Election 2000 in brief

Compiled from Times staff and wire reports

© St. Petersburg Times, published November 1, 2000

Campaign shirts prove hot items in Israel

JERUSALEM -- The ongoing violence between Israelis and Palestinians has spurred a run on bulletproof vests ($700) and helmets ($200) at Mr. T, an Army-Navy surplus store here.

But the hottest-selling items reflect an entirely different sort of struggle: the battle to see who will become the next U.S. president.

Store owner Jerry Stevenson says dozens of customers have paid $6.95 each for T-shirts touting George Bush as "a true friend of Israel" and the Gore-Lieberman ticket as "a hope for Israel."

"In the 22-year history of Mr. T's, these have been the top one or two items" in popularity, says Stevenson, who was born in the United States but has spent much of his life in the Jewish nation.

The store initially offered only Gore-Lieberman shirts, reflecting Israeli pride in the selection of Sen. Joseph Lieberman as the first Jewish vice presidential candidate in U.S. history.

"Then the Bush people got angry," says Stevenson, so he added shirts supporting the Texas governor. Still, the Gore-Lieberman shirts are outselling the others by a ratio of 40-to-1.

Alas, sales of all kinds have slowed dramatically as the violence has dragged on, scaring away foreign tourists.

"Many more would have been sold were it not for the mayhem and madness," says Stevenson, echoing a common complaint among retailers throughout Israel and the West Bank. "Tourism is down to zero, and since this is the market that would have bought the shirts, sales went way down on everything for the past month."

NADER CONTINUES CAMPAIGN: Ralph Nader dismissed Democrats who are calling for him to drop from the presidential race as "whining, carping, low-expecting politicians," and previewed a second television ad rolling out in markets across the country.

Nader, at a fiery news conference before a televised town hall meeting with Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura, repeated his familiar message that there's little difference between Gore and Bush.

Nader's new 30-second TV spot, a parody like his first, is based on an ad by the employment Web site Monster.com. The black-and-white ad features a series of children matter-of-factly reciting dismal hopes for "when I grow up," and asks voters if they "want something better for yourself and the next generation."

ECONOMY POLL: More than half of American voters give the Clinton-Gore administration credit for the strong economy, an Associated Press poll shows, and they lean toward Al Gore as the candidate who would keep things going.

But four in 10 think the economy's future won't be affected by either candidate, including more than half of independent voters, in the poll conducted for the AP by ICR of Media, Pa.

Those who think it makes no difference are a bigger group than those who think either Democrat Gore, 31 percent, or Republican Bush, 22 percent, would be more likely to keep the nation's economy strong. Many political analysts had predicted that a robust economy would translate into a Gore election. National polls at this late date give Bush an edge or show the race essentially even.

The poll of 811 registered voters was taken Oct. 25-29 and has an error margin of 4 percentage points.

- Times senior correspondent Susan Taylor Martin contributed to this report.

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