ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, August 30, 1996 TAG: 9608300051
SECTION: NATL/INTL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: CHICAGO
SOURCE: Knight-Ridder/Tribune
MANY WERE MOVED TO TEARS Wednesday as he described his sister's death in 1984 to lung cancer. On Thursday, reporters wanted to know why he took $9,990 from tobacco PACs from 1985 to 1990.
A day after emotionally telling the nation about his sister's painful death to lung cancer, Vice President Al Gore Thursday found himself sheepishly explaining to reporters how he accepted campaign contributions from the tobacco industry after her death in 1984.
Records show that Gore accepted a total of $9,990 from political action committees that represented tobacco interests while he was a Tennessee senator. That money was given between 1985 and 1990.
``I was continuing to grow into a new way of understanding the issue,'' Gore told reporters Thursday over lunch at the Intercontinental Hotel. ``That's just the fact.''
During his prime-time speech that moved many delegates to tears at the Democratic National Convention, Gore told about the death of his sister, Nancy, who started smoking at age 13, had a lung removed at 45 and then eventually died in the hospital with her family around her.
During his speech, Gore pledged ``Until I draw my last breath, I will pour my heart and soul into the cause of protecting our children from the dangers of smoking.''
Asked about the enormous sum of money that Philip Morris is spending to help sponsor the Democratic National Convention, Gore said: ``I think that [policy] ought to be reviewed.''
He said the Clinton-Gore campaign is not accepting tobacco contributions and said the Democratic National Committee should review its policy.
Reporters also asked Gore about a statement he made to North Carolina tobacco farmers in 1988 - four years after his sister's death - during his race for the Democratic presidential nomination. He said then: ``Throughout most of my life, I raised tobacco. I want you to know that with my own hands, all of my life, I put it in the plant beds and transferred it. I've hoed it. I've chopped it. I've shredded it, spiked it, put it in the barn and stripped it and sold it.''
On Thursday, Gore told reporters that ``in spite of having suffered the loss, I still felt a numbness that prevented me from integrating into all aspects of my life the implications of what that tragedy really meant. It's a natural human failing that we all have. It takes time to fully absorb the most important lessons in life. Sometimes a new awareness, a new way of thinking begins slowly and you grow into it.''
He said that he continued to receive an annual lease payment from his tobacco property for a few years after his sister's death until he eventually surrendered the payment.
``My mother and father continued to grow tobacco on our farm for several years after her death,'' he said. ``We had experienced the `numbness' characteristic of loss. Sometimes you never fully face up to things that you ought to face up to. You never fully learn the lessons that life has to teach you.''
Gore said that his political career ``prodded'' him to ponder these questions. ``I was blessed with opportunities to come back to it and examine it over and over again,'' he said. ``As I did I grew into a greater awareness of the fact that this same tragedy that hit my family was hitting 400,000 American families every year.''
Asked why he didn't mention the fact that he used to grow tobacco during his convention speech, Gore said thought about it, but ``I don't know. It seemed like it might be better to focus on what was most important about that story.''
Before the issue of financial connections to the tobacco industry came up, Gore told reporters how he came to make the emotional speech.
He said that ``in order to break through that numbness and integrate the reality that we are facing in America where this issue is concerned, it was important to tell that story.''
He even asked reporters for a show of hands about how many of them had lost relatives or close friends to diseases related to smoking.
He said that personal anecdotes can be overdone in a political setting, but said he hasn't seen any examples of it.
``I believe in our politics and in our personal lives, we are seeing an effort to integrate our emotional lives and intellectual lives in a more balanced fashion,'' he said. ``People are becoming more willing to give some respect to the importance of the way people feel and to try to balance emotions and logic in a more artful way.''
Records show that Gore accepted a total of $9,990 from political action committees that represented tobacco interests while he was a senator. All of that money was given between 1985 and 1990.
The Philip Morris PAC was the biggest contributor, giving a total of $6,340 to Gore. RJR PAC, the Smokeless Tobacco Council PAC and the Tobacco Institute PAC each gave him $1,000. Brown and Williamson Tobacco added $650.
The $9,990 that Gore got from the tobacco PACs is a relatively small amount of money for a senator who represented a tobacco-producing state. For Example, Fred Thompson, who now holds the Senate seat Gore vacated when he became vice president, has collected nearly four times as much from tobacco PACs since 1993.
Thompson received $14,000 from tobacco PACs for that election and has already taken $25,000 in 1995-96.
LENGTH: Medium: 98 lines KEYWORDS: POLITIC PRESIDENTby CNB