Du Pont Challenge to Farm Aid Gets Iowans’ Attention

For the better part of two months, Republican presidential candidate Pierre S. (Pete) du Pont IV, a tweedy heir to the chemical company fortune, has been crisscrossing Iowa trying to convince the state’s downtrodden farmers, 14,000 of whom have gone bankrupt, that agricultural subsidies are bad for them.

There is more than a touch of irony here, as a candidate born to greater wealth than most farmers bank in a lifetime urges them to repudiate the government aid that has kept many of them out of receivership.

But the applause he often receives, along with more than a few pledges of support, has convinced Du Pont that he is not on a fool’s errand.

“Right now, the idea is to get ‘em to listen to me. Later, I’ll get their vote,” said the 52-year-old Du Pont, who knows something about politics after winning three congressional terms from Delaware and two terms as governor from 1977 to 1985. He was elected governor the second time by a 71% majority.

Du Pont’s stand on farming--he would phase out federal subsidies in five years--along with a like-minded approach to welfare is part of a brash strategy to out-Reagan Ronald Reagan at a time when better known Republican candidates are looking for ways to soften the party’s message and broaden its appeal. (Last week, President Reagan himself called for a phase-out of farm subsidies but over 10 years and only if foreign governments follow suit.)

“Ours is not a campaign for the fainthearted. We are trying to go beyond the Reagan program. . . . If you’re satisfied with the status quo, then you and I don’t belong in the same room,” says Du Pont, who rejuvenated Delaware’s anemic economy by cutting taxes and spending and is convinced a similar formula can work on a national scale.

The most striking aspect of Du Pont’s campaign is his eagerness to debate his message with unbelievers. Taking his laissez faire gospel to the depressed Farm Belt, Du Pont hits town like an exuberant missionary bounding into the bush in search of his first heathen.

Du Pont truly is advocating a new way of life in a farm state where 75% of the farmers receive some sort of subsidy, and he is not always a hit. Men in overalls and women in sun dresses stare into the middle distance as he tells them that, once their subsidies are canceled, farmers will grow less corn, surpluses will disappear and prices will rise.

“Grow less corn!” an astonished woman exclaimed. “We were born and raised to be corn farmers.”

Clearing Out Barnyard

But Du Pont persists, believing that most farmers are businessmen at heart who agree in principle with his call to “get government out of the barnyard.”

If some of Du Pont’s ideas sound Draconian, there is nothing menacing about the man. The product of Ivy League schools--he has a bachelors degree from Princeton and a law degree from Harvard--Du Pont somehow mingles easily with the farmers, merchants and small town bankers he courts on his travels through rural Iowa and New Hampshire.

“How can someone named Du Pont who went to all those fancy schools understand the problems of ordinary people? That’s a good question,” Du Pont said to a group of Algona, Iowa, businessmen.

“Some people from wealthy families who go into politics feel guilty about their money. They become liberals and believe in spending their money and yours. I’m not that kind of person. I believe in creating opportunity.”

Du Pont is the great-great-great- grandson of the founder of the 184-year-old E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. He was born Pierre Samuel du Pont IV. But the nickname “Pete” has come to suit a fellow who lost his front teeth playing intramural hockey, flunked high school math, made a hash of one of his first jobs at the family business, enjoys a round of miniature golf in between campaign stops and chuckles merrily as an aide impersonates him at a staff picnic.

Devoted Young Staffers

To members of his campaign staff, a group of devoted young people, Du Pont is known as “the Duper,” as in “the Duper did good today” or “who’s going to tell the Duper he doesn’t look so good in Banlon golf shirts?” a reference to the girth that is beginning to swell around Du Pont’s otherwise trim six-foot frame.

Du Pont was the first Republican candidate to enter the 1988 race, and he was the first to spell out a platform, a series of arresting proposals designed to make him as well-known as the company that bears his name.

He would end welfare for all able-bodied people under 65. Those who could not find jobs would be put to work by the government for 90% of the minimum wage.

“What kind of jobs?” he asks rhetorically. “How about paying someone to ride a school bus to keep order? What about paying someone to clean the graffiti off New York City subway cars?”

He would require drug testing for schoolchildren and refuse them driver’s licenses if they tested positive.

He preaches monogamy as the best way to prevent AIDS.

“AIDS is not a civil rights issue. It’s a deadly disease,” he said. “If we all decided today to limit our sexual partners to one person, there wouldn’t be any more spread of AIDS.”

Cites Fidelity to Wife

The father of four grown children, Du Pont says he has never strayed from his wife, Elise, a lawyer and former assistant administrator at the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Well within the Reagan camp on defense issues, Du Pont is an advocate of the Strategic Defense Initiative, or “Star Wars,” anti-missile system and of aid to the Nicaraguan contras. But he says that he would not agree to a withdrawal of NATO missiles in Europe unless the Soviets agreed to a reduction of their conventional forces.

He says that the Social Security system will face an insupportable burden of aging baby boomers by the turn of the century, necessitating either higher payroll taxes or reduced benefits. His solution is for people to switch their Social Security contributions to IRAs. In return, they would receive tax credits along with smaller Social Security benefits.

Du Pont says he is evolving from a gadfly to a bona fide contender, and he has done well enough in four straw polls in Iowa to lend credence to his claim. He is one of seven Republican candidates lining up for the nation’s first presidential caucus, to be held in Iowa next Feb. 8.

Du Pont finished third in two of the straw polls and second in one. In the largest poll, taken at a GOP fund-raising event in Des Moines in June, Du Pont fell to 6th place but consoled himself with the fact that he finished in a virtual tie with Vice President George Bush.

