Remarks at a Get Out the Vote Rally in San Jose, California - Transcript

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Nov 13, 2000

November 3, 2000

The President. Thank you very much. Are you ready to win this election?

Audience members. Yes!

The President. Let me say, first, to all of you, how very glad I am to be back in San Jose. I want to thank Mayor Gonzales and all the people here who have always made me feel so welcome. I've had some of my happiest days as a candidate and as a President in this part of the wonderful State of California. Of course, my daughter has lived near here for the last 3 years.

I was reminding Governor Davis that in 1992 we had 10,000 people at San Jose State, and it was the most exuberant rally in the entire campaign. It was an amazing thing. I'll never forget it.

I'm delighted to be on the stage with all these folks today--our State Democratic chair, Art Torres; your wonderful Representative in Congress, Zoe Lofgren. I am so proud of her. I love being with her. Secretary Norm Mineta, my great friend, what a credit he has been to San Jose and all of California. You should be so proud of him.

And it means especially a lot to me that Willie Mays came here with me today. He's been here with me so many times, and I'm very grateful. You know, one of the great things about--we just had the World Series, so I want to say this--one of the great things about being President is that if you have a particular interest, you can pretty much get anybody who is involved in it to come and talk to you. [Laughter]

I love music, and I love sports. And I became a friend of Hank Aaron who, as all of you know, owns the all-time home run record. So there was a celebration of the 25th anniversary of Hank Aaron breaking Babe Ruth's record in Atlanta. And Hank invited me to go down, and I did. There were 12 Hall of Fame baseball players there. And so I said to Hank Aaron, "Who is the greatest player you ever played with?" He said, "It's not even close. Willie Mays is the greatest baseball player who ever played."

I want to say, are there any students from San Jose State here? [Applause] I want all of you to know that when I landed in my helicopter today, I had the enormous honor to meet your young football player Neil Parry--who was injured and lost his foot--and his family. They're in good spirits. They've got their heads up. He told me he was going to play football next year, and he wanted me to come watch him, and I told him I'd have some more time, and I'd be honored to come back and see him.

I want to thank Gray Davis for being a truly astonishing Governor. He has gotten so much done in so little time. You should be very, very, very proud of him. He has also been a true friend to me and a loyal supporter of Vice President Gore, and we're going to celebrate here Tuesday night, in no small measure because Gray Davis never blinked when things looked bad, and now they look good all over America. Thank you, Gray Davis.

And I'll just tell you, I am so proud of Mike Honda. We had a talk the last-this is the second time I've been in his district to campaign for him, and we were talking about what it was like to be young and Japanese in America when we made the terrible mistake of interning Japanese-Americans during the war.

One of those internment camps was in my home State. And I'll never forget when I went back to Hawaii to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II. I met a veteran who told me that he was interned in a camp in Arkansas. And he said, "I may be the only person who came out ahead, because I met my wife across the river in Mississippi. They were the only family that I knew who were Japanese-Americans where I could get what I thought was good food." [Laughter]

So our country has come a long way in the last 50 years, and Mike Honda is the embodiment of both that past and the bright future ahead of us, and I thank you for helping him.

Look up here on this stage. Is this America or what? [Applause] You have a Latino party chair; an African-American baseball legend; a Japanese-American Secretary of Commerce; the daughter of a truck driver, as she just said, in Congress--they probably make more than people in Congress do now--Zoe Lofgren; a Japanese-American candidate for Congress; and two representatives of the gray-haired white guys' caucus. [Laughter] Is this America, or what?

Look, I want to just take a few minutes--you know, we're so exuberant; we're all feeling good. And I could just give you a few applause lines, and we could scream for 5 minutes. But I want you to give me a chance to speak with you seriously, just for a couple of minutes, for the following reasons.

The Presidential race is close, even though the Vice President has a good lead in California. A lot of these Congress races are close. There are five House seats we could pick up here in California if we won every close one presently held by a Republican; and one where we have a truly outstanding Congressman, Cal Dooley, who is in a tough race himself for reelection--one of the most outstanding people in the entire United States Congress.

And what I want to say to all of you is that every one of you has friends in this congressional district where Mike will be running, a little south of here, where Lois Capps is running for reelection--one of the most wonderful people I've ever known--and in other places where we have battles here in California. Most of you have friends in other States where the outcome of the election is not yet clear. There are 12 or 15 States where this election is still within two to three points.