Al Gore Biography

U.S. Vice President

Name at birth: Albert Gore, Jr.

Al Gore served for eight years as vice-president under Bill Clinton, then was the Democratic Party's nominee for president in 2000. Gore's father, Albert Gore Sr., served 32 years as a U.S. representative and senator from Tennessee. The younger Gore served in the U.S. Army and worked briefly as a newspaper reporter before winning election to Congress in 1976. In 1984 he moved up to the Senate and was re-elected in 1990. After making a run at the presidency in 1988, Gore was chosen by Clinton to be his 1992 running mate; the two were elected and then re-elected in 1996. Gore's detail-oriented concern for environmental and economic issues earned him a reputation as a "policy wonk" and a somewhat wooden personality. Gore won the Democratic Party nomination for U.S. president in 2000, choosing Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman as his running mate; in the November general election they ran against the Republican ticket of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. After a post-election delay of a month while votes were recounted and lawsuits were filed on both sides, Gore conceded the election to Bush on December 13, 2000. Gore actually received more popular votes than Bush: the final official tally was 50,158,094 votes for Gore to 49,820,518 votes for Bush. But after winning Florida, Bush led in electoral votes, 271 to 267. In later years Gore has dedicated himself to raising public awareness about global warming. A documentary about Gore and climate change, titled An Inconvenient Truth, was released in 2006, and was given an Oscar as the year's best documentary. Gore was awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his work on climate change.

Extra credit: Gore has an undergraduate degree from Harvard, where he once roomed with actor Tommy Lee Jones... Gore attended graduate classes at Vanderbilt University's schools of divinity and law, but did not pursue a degree from either... During the 2000 campaign it was often reported that Gore claimed he had invented the Internet; the actual quote, from a CNN interview on March 9 of 1999, was: "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet"... Gore's wife Tipper was once known as a leading advocate against violent and explicit lyrics in popular music... Gore replaced Dan Quayle as vice president and was succeeded by Dick Cheney... Gore himself did not win the Oscar for An Inconvenient Truth; the award went to the film's director, Davis Guggenheim. The film also earned an Oscar for Melissa Etheridge for her song, "I Need to Wake Up"... Gore shared the 2007 Nobel Prize with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC.

Gore joins Ralph Nader and Pat Buchanan in our loop Candidates 2000.

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