Move Seen as Cutting Expected Losses : Gore Drastically Reduces Staff in Iowa

Tennessee Sen. Albert Gore Jr. is drastically reducing his presidential campaign staff in Iowa as part of an effort to cut his anticipated losses in that key state and marshal his resources to appeal to conservative voters in other battlegrounds for the Democratic presidential nomination.

“There is no point in wasting resources to play a game that’s not suited to a national candidacy,” Gore’s press secretary, Arlie Schardt, said Friday in announcing the cutback to five from 21.

Schardt said that Gore was disturbed at the “litmus tests” he contends candidates must pass to succeed in Iowa, which picks its delegates in precinct caucuses that are dominated, critics say, by party activists who are more liberal than the general electorate.

Criticizes Process

The reduction was foreshadowed by Gore’s criticism of the Iowa process at last week’s Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner in Des Moines. “There is something wrong with a nominating process that gives one state the loudest voice and then produces candidates who cannot even carry that state” in the November election, Gore declared. (The Republicans have won the state in every presidential election since 1968.)

Schardt said some of the staffers will be reassigned to other states, including New Hampshire, which holds the nation’s first presidential primary eight days after Iowa’s caucuses start the Democratic delegate selection process next Feb. 8.

Asked which litmus tests Gore objected to, Schardt mentioned the recent debate on national defense policy in Des Moines sponsored by Star-Pac, a group committed to arms control. At that debate, Schardt said, Gore “told them what they didn’t want to hear” by taking a more hawkish stand than the five other Democratic presidential contenders.

Foes See Little Chance

Aides to Gore’s competitors for the nomination say that the senator had little chance to do well in the state because he has spent relatively little time there--only six days, according to Schardt.

And they contend that by criticizing litmus tests and special interests in liberal Iowa, Gore is trying to strengthen his position in New Hampshire and especially in the Southern states, which will pick about one-third of the convention delegates in the March 8 Super Tuesday regional primary.

Paul Risley, Gore’s press secretary in Iowa, said most of the staffers will be reassigned to other states. Gore’s Iowa state director Reid Wilson plans to remain with the Gore campaign, but he will be reassigned out of Iowa because he is “an organizational person,” Risley said.

Risley said that the Gore Iowa campagn is shifting to “a message campaign from an organization campaign.”

“A message campaign is a cheaper way to do it. We’ll be a trimmed down lean mean fighting machine,” he said.

The new state director will be Michael Veit, who has been serving as Gore’s Cedar Rapids coordinator.

Staff writer Maura Dolan contributed to this story from Des Moines.