Presidential Rivals Assail GOP Survey Stressing Bush Potential

Vice President George Bush’s potential rivals for the 1988 Republican presidential nomination were crying “foul” today over a poll commissioned by the Republican National Committee that included questions about Bush’s potential as a candidate.

“Someone ought to be fired,” said former Senate Majority Leader Howard H. Baker Jr. of Tennessee.

“I didn’t know the RNC had become a Bush headquarters,” said Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas, the current Senate majority leader.

Terry Wade, a spokesman for the RNC, said the poll was commissioned last September as “a general public attitude survey.” He said the controversy resulted from a cover letter mistakenly attached to the survey which described it as an examination “of voter support for Vice President George Bush in both the primary and general elections for President in 1988.”

The survey was conducted by Robert Teeter of Market Opinion Research and was to test voter opinion of many public figures being mentioned as potential presidential candidates.

However, RNC officials then agreed to include additional questions about Bush at the request of advisers to the vice president.

Wade said the GOP committee had not yet been billed for the $75,000 survey, but that the Bush political action committee probably would be expected to pay about a third of that.

Aides to Dole and Baker contended that regardless of who paid for the poll, it also would violate federal election laws.