Reagan Campaigns in Midwest for Black, Woman Candidates : President Says GOP Is ‘Party of Opportunity’

President Reagan, campaigning for two Midwestern Republicans who hope to be elected the nation’s first black governor and his party’s first woman governor, said today that the GOP is “the party of progress and opportunity,” not the Democrats.

Campaigning for Kay Orr, the Republican candidate for governor of Nebraska, and earlier in the day for Michigan gubernatorial candidate William Lucas, Reagan said that in the six years of his Administration new opportunities have opened for women and blacks.

“We are showing as never before that we are truly the land of opportunity,” Reagan said at a Detroit fund-raiser for Lucas. “The number of women in elected offices has risen dramatically, now over 18,000 nationwide. In just six years, the number of elected black officials has risen from under 5,000 to almost 6,500.”

Venturing into the hard-hit Farm Belt, Reagan acknowledged that farmers are facing economic difficulty but contended that his Administration has put more money into farm support than previous Presidents. “Yes, times are still hard for many Nebraska farmers, but they’ve begun to get better,” he said.

Errs on Women in House

In listing women’s political gains, Reagan said there are more Republican women in the U.S. House than Democrats. However, there are 12 Democratic women and 11 GOP women in the 435-member House. Reagan also noted that the only two women in the Senate are Republicans and that the GOP has five women nominees for governor across the country.

And referring to himself, Reagan said, “It was a certain Republican President who nominated Sandra Day O’Connor to be the first woman on the Supreme Court in history.’

Although Reagan has no women among his senior advisers and only one in his Cabinet, Reagan pointed to the women candidates and the nomination of Lucas as signals of openness in his party.

“Nothing could more powerfully demonstrate that in 1986, it’s not the Democrats but the GOP that’s become the party of progress and opportunity,” he said.

Trailing Democrat

Reagan addressed two fund-raising events for Lucas, a former Democrat who switched to the GOP last year. The Wayne County executive hopes to become the nation’s first black governor, but he trails considerably in polls behind Democratic Gov. James J. Blanchard.

In Omaha, he campaigned for another potentially ground-breaking candidate. Orr, the state treasurer, is trying to become the first elected GOP woman governor in a race that is certain to produce a woman chief executive. Her Democratic opponent is Helen Boosalis.

In Detroit, Reagan referred to “that business I used to be in”--the movies--in crediting women for their growing role in politics.

“It’s not like the days of Ginger Rogers,’ he said. “Her male counterpart got the lion’s share of publicity, but Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did and did it with high heels on and did it backwards.”