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Personality Spotlight: Albert Gore Jr. U.S. senator, ex-candidate

Throughout his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, Sen. Albert Gore Jr. told voters they had a chance to repeat history by replacing the nation's oldest president with its youngest chief executive.

But the 40-year-old Tennessean no longer expects to succeed Ronald Reagan, who at age 77 is older than Dwight Eisenhower was when he turned over the White House to John F. Kennedy in 1960.

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Gore's campaign came to an end Thursday when he announced that he will suspend his campaign.

The Southern senator announced his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination June 29, 1987, becoming at age 39 the youngest declared candidate of the 1988 campaign -- and one of the youngest ever to seek a major party's nomination.

That announcement, in the senator's birthplace of Carthage, Tenn., followed a March 25, 1987, declaration that he would not be a candidate.

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After Sen. Sam Nunn, D-Ga., announced Aug. 27, 1987, he would not seek the Democratic nomination, Atlanta pollster Claibourne Darden, a longtime observer of the political scene in the South, said Gore 'will now inherit the crown of being the Southern candidate.'

Gore jump-started his campaign with the mostly southern March 8 Super Tuesday primaries. He bypassed the two traditional opening contests for president -- Iowa and New Hampshire -- arguing they gave liberals too much influence.

The strategy, born of necessity because of low ratings in Iowa, failed to put Gore ahead of rivals Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis and Jesse Jackson, although Gore won seven Super Tuesday states. He fared no better than third place in the contests that followed Super Tuesday.

Gore reassessed his campaign after finishing a distant third in the April 19 New York primary, where he picked up only about 10 percent of the popular vote.

New York Mayor Ed Koch's bitter criticism of Jackson may have hurt Gore more than his endorsement of the Southern senator.

The popular and personable Gore entered the Senate in 1984, filling the seat of another Senate luminary -- retiring Republican leader Howard Baker, now the White House chief of staff.

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As a four-term member of the House, Gore represents the hilly and fertile district just west of the Appalachians -- one of the heartlands of the Democratic Party.

The district was noted for electing congressmen who became national Democratic leaders -- President James Polk and Gore's father, Sen. Albert Gore Sr., among them. It was also the political home base of President Andrew Jackson, the party's founder.

Like his father, Gore usually followed the national party line, but at times showed his independence. Gore Sr., was defeated in 1970 by conservative Republican Bill Brock after being portrayed as too liberal.

As a politician, the younger Gore kept up relations with constituents in the rural district through more than 1,000 'open meetings' and made a name for himself nationally through involvement in topics ranging from arms control to organ transplants and hazardous waste.

An avid jogger, Gore graduated from Harvard in 1969, then enlisted in the U.S. Army and served in Vietnam. Returning to civilian life, he worked as an investigative reporter for The Tennessean newspaper in Nashville and operated a small construction business before returning to college to seek a law degree.

Gore dropped out of Vanderbilt Law School in 1976 to run successfully for Congress after the late Rep. Joe L. Evins, who succeeded Gore's father in the House, announced his retirement. Gore served four terms before election to the Senate in 1984.

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He won a seat on the most sought-after House panel in the early 1980s -- the Energy and Commerce Committee that has jurisdiction over most federal regulatory laws.

While a member of the House Science and Technology Committee, he headed the panel's investigations and oversight subcommittee and probed controversial policy areas and steered clear of cheap shots against his critics.

While not a member of any committees dealing with the military, Gore studied arms control issues intensively and was the leading proponent of removing multiple warheads from MIRV missiles -- a proposal supported by Henry Kissinger.

Gore and his wife, 'Tipper,' have four children. Mrs. Gore gained attention when she waged a national campaign against sexually explicit and violent themes in rock music.

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