Vows to Keep Blunt Style in Weighing Election Bid : Schroeder to Test Waters in 49-State Trip

Rep. Patricia Schroeder (D-Colo.), a tart-tongued campaigner who coined the phrase “Teflon President” and jokes that President Reagan “thinks arms control means some kind of deodorant,” Wednesday vowed not to change her controversial, free-swinging style as she criss-crosses the country testing the waters for a Democratic presidential race.

Scoffing at critics who say her biting comments brand her as flippant and an eccentric, Schroeder said people “get tired of the same old flannel-mouth talk,” and she intends to continue to serve up “a Will Rogers-type directness which is really where I come from.”

“And if people aren’t ready for it,” she exclaimed, “then I am not going to go to school and learn how to be someone else. I am not an actress.”

Expects to Be in Debates

The 47-year-old eight-term congresswoman, interviewed during a breakfast session with reporters and editors of The Times Washington Bureau, said she expects to participate in several debates with the seven other Democrats eyeing the nomination before she makes a final decision in mid-September on whether to run. By the time of her announcement, she will have campaigned in 49 of the 50 states.

Her prospective candidacy has generated some enthusiasm within the party, especially among liberal and women’s groups, but she will face enormous financial and organizational problems if she decides to make the race. To run, she said, she needs by mid-September to have raised at least $1 million--and that would be a bare minimum to start a serious campaign. So far, she has raised about $125,000 and has pledges of about $375,000.

Schroeder said her fund-raising has been “really remarkable” considering she started her exploratory campaign only two months ago and her first mass mailing to solicit funds is not going out until this week. Her campaign’s “big high-roller fund-raisers,” she said, will not be held until next month because so many people are on vacation in August.

Meanwhile, former Democratic Party Chairman Charles T. Manatt told reporters that “her candidacy espouses progressivity and modern things that I think will be very much part of the agenda for the ’88 election.”

Manatt, co-chairman of the presidential campaign of former Colorado Sen. Gary Hart before Hart withdrew this spring, said that because of time and money restrictions, probably no more than one additional candidate will join the seven Democrats who already have announced or signaled their intentions to seek the nomination.

Eighth Candidate Seen

The most likely eighth candidate, he said, would be either Schroeder, Sen. Sam Nunn of Georgia or Gov. Richard F. Celeste of Ohio.

Schroeder, who was also a co-chairman of the Hart campaign, has been encouraged by two recently completed Gallup public opinion polls. One poll showed Hart would still be a 2-1 favorite over other Democratic contenders if he were still in the race and the other showed Americans increasingly indicate a willingness to vote for a qualified woman candidate.

The poll showing Hart still in the lead, Schroeder said, indicates “the race is really wide open and the people who should be depressed are the ones who’ve been out there for a couple of years raising money, spending money with all sorts of professional organizers on the ground and they’re just not getting out of the box.”

In the other poll, Gallup said the public’s growing willingness to say they would vote for a well-qualified woman, Jew or black for President is “one of the most dramatic political developments in the last three decades.”

In 1958, only 52% of those surveyed said they would vote for their party’s presidential nominee if she were a qualified woman. The new poll showed the figure has increased to 82%. For qualified black candidates, the comparable figures were 38% and 79%, and for Jewish candidates, 62% and 89%.

‘Burden Sharing’ Plan

Schroeder said that if she runs, a major proposal of her campaign, one that will distinguish her from other Democratic candidates, will be a “burden sharing” plan that would require U.S. allies to increase their defense expenditures, thereby reducing the U.S. defense burden.

Under the plan, Japan, Canada and the European allies all would be required to contribute the same share of their gross national product to defense that the United States contributes. Schroeder said said any countries that refuse to go along with the plan would face a “service charge” or import fee on goods exported to the United States.

Referring to the annual economic summits of the Western allies, Schroeder declared: “I’m so sick of our country going to things like the summit in Venice where our dear, beloved allies pound and hammer on us about the debt (the federal budget deficit), and the debt is really being driven by our protecting them. An ungrateful little bunch!”