Politics

Running Mates Keep Up Florida Heat

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

October 17, 2000 / 11:36 AM EDT / CBS

Joe Lieberman is courting the votes of the high-tech industry and Dick Cheney is taking to the road as both vice presidential candidates focus on Florida, a state essential to the presidential aspirations of George W. Bush and Al Gore.

As his boss prepared for the race's third debate, Lieberman was talking about the economy and high-tech industries Tuesday at a national conference of industry executives and workers.

"Al Gore and I are committed to creating 10 million new high-wage jobs in this sector over the next decade," Lieberman said before addressing 4,500 information technology professionals here.

The campaign trumpeted the endorsements of more than 440 technology and Internet business leaders, including executives of Netscape, Xerox, Qualcomm, Apple and Novel, among others.

Both Bush and Gore have reached out to high-tech industries and raised campaign money from them.

Earlier, on the CBS News Early Show, Lieberman said the "most irksome" campaign trail statement made by Bush was that "somehow we're for big government and they're for the people. The fact is we're not about expanding government, we're about expanding opportunity and in fact doing it in a way that reduces government."

Lieberman said he was shocked to awaken Tuesday to the news that Missouri Gov. Mel Carnahan had died in a plane crash: "It puts everything that goes on in a political campaign into perspective."

Lieberman called Carnahan, a fellow Democrat who was running for the Senate, "a fine, decent straight-talking man, really the best of the heartland of America."

Amid mourning, the debate and the campaigns were scheduled to go on.

At previous stops in West Palm Beach, Fla., and in Michigan the day before, Lieberman said he and Gore would be the best stewards of the economy. He said Republicans Bush and Cheney would sink the stock market, increase interest rates and plunge the country into debt with a budget-busting tax cut for the wealthy. "Their plan will stain us once again with red ink," Lieberman said.

Lieberman in West
Palm Beach, Fla. (AP)SIZE>

Cheney was scheduled to hit the road in Florida with a bus tour, starting out in Kissimmee and making stops at a senior center and a community college. He also was flying to Tallahassee to watch the presidential debate Tuesday night with his boss' brother, Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida.

Like Lieberman, Cheney was pitching economics in Florida. He was pushing Bush's plan for across-the-board tax cuts, as well as an initiative to let younger workers divert part of their Social Security taxes to personal investment accounts.

At a rally Monday in Lakeland, the centr of Florida's citrus growing region, Cheney said, "We want you to keep more of what you earn" while Gore and Lieberman want to spend the surplus on an array of big-government programs.

The polls here have Gore and Bush running neck-and-neck for the state's 25 electoral votes.

Analysts have called the state a must-win for Bush because, besides Texas, most of the states in his column carry fewer electoral votes. Gore, meanwhile, could virtually lock up the election with a win in Florida because two other vote-rich states, New York and California, appear to be solidly behind him, experts say.