Governor’s Drive Enters New Phase : Upbeat Dukakis Eager for a Bush Match-Up

Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis, his campaign now well in the lead for the Democratic presidential nomination, is increasingly focusing on a fall match-up against Vice President George Bush.

Appearing upbeat and sounding confident during an interview and in several campaign stops in Ohio and Pennsylvania Friday, Dukakis indicated that he is spoiling to go one-on-one with Bush in the national election.

“I’m looking forward to the debates,” Dukakis said in an interview aboard his campaign plane.

“I don’t see intensity out there for Bush,” Dukakis added. When asked about a similar problem in his own ever-cautious campaign, he said he believes that he can put together a “real coalition” of voters attracted by his message of economic opportunity and competence in government.

“More than the old Democratic coalition,” he said. “With lots of independents and Republicans. People who care about health care, housing, education. The kinds of things I’ve been talking about.”

Nomination Not ‘Inevitable’

Dukakis insisted his nomination is not “inevitable,” and indeed, he has barely half the 2,081 delegates needed to win his party’s nomination. He still faces rival Jesse Jackson in primaries in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Oregon, New Jersey and California.

But Dukakis’ comments clearly signaled that his year-old presidential campaign has entered a new phase since he won the New York primary on Tuesday, and took the lead in the long-muddled Democratic race.

“Everybody’s knocking on wood,” said Thomas Herman, the campaign’s deputy issues director. Aides said they are suddenly deluged with offers of help and support from longtime Democratic activists and advisers. “My phone was ringing off the hook yesterday,” said Madeleine Albright, a Georgetown University professor who is Dukakis’ senior foreign policy adviser.

In Los Angeles, Dukakis was endorsed Friday by former California Gov. Edmund G. (Pat) Brown, who called Dukakis “a responsible liberal.”

Brown, who turned 83 on Thursday, made his endorsement along with state Senate Majority Leader Barry Keene (D-Vallejo) and Los Angeles County Supervisor Ed Edelman.

Named Honorary Chairman

Brown has been named honorary chairman of the Dukakis California primary campaign, where 314 delegates are at stake. The election is June 7.

At campaign headquarters in Boston, Dukakis aides said they were stepping up plans for the Atlanta convention in July, including assigning staff members to arrange liaisons to the platform, rules and credentials committees.

“There’s a lot of people out there who’ve done this before,” said campaign spokesman Mark Gearan. “It’s a good time to get them aboard.”

With four days until the Pennsylvania primary, Dukakis touted his state’s strict plant-closing legislation and new guaranteed health insurance law during campaign stops at a Ford auto plant in Maumee, Ohio, at Maryhurst College near Erie, Pa., and outside a ghostly, shutdown steel complex in this long-depressed “rust belt” town.

Sounding a theme he intends to use against Bush, Dukakis accused the vice president of failing to understand “what it takes to build an economic future and to create good jobs.”

“I don’t see how we are going to bring good jobs and good wages back to the industrial Midwest unless we work together. If the vice president doesn’t understand that, then he shouldn’t be running for President,” Dukakis said.

Assails Bush on Education

He also criticized Bush for saying that he wants to be “the education President.”

“How can he say that after the last seven years?” Dukakis asked a crowd of students at Maryhurst. “After seven years of an Administration that has slammed a door in the face of millions of youngsters looking for a chance to go to college? After seven years of treating education . . . as if it were a privilege for the few, instead of a right and a necessity for every American?”

Dukakis called for a national teaching excellence fund and an education security fund to boost teachers and to make more college loans available to students. He said his ideas would cost an additional $250 million in federal spending.

With Dukakis strategists still anxious about Jackson’s emotion-charged campaign, Dukakis took pains at each stop to offer nothing but praise for the civil rights leader.

“Jesse Jackson and I like each other, we respect each other,” he told several hundred workers in Maumee. “We may differ on some issues, but we do it in the spirit of friendship.

“I think it’s remarkable that the two leading candidates for the Democratic nomination are the son of Greek immigrants from Massachusetts and a black man who grew up poor in South Carolina,” he added. “That’s what America is all about. That’s what the Democratic Party is all about.”

Spells Out Differences

When asked at a later press conference to delineate his differences with his rival, Dukakis paused, then said: “He doesn’t have a record in government. I do. He has other strengths. And I respect them.”

Dukakis said he has not ruled anyone “in or out,” including Jackson, as a possible running mate. In the past, he has said the most important criterion for choosing a vice president would be to select someone qualified to sit in the Oval Office should something happen to the President.

When asked in the interview to name other criteria, he said: “Then, does the person bring strength to the ticket? I don’t think there’s any question that Lyndon Johnson helped John Kennedy win Texas.”

Dukakis added that he would “want to consult and invite suggestions” for a possible running mate. He said he did not know if he would follow Walter F. Mondale’s much-criticized example in 1984 of interviewing and appearing with potential candidates one after the other, day after day.

‘Zero Time Thinking’ of It

“I really have spent zero time thinking about this,” he said. “And I’m not going to until I’m really sure the nomination is well in hand.”

Despite his lead, Dukakis obviously is still unknown to many voters. That was clear on the morning after Dukakis’ New York triumph, when he sat behind ABC News reporter Sam Donaldson on a commercial Pan Am shuttle flight to Boston.

One after another, passengers came up to ask for Donaldson’s autograph. No one asked for Dukakis’ signature.