.
On Friday, Gore also
defended himself against accusations that he exaggerates his accomplishments and
embellishes his resume.
Holding his first news conference since July 17,
Gore addressed two examples of hyperbole: his claim that his mother sang him a
union advertising jingle as a lullaby and his assertion that the price his
family paid for his mother-in-law's arthritis drug was about three times the
amount paid for his dog's same medication.
Gore said the quip about the
jingle, written when he was 27 years old, was a joke he has told repeatedly. If
the humor was missed, he said, "maybe I better tell better jokes."
As
for the medication anecdote, which turned out to be inaccurate, he said, "I'm
not talking about my mother-in-law anymore; I may talk about my dog some more."
Gore had cited figures showing his mother-in-law's medication was more
expensive than the canine equivalent, but he later conceded those numbers came
from a congressional study.
*
Times staff writers Megan
Garvey and Maria L. La Ganga contributed to this story.
LOAD-DATE: September 23, 2000
