The main challenger to Bush was Senator John McCain, who appealed to moderate Republicans, independents and the press due to his reformist policies.

Bush won the majority of the primaries and after the March 2000 Super Tuesday contests he was well ahead in delegates of both McCain and Alan Keyes.

[15] By the time that Bush had officially entered the primary race on June 12, 1999[16] eight other candidates, Bob Smith, John Kasich, Pat Buchanan, Lamar Alexander, Dan Quayle, Elizabeth Dole, Steve Forbes and Gary Bauer, had already entered with John McCain and Alan Keyes coming months later.

[21] However, by mid-July Bush's campaign fundraising and massive leads in the polls had already forced out two of his opponents, Bob Smith and John Kasich.

[16] Seventeen days later Bush won an Iowa straw poll and held a press conference in Austin, Texas where the question of his drug use was raised, causing him to become agitated.

[33] After Larry Gene Ashbrook committed a church shooting at Fort Worth, Texas Bush cut his campaign activities to return to Texas[34] where he stated that "there seems to be a wave of evil passing through America now, and we as a society can pass laws and hold people accountable for the decisions they make, but our hopes and prayers have got to be that there is more love in society,"[35] and six days later Bush announced a gun crimes initiative.

[54] After this victory many pundits predicted that Bush would easily take the nomination as he had received 40% of the vote in Iowa to McCain's, his main opponent, 5%.

[63] On the eighth Bush won the Delaware primary with 50.73%, he hoped that this victory could be used to make him surge in the South Carolina polls which was to happen in eleven days.

[65] Shortly before the primary a debate was held where both Bush and McCain attacked each other for negative campaigning, giving a small victory to minor candidate Alan Keyes.

[69] On the 22nd McCain defeated Bush in both his home state of Arizona and Michigan with over 50%, allowing him to continue his campaign and gave him confidence while going into the March 7 primaries.

[75][76] On Super Tuesday Bush won every primary and caucus except in Vermont, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts and following his victory stated "I understand politics, this campaign hasn't been any rougher than others I have seen.

[86] Following his primary victories Bush campaigned in California, which despite polling showing that it would go to Gore, spending multiple days in Sacramento alone and stating that "We now have, in the case of the independents and crossovers, 1.2 million voters who voted for our combined Republican presidential candidates that are in play – many of which have not been in the past".

[89] At the same time Gore was campaigning in Florida, but refused to answer any questions relating to Elián González and instead chose to focus on Social Security reform.

[107] Soon after Ford's statement the Democratic National Committee announced a 10-week, $25 million television campaign focused on healthcare to improve Gore's standing in polling.

[110] A poll conducted from June 14 to the 15th of 1,218 adult Americans, which included 589 likely voters, showed that the public was more likely to view Bush as a strong and decisive leader and that 55 percent would be proud to have him as president opposed to 46 who said the same about Gore.

[113] Near the end of June, Ross Perot, the man whose 1992 campaign had been attacked for spoiling the election in favor of his father's opponent Bill Clinton, announced that he would not run for president under the Reform Party and asked the nominating committee to put the term no endorsement in lieu of his name.

[114] On the Fourth of July Bush was present for a parade attended by 2,000 people in Belton, Texas and Bush continued meeting with Cheney to discuss possible running mates and publicly mentioned Frank Keating, Tom Ridge, John Engler, Connie Mack III, John Kasich, and Christine Todd Whitman.

[117] Later in July speculation over Bush's running mate choice revolved around Dick Cheney, former Wyoming Representative and Secretary of Defense, and John Danforth, former Senator from Missouri, but both had stated in the past that they were not interested in the vice presidency.

[118][119] On July 25 Bush officially announced that Cheney would be his running mate with him changing his state of residence from Texas to Wyoming to be constitutionally qualified.

[124][125] On August 2 Cheney was approved by acclamation and in his acceptance speech stated that the Clinton administration was marked by "little purpose" and proclaiming that Texas Gov.

[137] After giving a speech in one of the few Republican friendly areas in Chicago controversy arouse due to an open microphone catching Bush and Cheney using swear words to describe Adam Clymer, a New York Times reporter who wrote articles he felt were unfair to him.

The New York Times initially was going to ignore the story, but changed its decision after further statements made from the Bush campaign accusing Clymer of bias.

[158][159][160][161] Early in October polling in California showed Gore leading Bush by a large margin of 14%, but by November that margin had decreased to 7% and with other national polls showing neither candidate with 50% leading to speculation that neither candidate would achieve a majority in the popular vote and would have a close electoral college vote.

Due to the closeness of the results in multiple states a vast majority of Americans were prepared to accept Bush or Gore as president according to a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll.

[169] At the Supreme Court a new question was brought up over whether the Florida Legislature had the power to appoint electors, but Bush's lawyers urged the high court to hold that "the Constitution specifically assigns the power to determine the manner of appointing presidential electors to the state legislature," as opposed to the "state" in general.

[171] However, Florida Senate President John McKay announced he would not call a special session to deal with the selection of electors despite other legislators expressed confidence that he would.

[174][175][176] The Democratic party launched a campaign to discredit the special legislation session as Florida's legislative rules do not permit the minority party to filibuster to prevent a vote during a special session and statements made by John Ahmann, one of the engineers for ballot devices, made in support of Bush were used in attacks as he acknowledged that a re-inspection or recount of ballots may be required in cases of extremely close elections.

[181] Events in Florida turned against Bush as a Federal Appeals Court ruled that a manual recount did not cause any harm to him or his supporters and a legislative special session was announced to appoint electors.

The decision was extremely controversial due to its partisan split and the majority's unusual instruction that its judgment in Bush v. Gore should not set precedent but should be "limited to the present circumstances".

National Environmental Strategies (NES), the oil and gas lobbying firm which Griles worked for, was paying him $284,000 a year as part of a $1.1 million payout for his client base.