Politics 88 : Jokes About Being a Northern Liberal With Greek Name : Dukakis Faces Up to Problems in South

As the Dixie band belted out “I Saw the Light,” and matrons with bee-hive hairdos ladled out spicy pork barbecue, Rachel Gray stood atop a stack of hay bales and laid out the problem.

“We’re used to names like Smith or Jones,” she told the 800 people crowded into a cinder-block hall here Sunday. “Not names like Mike Dukakis. Well, we’re not just Southerners anymore. We’re all Americans.”

Then came Dukakis’ pitch.

“I had to run for President to find out my eyebrows had become a status symbol,” he said with a grin. “If you can’t remember my name, and can’t pronounce it, just remember--go for the guy with the bushy eyebrows.”

Accent a Serious Issue

The crowd laughed, but Dukakis’ joke dealt with a serious issue in his Super Tuesday campaign: how an ethnic-looking candidate with a Greek name, a Boston accent, a Jewish wife and a liberal reputation will fare in the conservative South.

Aides were concerned enough so that Marsha Hale, Dukakis’ Southern coordinator, conducted six focus groups last November in North Carolina, Texas, Alabama and Florida. Among the questions, she said, was whether Dukakis’ background would work against him.

“Most Southerners, even when I didn’t bring up the subject, said all Americans are immigrants,” she said. “They were almost insulted (by the idea) that Southerners would not vote for him because he’s from Greek immigrants.”

‘This Fella . He’s Solid’

That was the case for Jimmy Swing, a burly 74-year-old retired county worker who chewed tobacco and cheered at the Dukakis rally at the Davidson County fairgrounds here. “My great-granddaddy was German,” he said. “He had the same belief as this fella--work hard, nail it down, don’t expect something for nothing. Now, this fella, he’s like that. He’s solid.”

“A lot of folks think a Northern liberal can’t win in North Carolina,” said Voncile Moser, a High Point accountant who organized the rally. “Well, to me and my friends, we don’t think he’s a liberal at all . . . . Just because he’s from Massachusetts, you can’t call him a Kennedy liberal.”

“He talks common sense,” said Debbie Willhite, the campaign’s Southern political director. “That’s the most common language of Southerners.”

But the differences are never far below the surface as Dukakis advocates jobs for textile workers here, or health care for retirees in St. Petersburg, Fla., or day care for working women in Houston. Dukakis sometimes even accentuates the difference.

Jokes About Accent

“Hear how I pronounce vista?” Dukakis asked, after saying ‘vistah’ in his flat Boston accent to several dozen professional women in the 100 Women’s Club in Houston on Friday. “Once a New Englander, always a New Englander.”

That didn’t hurt him with Kim Turner, a public relations student from Humble, Tex. “He sounds like John Kennedy sometimes,” she said. “I like that.”

With Tennessee Sen. Albert Gore Jr. campaigning heavily as a Southern-born candidate, and the Rev. Jesse Jackson offering what he calls “grits and gravy talk” to Southern audiences, Dukakis takes an opposite tack: He has no “Southern strategy,” he says over and over, just an “American strategy.”

Not Voting for ZIP Code

“The people of Georgia and North Carolina and Texas and Florida aren’t voting for a ZIP code,” he told an overflow crowd of 3,500 at the Jefferson-Jackson fund-raising dinner in Atlanta on Saturday. “North and South, East and West, we all share the same dreams and aspirations.”

Not everyone agrees.

“I think he has a lot of good ideas, but I don’t think he appreciates the fact that the South is a very different part of the country,” said Claudine Pease, 19, a geology student who heard Dukakis speak at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin on Friday. “The South fought a war to be a separate country. So, when he sloughs off the South by saying we’re all one country, that doesn’t go over very well.”

Dukakis knows Texas is different. He has begun airing TV and radio ads on Spanish language networks in South Texas to woo Latino voters. In the 30-second TV ads, Dukakis explains his achievements and goals in fluent Spanish.

Also last week, his campaign began running 30-second and 60-second versions of a biographical TV spot first broadcast in Iowa. The ads so far are airing in Miami, Tampa, St. Petersburg and Palm Beach in Florida; San Antonio, Corpus Christi, Beaumont and McAllen in Texas; and Baltimore, Md.

Leslie Dach, campaign communications director, said Monday that the campaign will begin to air two new ads tonight and Wednesday in the same markets. He would not describe them other than to say they focused on Dukakis’ “economic message.”

Buying More Air Time

Dach said the campaign would “expand the (media) buy very heavily” starting Wednesday, or a week before the March 8 vote. “Our TV will grow geometrically,” he said. “A critical number of voters make up their minds in the last few days. So that’s when we’ll concentrate our buys.”

Although final plans have not been made, Dach said the campaign would spend “substantially more” than rival candidates Gore and Missouri Rep. Richard A. Gephardt. Another aide estimated the campaign would purchase about $1.5-million worth of broadcast time.

Dukakis remains the richest of the Democratic candidates. He has raised about $600,000 in the last week, aides said, adding to a war chest estimated at about $4 million after his New Hampshire victory two weeks ago.

Focuses on Texas, Florida

So far, Dukakis has focused most of his Super Tuesday campaigning in Texas and Florida, the two states with the largest number of delegates. His schedule this week will add stops in Baltimore, Washington state and Arkansas. He will also visit Denver, Colo., for a fund-raiser.