The leader of the New Hampshire effort to draft former Vice President Al Gore into the presidential race now plans to try a write-in campaign for the reluctant candidate.

Farrell Seiler of Hanover, the head of the Draft Gore, New Hampshire! campaign, said he was holding a series of meetings across the state to discuss his plan, especially given the fact that Gore was a co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize for his work to raise awareness of global warming.

"He now struts on a world stage. He's the only political leader, I think, in America at this point who, were he to occupy the Oval Office, would be able to begin the process of refurbishing our reputation abroad," said Seiler, an environmental activist and the president of the Littleton-based New Hampshire Wind Energy Association.

The Draft Gore movement started in June, shortly after Gore's work on the film An Inconvenient Truth led to an Oscar.

Seiler, who was to meet with Upper Valley supporters last night on Dartmouth College's campus, acknowledged that the 1,317 names on a petition to get Gore to enter the Democratic race for the White House have not grown significantly since the Nobel Prize was announced last week.

But Seiler said he is hopeful he can persuade Democrats and independents to write in Gore, with a goal of winning 50,000 votes, setting up the winner of the popular vote in the 2002 presidential election to take on other Democrats in the primaries that follow.

"The message basically is New Hampshire is unique," Seiler said. "I think that there is a very strong undercurrent of support for Al Gore, and I think that will come out on primary day."

If there is a groundswell of support for Gore - who himself has said "I don't have plans" to run again for office - Mike Heslin, a Dartmouth College senior and the president of College Democrats of New Hampshire, said he has yet to see any evidence of it.

"There has not been a whole lot of chatter about it," said Heslin, who noted that many students have now committed themselves to other candidates.

Still, Seiler is looking to history as his inspiration.

He noted that in 1952, then-Gov. Sherman Adams put Gen. Dwight Eisenhower's name on the ballot as a write-in candidate in the New Hampshire Republican primary, even as Eisenhower was still in uniform as supreme allied commander of the newly formed NATO forces in Europe.

Eisenhower defeated U.S. Sen. Robert Taft, an Ohio Republican known as "Mr. Republican," and the "I Like Ike" campaign was on.

The write-in proposal to get Gore into the 2008 race is listed as "Plan B" on the Draft Gore website. Plan A involves having Gore agree to have his name put on the ballot, which must be done by Nov. 2.

Seiler said yesterday he hasn't "officially" heard from Gore or Gore's people about the Draft Gore efforts. Translation: Forget Plan A, it's time for Plan B.

As Seiler says on his website, "A New Hampshire voter who fills in the oval and writes in any individual or candidate does not require the permission of the candidate."

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