Bush Backers Claim Victory in Michigan

Backers of Vice President George Bush claimed victory Wednesday in the first electoral test of the 1988 presidential campaign, and still-incomplete returns indicated that Bush’s substantial investment in Tuesday’s Republican primary had been justified.

With returns in from about 25% of the elections for precinct delegates, who will ultimately help shape Michigan’s delegation to the Republican National Convention, Bush’s forces contended that more than 53% of those chosen are loyal to the vice president.

“We unequivocally believe this is an across-the-board victory for the vice president by any criteria,” said Lee Atwater, chairman of the Fund for America’s Future, which served in effect as Bush’s campaign organization in Michigan.

Neither Bush nor either of his two competitors in this unprecedentedly early start to presidential campaigning--television evangelist Pat Robertson and New York Rep. Jack Kemp--has officially declared his candidacy. But organizers for all three professed to be encouraged by what they saw of the returns, which probably will not be final for several days.

The confusion and conflicting claims that have marked this campaign from its outset continued Tuesday. Marlene Elwell, state coordinator for the Freedom Council, Robertson’s campaign organization, said candidates recruited by the council had won 47% of the slots in the 23% of the delegate elections that it had counted so far.

Robertson, at a news conference in Des Moines, said that, if his initial figures hold, he will have won in 10 of Michigan’s 18 congressional districts, making the primary “an extraordinary victory” for him.

Bush’s supporters used expensive mass mailings that included a refinement in political technology--a “write-in sticker” bearing the name of a Bush backer seeking a write-in slot as precinct delegate, which voters could stick on their ballots instead of having to write in the name.

Strategists for Kemp predicted that Kemp would eventually have considerable strength in the Michigan delegation. They claimed, but could not prove, to have gained “a clear second-place finish” in Tuesday’s vote, which would put Robertson in third.

Election Sample

There was a variety of evidence suggesting that Robertson had lost some momentum after being vaulted into national political prominence by his ability this spring to recruit delegate candidates in Michigan. An NBC sample of 100 precinct delegate elections showed Kemp getting 11% of the delegates to only 8% for Robertson, whereas 26% were for Bush.

Beyond that, a variety of data from polls and surveys in the state suggested a negative reaction to Robertson. Elwell blamed this attitude in part on the tactics of Robertson’s opponents.

Elwell cited a flyer, which she said had been passed around by Bush delegates at one polling place Tuesday, which said: “Help keep religion out of politics,” and warned: “Fundamentalist evangelical supporters of Rev. Pat Robertson are trying to take over the Michigan Republican Party.”

Bush’s strategist disclaimed any connection with the flyer. But pollster Robert Teeter, a Bush adviser, said one reason Robertson had “lost some steam” in Michigan is that “when you try to inject religion as a reason for voting for someone, there are some people in Michigan who react negatively.”

Gary Jarmin, a political consultant to the Christian Voice, a conservative religious lobbying group, and a Kemp supporter, said that “the question is whether Robertson can appeal to a broad spectrum of the electorate. And the first test shows that he has a long way to go.”

Bush Courts Vote

Meanwhile, Bush has been quietly competing for the conservative Christians who make up the evangelist’s political base.

“Bush has respectfully and carefully built relationships with evangelists in the last few months,” said Doug Wead, a writer and ordained minister in the Assemblies of God church who serves as religious liaison to the Fund for America’s Future, Bush’s political action committee.

Since June, Wead said, Bush has appeared at a nationally televised Billy Graham crusade, was the subject of a cover article in the Christian Herald, a widely read evangelical publication, addressed the Southern Baptist Convention in Atlanta and was host at a reception in the vice president’s official residence for evangelical leaders.

In recent weeks, religious television stations across the South have been playing a 30-minute videotape made by Bush, an Episcopalian, in which he discusses his religious faith.

Wead pointed out that Bush started his efforts to strengthen ties with the evangelical community long before his encounter with Robertson in Michigan. And last year Bush was endorsed as a presidential candidate by conservative religious leader and Moral Majority founder Jerry Falwell.