BOSTON — Beantown was awash with presidential campaign fever yesterday as Texas Gov. George W. Bush and Vice President Al Gore primed to face off in the first of three 90-minute debates slated for this election season.
Bush declared himself ready, and Gore supporters cheered as the presidential contenders prepared to face off in debate for the first time, exactly five weeks before Election Day.
For much of yesterday, Gore remained inside the Florida beach bungalow he used for "debate camp" to prepare for the event, while Bush indulged in a run and a nap in West Virginia. The 9 p.m. debate start was just half an hour before Bush's usual 9:30 p.m. bedtime.
"Ready to go," Bush told reporters as he made his way to Boston from a campaign stop in heavily Democratic West Virginia.
He joked about turning up in "Regis wear," a reference to game-show host Regis Philbin's monochromatic attire.
Just kidding, Bush hastened to add. "Tonight's not the night for gimmicks. Tonight's the night to talk about hard, compassionate issues." He blew kisses to office workers watching him leave his Huntington, W.Va., hotel.
Gore, by contrast, uttered no public words as his motorcade pulled out of Florida's Longboat Key resort yesterday morning. Supporters greeted him with a sheet spray painted with the message, "It's game day, go get 'em!"
An uninvited guest
Bush and Gore were not the only presidential hopefuls with a presence on the University of Massachusetts at Boston's campus yesterday.
Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader '55, shunned by the presidential debate commission, scored a ticket to last night's debate from Todd Tavares, a 21-year-old Northeastern University student who said he got it from a roommate — but was turned away at the door.
"It's already been decided that whether or not you have a ticket you are not welcome in the debate," John Vezeris, a representative of the debate commission, told Nader. The commission had excluded all but the Democratic and Republican candidates from participating.
"I didn't expect they would be so crude and so stupid," Nader said after being turned away. "This is the kind of creeping tyranny that has turned away so many voters from the electoral process."
Though their candidate was turned away at the door, Nader supporters gathered outside the Clark Athletic Center armed with signs demanding, "Let Ralph Debate." Supporters had also posted similar signs around town to protest the Nader-less event.
The Green Party candidate was not permitted to participate because his support in nationwide polls was not more than 15 percent — the cutoff set by the Commission on Presidential Debates, the bipartisan group sponsoring the debates.
Hundreds of protesters — not only from the Green Party, but from other political groups pushing their own agendas — gathered outside the athletic center in the hours leading up to the debate.
State police clashed with protesters several times, and at least one Boston Globe photographer was injured during a scuffle.
Covering the contest
In addition to planning for the main event between the 2000 campaign's presidential frontrunners, debate organizers also had their hands full preparing for the swarm of reporters and correspondents expected to descend on Boston for the event.
UMass Boston — a commuter school built on landfill out in Boston Harbor — remained shutdown for the second day in a row yesterday as security tightened in preparation for the event.
All members of the press were first required to navigate two Secret Service checkpoints. With those behind them, they were presented with official debate credentials in holders bearing the Ford Motor Company logo.
They then had to shuffle past a third Secret Service checkpoint before being confronted with the "2000 Presidential Debate Canteen," sponsored by Anheuser-Busch. There, they could enjoy free meals and drinks — as well as the occasional game of ping-pong, foosball or arcade hockey.
Members of the media were relegated to a several-thousand-square-foot room equipped with more than 50 televisions on which to watch the event.
As the hours before the debate wound down, the media center became packed with important figures and political luminaries such as Jesse Jackson, New York Gov. George Pataki, Massachusetts Sens. Bob Kerrey and Ted Kennedy and former White House press secretary Mike McCurry '76.
To keep the candidates cool, university officials turned the thermostat inside the Clark Athletic Center gym well below 65 degrees. That is the show-time temperature, once the lights were flipped on and seats filled, that was required under contract by the CPD.
During the last few days, the race for the popular vote has settled into a dead heat — almost every nationwide poll shows the two candidates running neck-and-neck. Gore shows a considerable lead in electoral votes.
Last night's debate was, for its more than 50 million viewers, one of the first chances for many Americans to evaluate each man on the basis of more than a soundbite.
(The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
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