Democrat Group Opens Drive to Cut GOP Gains

A splinter group of conservative and moderate Democrats barnstormed through Florida on Friday, kicking off a national drive aimed at curbing Republican gains among Democratic voters and strengthening their own influence in their party.

“We believe the Democratic Party has to be moved to the center,” Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), one of the founders of the Democratic Leadership Council, told a luncheon audience of business and professional people in Tampa. “And we believe it’s time that those of us who feel that way speak up for our beliefs.”

Efforts of the council, which was established last February, are being spurred by the current Republican drive to exploit President Reagan’s landslide victory last November by achieving a party realignment that would make the GOP the nation’s majority party. Republican leaders recently announced a $500,000 program aimed at converting 100,000 registered Democrats in four key states, including Florida.

Stress Principles

In brief talks to the Tampa luncheon, earlier in the day to state legislators in Tallahassee and to a student gathering at the University of Florida in Gainesville, Leadership Council members stressed the need for the party to adhere to such principles as fiscal responsibility and a strong defense to bolster the group’s appeal to middle-class voters. They said they would advocate more specific proposals probably early next year after they have made more excursions to various parts of the country.

“We’re here to listen and learn,” said Rep. Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.), chairman of the council. “The knowledge we need is not in Washington, it’s out in the country.”

The council was established in large part to give officeholders, mostly in the South and West, a policy forum apart from the regular party structure, which some see as a liability because it is perceived as overly influenced by traditional liberal ideology and interest-group pressures.

Few Women, Minority Members

But the council has been criticized because it has scarcely any women or minority group members. And that point was raised during the Florida trip. “It’s good to see all you fine looking gentlemen,” said state Rep. Helen Gordon Davis of Tampa, noting that all the members of the leadership group are white males. “But we’d like to see some women, Hispanics and blacks with you.”

In reply, Gephardt said he is sorry that the minority members of the council were unable to make the trip. A council staff member said there are two Latinos, three blacks and four women among the council’s nearly 80 members.

Another Florida lawmaker, Rep. Al Lawson, a black from Tallahassee, asked if council members are concerned that “as we shift to the middle, blacks are not left out.”

Cites Commitment

Rep. James R. Jones (D-Okla.), a council co-chairman, pledged that a “move to the middle” would not mean that the party has abandoned “its commitment to equal opportunity and civil rights.”

Underlying the interest in the council as an alternative to the regular party machinery is the fear among local officials that the impact of recent Democratic defeats at the presidential level would be felt even in state parties where Democrats have been relatively successful in recent years. The disastrous showing of Walter F. Mondale, the party’s 1984 standard-bearer, brought this threat home even in states, such as Florida, where the Democratic Party has long been dominant.

“I like Mondale as a person,” Florida House Democratic leader Jon Mills told a reporter. “But Mondale cost us five House seats last November.”