Seeks High Finish in Iowa

Du Pont wants to finish third in Iowa, do even better in New Hampshire and head for the multi-state southern regional primary in March as his party’s conservative standard-bearer.

A lot of people do not think that he has much of a chance. He is still not widely known and, despite a tidy net worth he estimates at $5.5 million, Du Pont does not expect to be able to compete with the current front-runners in campaign fund-raising. He says that he has raised about $2.3 million.

Commentator Kevin Phillips, an analyst of conservative trends, praises Du Pont for his candor on the stump, but he does not see any signs yet of Du Pont’s candidacy taking off.

“His issue positions are an awfully good way to be taken seriously. At the same time, there is no indication, at this point, that people see him as a serious, plausible candidate,” Phillips said.

If the Du Pont campaign does catch fire, Phillips predicts that Du Pont “will come under a lot of pressure” to moderate his positions on agriculture, welfare and Social Security.

Mike Mahaffey, chairman of Iowa’s Republican Party, also has doubts about Du Pont’s campaign.

‘Somewhat Provocative’

“He’s being somewhat provocative . . . getting the debate started. But he’s going a bit against the grain, and I just sense some reservations, especially in rural areas,” Mahaffey said.

Du Pont is a relatively recent convert to conservatism. As a congressman in the early 1970s, he voted for higher gasoline taxes, for federal funding of abortions and against aid to anti-Communist rebels in Angola.

He still goes his own way on some issues. He opposes a constitutional amendment banning abortions. He thinks abortion is an issue that each state should be allowed to decide for itself. He favors tougher laws on acid rain. He recommends putting the Audubon Society in charge of national parks. He believes in foreign aid as a means of stimulating markets.

“I’m against both the military isolationism of the liberals and the economic isolationism of some conservatives,” he said.

As a speaker, he is intense without sounding combative. There is no dark rhetoric about evil empires or welfare queens. He argues that the poor are hurt more than they are helped by social programs that provide more benefits to people if they do not work than if they do.

“The welfare system is a jail, not a symbol of our compassion for people. . . . Subsidies cause poverty,” he says.

Calls Himself a Populist

On other occasions, Du Pont calls himself a populist and reminisces about starting a free breakfast program for ghetto children during the 1960s. In New Hampshire, he was uncomfortable with the argument of one Republican businessman that the family farmer is an anachronism not worth saving and that it is time for Republicans to “get back to the idea of the survival of the fittest.”

Indeed, there are moments when Du Pont’s genial nature seems at odds with the austerity he espouses, making it a little hard to believe that he would continue to shrink the social safety net after eight years of Reaganomics.

He insists that he would, up to a point.

“I’m not talking about taking it apart for Medicare or Medicaid, for elderly or disabled people. But I do think we have do it for able-bodied people. I think they have gotten enmeshed in the safety net.”

Du Pont’s convictions grow out of his success as governor of Delaware, where a 30% cut in personal income taxes along with a constitutional limit on spending by the Legislature led to eight surplus budgets, a dramatic rise in new businesses and a 20% increase in employment.

Du Pont is held in high esteem by many Democrats who were in state government while he was governor.

Seen as ‘Strong Leader’

“He was a strong leader who believed in balanced budgets and stuck to his guns as far as spending was concerned. He’d have to be singled out for his strength in saying ‘no’ to special interest groups,” said Delaware State Rep. Robert Gilligan, who led the House Democratic majority during the last two years Du Pont was in office.

Du Pont’s tenure began inauspiciously, however, with a failed effort to veto the first budget he was handed by the Legislature and with a near-disastrous public comment that the state was bankrupt.

“When Wall Street heard that, they pulled the plug on our bond market. It took eight years for it to recover,” said Richard Cordrey, Democratic president pro tem of the State Senate.

While Gilligan and Cordrey gave Du Pont praise for helping to turn the state’s economy around, they said he was the beneficiary of good timing, his election occurring just as the state began cycling out of a bad recession.

With only about 600,000 people, Delaware is a tiny laboratory for testing national policy, and there are those who think that Du Pont’s nostrums are a bit parochial.

“I don’t think these are the issues that are going to get you elected. You’ve got to have a bigger picture,” Bill Vernon, a Des Moines advertising executive, told Du Pont after listening to the candidate’s standard speech on farm subsidies, welfare, Social Security and drug testing at a gathering of Iowa businessmen.

“People want to hear what you would do about the deficit, about trade and how you would deal with (Soviet leader Mikhail S.) Gorbachev,” Vernon said.

Du Pont argues that he is prepared to speak on those issues but believes that the best way to make an early impression on voters is with a simple message.

Problem of Stature

Still, Vernon’s criticism underscores a problem of stature Du Pont is likely to have until and unless he does well in the primaries.

Another Republican candidate, former Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig Jr., brought home that problem in a recent Iowa speech. Surrounded by most of the other GOP candidates, including Du Pont, Haig concluded his remarks with a series of corny puns, poking fun at most of his rivals.

“Shake a leg for Haig. . . . Don’t be Bush wacked. . . . Remember Dole and Dole is only pineapple juice, while Haig and Haig is the real thing. . . .” By the time he was finished, leaving his audience groaning for mercy, Haig had mentioned all of the Republican candidates, except Du Pont.

The omission was not lost on Du Pont.

“What do you think that means?” he asked his aides in a tone of mock alarm.

“I don’t think it means anything at all,” he answered himself.