VOTERS’ CHANCE TO ASK QUESTIONS : KCRW LINKS LISTENERS TO CANDIDATES

The 1988 presidential campaign trail will run through the little basement studios of KCRW-FM (89.9) in Santa Monica beginning today as the station inaugurates “Running for President,” a series of talks with the candidates that will feature a half-hour of direct listener questioning of each aspiring President.

“We wanted to give our audience access to the candidates,” says Ruth Hirschman, KCRW’s general manager and host of the program. “Politics have taken such a confusing turn that it is difficult to assess anything. The only consensus in Washington these days is one that says stay tuned. And that goes for the election as well, which makes something like a call-in show with our audience so interesting.”

Hirschman and her co-host, Ben Cate, a veteran journalist with Time magazine, plan to interview each candidate for the first half hour of the show and then will open the phone lines for questions from listeners to the noncommercial station, which is run by Santa Monica Community College.

“We both have a real low tolerance for Pablum and our audience has an even lower tolerance for it,” Hirschman says. “The candidates probably won’t be willing to volunteer new or unpopular opinions, but we’re going to press for them.”

Sen. Paul Simon (D-Ill.) will be the first to face their questions today at 2 p.m.

(KCRW is not the only radio station in Los Angeles to capture part of a presidential candidate’s campaign day. KABC-AM’s (790) Michael Jackson would not let the candidates slip through town without booking them on his morning talk show, and Simon is scheduled to stop by to talk to Jackson for half an hour at 10:30 a.m. today.)

Hirschman says that KCRW also has received commitments from eight other declared candidates but has not yet heard back from Vice President George Bush, former evangelist Pat Robertson and Gov. Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts. No specific interview dates have been set.

“They all know they have to do the $1,000-a-plate fund raisers,” Hirschman says. “But the interesting thing is that booking a little community-college radio station evokes Harry Truman and his whistle stop campaign.”

In a campaign-era dominated by staged media events and an endless series of inconclusive television debates, she believes that appearing on a talk show at a public radio station will afford Simon and fellow candidates Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sen. Robert Dole (R-Kan.), former Secretary of State Alexander Haig, Rep. Richard Gephardt (D-Mo.), former Democratic Gov. Bruce Babbitt of Arizona, Sen. Albert Gore (D-Tenn.), former Republican Gov. Pierre du Pont IV of Delaware and Rep. Jack Kemp (R-N.Y.) a chance to make good on their boasts that they are responsive to the American people. It also subjects them to the challenge of defending themselves on live radio against some potentially combative voters.

Hirschman says that since the station aired the Iran- contra hearings and the Bork hearings, more conservatives have been listening and calling in to her regular talk show on national and international affairs. These people, Hirschman reports, have joined the traditionally more liberal-minded public-radio audience in enlivening KCRW’s daily political debates.

“We have a politically divisive audience about defense, about Central America, about abortion and about Bork,” Hirschman says. “It will be interesting to see how the candidates meet this challenge. For our audience, I think this will really separate the men from the boys.”