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I arrived at the university and began the press conference. I was nervous. I didn’t want any misunderstandings over what I was about to say.

I told the media present that Bush had to be stopped. I appealed to the people in Florida that if Gore was their man, then by all means, they should get out and vote for him. But if you were voting for Nader, I wanted you to think long and hard about your vote. The stakes, I felt, would be different in Florida. If it’s more important to you to stop Bush, then you might have to vote for Gore. I would understand and respect your decision.

The reporters were a bit surprised. Was I switching my vote to Gore? No, I said, I’m voting for Ralph. Of course, that’s easy for me to say—I live in a state where Gore is already going to win by a landslide. But if you live in Florida, things are different.

The story went out across the state that one of Ralph Nader’s “celebrity backers” had given the green light to vote for Gore in Florida if that’s what voters thought was the right thing to do.

When the press conference finished, I ran into the bathroom and got sick. It was time for me to go on stage. An overflow crowd of two thousand people packed the auditorium. The organizer banged on the door. “We need to start,” she shouted.

“Just give me a few minutes,” I replied. I got sicker. Another bang on the door. “Show them a segment from my TV show,” I said. “I’ll be okay in a minute.”

I didn’t know if I was sick because of this horrible pressure I felt or because I’d been treated to a “Whataburger” burger (a Tallahassee favorite) on the way into town. Maybe I just knew that the whole election—the whole country—was in the shitcan with me, and there was no escape for any of us.

Twenty minutes late, I walked onto the stage. The Greens were all sitting down front, Nader signs in hand. I told them, and the rest of the audience, that there was a bitter pill I knew some of them wanted to swallow. I told the crowd, You have to use your best judgment—follow your conscience. Please know that I will think no less of you if you feel you have to vote for Gore. I will still be voting for Nader, I said, and went over the litany of reasons why it was a matter of conscience for me (I cannot ever vote for someone who believes in the execution of other human beings, who believes that we should continue the weekly bombing of civilians in other countries, who thinks that the minimum wage should go up by only a dollar an hour, who wants to sign additional trade agreements like NAFTA so that even more Americans can lose their jobs).

I told the crowd that I couldn’t pull the lever (or punch the hole) for Gore, a man who wanted to spend more on the military than Bush did, who wouldn’t seek guaranteed health care for all our citizens immediately, who thought that Janet Reno was wrong to return little Elián Gonzales to Cuba. That’s who Al Gore was.

But, I said, I understand your unique dilemma here in Florida. So don’t listen to me, do what you think is best, we’ll sort it all out later. And God bless these Nader kids down front here for their courage and dedication, something that many of their sixties-era parents had long ago snuffed.

The Q & A that followed the speech, plus another discussion in the student union afterward with a couple hundred students and community activists (some of whom had driven three hours to be there), was a powerful back-and-forth about how to handle the coming deluge. By the time it was over, it was 1:30 A.M., five and a half hours after I had resolved my issues with the Whataburger. I left with a sense that a storm was brewing here in Florida, and it might be wise to take cover.

I was driven to my hotel, a quaint little place that sat on the pedestrian mail leading up the block to the state capitol building. I turned on the TV and watched a replay of the eleven o’clock news. “A chief Nader backer says Bush must be stopped, no matter what,” the anchor said. I turned out the lights and went to sleep.

I awoke at 6:30 A.M. to catch my plane home. A student