Tuesday, April 11, 2000
Gore making pair of campaign stops in Ohio, focusing on education
By James Hannah
The Associated Press
VANDALIA, Ohio — Vice President Al Gore invited undecided voters to talk issues with him Monday at a town meeting, drawing a diverse crowd of youths in bluejeans and adults in business suits.
More than 200 people crowded into Vandalia-Butler High School's cavernous library, where a couple of dozen computers sit among towering banks of bookshelves.
Participants included students and others selected by nonpartisan organizations, such as the Chamber of Commerce. Vandalia is a town of 14,000 people 10 miles north of Dayton. Its location next to Dayton International Airport allowed Mr. Gore to sandwich the nighttime meeting between a trip to his native Tennessee and a planned visit today to Avondale Elementary School in Columbus.
Mr. Gore planned to spend Monday night at the home of Susan Fadley, a kindergarten and special education teacher at Avondale. Ms. Fadley said by phone before his arrival that she would not talk about the vice president's visit.
It was Mr. Gore's fifth visit to Ohio this year, and the eighth in the past 12 months. His presumptive Republican opponent in the November election, Texas Gov. George W. Bush, was expected in Cleveland today for his second Ohio visit of the year and fifth since July.
At the school on Columbus' west side, Mr. Gore was scheduled to visit classes and eat lunch with the pupils in the cafeteria. Mr. Gore has pledged to spend a day at a school every week or two during the campaign.
His first visit was to L'Anse Creuse Middle School North in Macomb, Mich., last month. There, he joined an improvisational exercise in a sixth-grade drama class where he had to play the part of a father scolding his daughter for bad grades without using real words.
He also spent the night before that trip at the home of a teacher.
Both Mr. Gore and Mr. Bush have been emphasizing education during their campaigns.
When people were asked last week whom they trust to do a better job of improving schools and education, most said Mr. Gore, the likely Democratic nominee, according to an ABC News-Washington Post poll.
The two candidates were tied on the issue a month ago, and Republicans see a strong showing on education as a key for Mr. Bush to cut into the traditional Democratic advantage among women.
Mr. Bush's campaign said he would deliver a speech that focuses on helping those on the outskirts of poverty move into the middle class. He was also scheduled to tour El Barrio, an agency that provides social services for the needy, including job training, GED classes and summer camp for youngsters, to a mostly Hispanic clientele.
Earlier in Nashville, Tenn., Mr. Gore took his frail, 88-year-old mother to a club where she had been refused admission as a young woman because it was then men-only. Her son saluted her there for teaching “through quiet dignity and deliberation one woman can make all the difference.” Nashville City Club was opened to women shortly after Mrs. Gore's ouster.
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