Power Returning to Manhattan; Military Delivering Fuel
PIERS MORGAN, HOST: Good evening. Breaking news tonight in New York, where after days without power from hurricane Sandy, the lights are beginning to slowly go back on in Lower Manhattan and beyond. It is slow, but it is happening. Mayor Michael Bloomberg says most of the power in Manhattan should return by midnight tonight, although some people will be left without it for another week. Sandy is gone, but misery continues as so many devastated. Today, the death toll climbed to 97 people. Staten Island neighborhoods swept away. Today, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano toured the area, vowing to do everything she could to help. Plus tonight, after insisting this Sunday's New York City marathon would go on, Mayor Bloomberg has now canceled the race. Many were outraged the city would take valuable efforts away from the Sandy recovery efforts for the marathon. Tonight, city hall and race officials have called it off. Meanwhile, look at this -- cars lined up for miles to get gas. Drivers in some cases are waiting 20 hours as the supply dwindles, fighting with each other. There's one report that a guy pulled a gun at one gas station. And tonight, the military is delivering fuel to the disaster zone, sending 24 million gallons of extra gas, a welcome sign. The Obama administration is hiring trucks to bring the gas to staging areas. All this is unfolding just four days before the general election. President Obama and Governor Romney fighting it out for every last vote, especially in the key state of Ohio. And today, the latest CNN poll shows Obama with a very slight edge there, but there's everything to play for. Today, the last jobs report before Election Day was released. Unemployment ticking up to 7.9 percent, but at the same time, 171,000 jobs were created. No surprise, both candidates reacted differently to the news.</s>BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Today, our businesses have created nearly 5.5 million new jobs. This morning we learned that companies hired more workers in October than at any time in the last eight months.</s>MITT ROMNEY (R), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: He said he was going to lower the unemployment rate down to 5.2 percent right now. Today, we learned that it's actually 7.9 percent and that's 9 million jobs short of what he promised. Unemployment is higher today than when Barack Obama took office.</s>MORGAN: Mitt Romney earlier today. You're looking at live pictures now from Westchester in Ohio, where Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, has given a blistering speech attacking Barack Obama. In a few minutes, he will be on this show live and exclusive to tell me why he feels so strongly why the president should leave the office. Let's start with these long lines for gas. Susan Candiotti is at one gas station in New Jersey. Susan, I have been following your travails for most of the day. You have been joining endless lines for gas in your car, most of the time coming up against a blank. Where are you now? And how does it all end?</s>SUSAN CANDIOTTI, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, it all ended with us not getting any gas. It looks like a ghost town here. You can see they were open for a good nine hours. They had the supply but those lines just sucked it all up. Too many customers and eventually they had to shut down tonight. So a lot of people were turned back and yes, Piers, we went to two different places, spent the whole afternoon in two different lines, and came up dry. That's happening to a lot of people. Some are luckier than others. But I got to tell you, it's been very impressive at least here in parts of New Jersey where I was, to see how many people were helping each other, sometimes pushing cars to get to the fuel pump, and other people being as calm as they possibly could and saying, "Look, we know that it's a bad situation, we know that they're trying to do the best they can, and we just have to go with the flow here and come back and try again tomorrow." But a lot of people were hitting up 15, 16, 20 stations and still not finding anything.</s>MORGAN: Nate Silver, "The New York Times" pollster of pollsters, tweeted just now that his cab driver just told him he waited 20 hours for gas, which is a familiar kind of story I think for a lot of cab drivers now. What is the real problem? Lots of misconceptions I think that there is a lack of gas, but actually, that's not the real problem, isn't it? It's more to do with no power means they can't pump the gas.</s>CANDIOTTI: You're right. It's all those things rolled up into one. You've got a lot of different things at play here. First of all, some gas stations actually have the gas in their tanks below ground and would love to pump it but as you said, they don't have the power to do it. Other places can't get it in fast enough, even though the fuel supplies are starting to flow more rapidly, because it's taking so long to fill up the tanks. They only have so many terminals to get it. And that's why there is more hope tonight that with this announcement that Obama, President Obama has asked the Defense Department to free up some extra fuel, you mentioned it already, upwards of 24 million gallons to get more of it out here and transported more easily so that it can get out faster to the gas stations that do have power.