DETROIT — With time unforgivingly short before election day, Al Gore careened through Michigan on Sunday, issuing stark warnings about the stakes attendant to election day.
He excoriated George W. Bush's economic plans on a day when the Republican nominee spent most of his time in Austin, Texas, out of the public eye. And Gore distanced himself from President Clinton, even as Clinton and other Democrats spread out to fan support for him.
Privately, the vice president sought to allay worries among this state's significant Arab American population that his support for Israel would deafen him to their views on the Mideast and matters at home. Publicly, he swayed in the embrace of African American churchgoers and rewarded them with a speech laden with biblical cadences and political bluntness.
"You have a chance," Gore told the congregation at Hartford Memorial Baptist Church. Election day "is the one day every four years when the wealthy and powerful and special interests tremble at the thought that you will penetrate the smoke screen and see for yourselves exactly what is at stake."
While Gore was revving up his populist rhetoric, Bush spent the day in a largely low-key fashion, campaigning only via a satellite transmission to Latino supporters in Anaheim Hills, Calif.
"You're looking at one candidate who has never lost sight of the importance of California," Bush said. He vowed that he would win the state's 54 electoral votes, adding that "while my opponent has been busy counting the votes of California, we've been working hard to earn them."
Bush could not have found much solace, however, in a new San Francisco Examiner poll that gave Gore a 10-point lead in California. Last week, a Los Angeles Times poll gave Gore a 7-point lead in the state.
Both men are due to campaign in California this week for the first time since September, with Bush appearing Monday in Burbank and Fresno and Tuesday in the Silicon Valley. Gore will hold a Halloween evening rally in Westwood.
As the presidential campaign opened its last full week, it continued to be the tightest such contest in at least two decades, and perhaps since the 1960 contest between another vice president, Richard Nixon, and Sen. John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts. National polls released over the weekend showed the race as either a dead heat or Bush with a minor lead. Some polls in crucial states, however, suggested an edge for Gore in the all-important effort to collect 270 electoral votes.
