Voters who want Al Gore to vie for the presidency are using the pages of The New York Times to push him to enter the race.
A group called Draft Gore purchased a full-page ad in Wednesday’s edition of The New York Times pleading with Gore to climb into the presidential arena.
Headlined “An open letter to Al Gore,” the ad describes him as a “hero” who “will transcend politics as usual and bring real hope to our country and to the world.”
“You say you have fallen out of love with politics and you have every reason to feel that way,” the letter says to the former vice president. “But we know you have not fallen out of love with your country . . . and your country needs you now.”
Draft Gore founder Monica Friedlander tells The Associated Press that the timing of the ad had nothing to do with the upcoming announcement of the Nobel Peace Prize. Gore is seen as the most likely recipient.
According to the AP, Draft Gore paid the standard $65,000 rate for the ad, financed, by 2,000 small donations collected online.
Draft Gore is one of about 20 organizations across the country raising money and seeking signatures to put Gore’s name on as many primary ballots as possible. With ballot deadlines looming, the groups are boosting their efforts across the nation.
Friedlander California-based group has collected nearly 150,000 signatures online and hopes to get about 40,000 more in the days ahead, she tells the San Francisco Chronicle.
“I don’t think he knows himself the depth and breadth of support he enjoys,” she says. “We’re getting letters from people who are desperate, who are pleading with him. . . . It’s overwhelming.”
Another group, America for Gore, has asked Gore loyalists to voice their two-cents’ worth on his political future by simply mailing him two pennies.
”He’s the favorite, and we’re waiting for him to get into the race,” the group’s Eric Schiller tells the Chronicle. “And we’ll have campaigns launched the minute that happens.”
A Nobel win would be just the latest in a series of accolades for Gore. His global warming film “An Inconvenient Truth” won him an Academy Award, and only last month he took home an Emmy for his interactive television network Current TV.
“It’s like waiting for Grateful Dead tickets to go on sale,” America for Gore’s Schiller told the Chronicle.
Bob Alexander, co-chair of Michigan-based Volunteers to Draft Gore, believes a Nobel win would tilt Gore to enter the fray.
“Hopefully,” he tells The New York Times, “the euphoria of winning the Nobel Peace Prize, plus all this other positive stuff, will be enough for him to say: ‘O.K., this thing is taking off. We’re ready to run.’ “