</s>MORGAN: Yes. It's a hell of a struggle. Susan, thank you very much indeed. Joining me now from Columbus, Ohio, is General Wesley Clark, an Obama supporter, former NATO supreme allied commander. General, welcome back.</s>GEN. WESLEY CLARK, FORMER NATO SUPRMEEBAMA SUPPORTER: Thank you, Piers.</s>MORGAN: All the action now is heading to Ohio. Almost everyone who is anyone is down there, including your good self. The polls are very, very tight, showing very marginal lead for the president in most of the ones I've seen but with the margin of difference, you could almost say it's a tie. How are you seeing it down there on the ground?</s>CLARK: Well, there's a lot of emotion, there's just thousands of volunteers out here. There's a ground game. We feel very good about the ground game, by the way. Our volunteers are charged up. We've been working this for three and a half years. We knew it would come down to this. We were prepared for it. And we've fought to keep the polls open and make the ground game possible.</s>MORGAN: I read yesterday, I think again it was Nate Silver who said that if Romney was to lose Ohio, he would have just a 3 percent chance of winning the election. Conversely, if Barack Obama lost Ohio, he would only have an 8 percent chance of victory. That shows you just how incredibly important Ohio may turn out to be.</s>CLARK: Well, it's an important -- it's critical. It's a very diverse state. But you know, Barack Obama's very firm stand in saving the American automobile industry has paid important dividends in Ohio. This morning I was in Youngstown. In Youngstown, we produced the Chevy Cruze. That's a G.M. product that is the direct result of the president's intervention to bail out the automobile industry.</s>MORGAN: And as a former commander yourself, how do you think the president's done this week in terms of his role as commander-in-chief in what was really a national crisis?</s>CLARK: I think he's done extremely well in terms of his sympathy and empathy for the groups, his visit. I think he was smart not to go into New York City, where it's too congested, too many problems. I think he's also done well in terms of showing the power of the office by just the latest move of having the military assist in deliveries of fuel. But I think it also shows up the hollowness of Governor Romney, his flip-flopping. For example, on the issue of FEMA, he was suggesting months ago that maybe you don't need a Federal Emergency Management Agency, maybe you can just let each state fend for itself. Now, imagine where we would be if someone had actually taken that advice and killed FEMA. You'd have New York, New Jersey, each fighting with each other for scarce resources, for fuel, for power, for electric line repair, competing against each other to bring in assistance from other states instead of having someone to coordinate it and push it.</s>MORGAN: We obviously saw the extraordinary scenes this week in many ways of Governor Christie in New Jersey, sort of metaphorically putting his arm around the president, telling him what a great president he was. Last thing you would have expected say two weeks ago. What did you make of that?</s>CLARK: I thought it was a fair appraisal. Look, Governor Christie has got and New Jersey has a real problem. Jersey Shore devastated, plus, all the electric outages and problems throughout a large part of the state. Of course, Governor Christie needs help. And this is what happens when governors need help, they come to Washington. And Americans expect Washington to help. There is a role for the commander-in-chief, for the president of the United States, when disaster strikes at home. And that's what Americans expect of their leader.</s>MORGAN: Were you pleased that the marathon was canceled?</s>CLARK: Yes. I think it was a smart move. I do. It's been -- New Yorkers have been really terrific about this. You know, people downtown in Manhattan have been four days without light or power. The streets are dark. It's like Sarajevo during the siege in the Balkans and the thought of more people coming in on top of the people that are already there and the people in and out of hotels, trying to find places to get showers and restaurants closed, and basically all of Manhattan's population was jammed north of 40th Street. So it only makes sense given the uncertainties of this and the pressure on services in Manhattan and the discomfiture of people there don't do the marathon.</s>MORGAN: General Wesley Clark, thank you very much indeed.</s>CLARK: Thank you.</s>MORGAN: Coming up, Rudy Giuliani joining me from Ohio. What happens when you cancel the marathon?