Campaign to Lobby for Reagan on Iran : Will Attempt to Rally Public Support in Media Appearances, Ads

Backers of President Reagan launched a new nationwide grass-roots lobbying effort Friday to rally public support for the embattled chief executive on Iran and Nicaragua.

The media campaign, in 360 congressional districts coast-to-coast, will include letters to the editors of newspapers and magazines, talk show appearances by the President’s local supporters and, in all probability, paid television commercials.

The campaign will stress that Administration approval of arms sales to Iran should be viewed in a larger context--that President Reagan acted to try to keep Iran out of the Soviet orbit when the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini passes from power, and that he acted to protect a major source of oil for Europe and Japan. The campaign will also emphasize that aid to the Nicaraguan rebels must continue.

‘At a Dead Standstill’

“Lost in all the politics, we believe there are matters of substance and policy, and if this continues--as long as this uproar continues--we are at a dead standstill as a nation,” said Jack P. Stevens, executive director of Citizens for America, a grass-roots lobbying effort founded in 1983 to rally public support for Reagan’s programs.

“The very vital matters of the Reagan agenda--immediate deployment of a Strategic Defense Initiative, tax reform, the Reagan doctrine supporting people seeking liberation from communism, the balanced budget--will be ignored as long as we are fixated on this problem.”

In a phone interview from Citizens for America’s Washington headquarters, Stevens said a “call for action” went out Friday to the group’s paid regional directors and 5,000 volunteers across the country.

“We maintain a very close relationship with the White House to know what matters are important at any certain time,” he said, “to help lobby Congress, to know which members of Congress need to be pressured and educated. What makes us different, rather than have someone with an expense account visiting congressmen, taking them out to lunch, we apply pressure in the districts, where it has a lot more impact, where it shows up on the local news that night, where the congressman’s district staff sees it.”

The call for action--the second issued by the organization this month on the Iran arms sales--asks Reagan’s supporters to argue that unpopular actions were designed to stave off more serious future difficulties for the United States.

‘We Have to Provide Arms’

“There are calls that this is the last dime the freedom fighters get. It would be astounding if we punish our country because someone has violated the law,” Stevens said. “It is our strong belief we have to provide arms to the democratic resistance in Nicaragua. What if, in 1990, there is a flow of Soviet Bloc arms, and revolutions in Costa Rica and El Salvador, there is intelligence information of missile sites and members of Congress on both sides of the aisle are thinking of U.S. troops in Nicaragua?”

” . . . People will ask what was Ronald Reagan doing? Was he sitting on his laurels, watching opinion polls, avoiding being an activist President? He would be condemned by historians. This is a President who intends to find his niche in history, who worried about policy, national security, long-term consequences.”

Citizens for America probably will produce paid television commercials with these themes, Stevens said. “It has to be done fairly soon, immediately, the sooner the better.”

In the past, the group has sponsored commercials supporting President Reagan’s positions on tax revision and urban enterprise zones.

Citizens for America was founded as a counterweight to liberal lobbying groups by Jacquelin Hume, a San Francisco food products entrepreneur and a member of the President’s “kitchen Cabinet” of close friends and longtime advisers.