Dukakis Meets Pennsylvanians on a Train Tour

Campaigning in the style of the President he frequently cites, Harry S. Truman, Democratic presidential candidate Michael S. Dukakis made a 100-mile whistle-stop tour Sunday across the ravaged, rugged hills of western Pennsylvania.

With two days until the state’s Democratic primary, the Massachusetts governor took his increasingly confident campaign into several of the gritty, gray towns surrounded by dark iron foundries and shuttered steel mills.

Here in Altoona, once the nation’s railroad capital, he stood by a collection of ancient locomotives to promote his state’s economic “miracle” and promise something of a miracle of his own if elected.

“We’re not only going to celebrate your urban heritage, but we’re going to bring tourists to Altoona and bring good, high-speed rail service back to America,” he said, pounding the lectern under chilly, gray skies.

Tourism for Altoona

That brought a mild guffaw from Raymond Pulcinello, a beefy, 76-year-old retired railroad worker who watched and applauded politely in the crowd of about 300.

“Tourists in Altoona?” he asked. “We need more than tourists. We need more police and firemen. We need jobs.”

Photo opportunities seemed more the point, however, as Dukakis rode the Pennsylvania Presidential Unlimited, a five-car Amtrak train he chartered, from Pittsburgh, east to rainy Greensburg and on to Johnstown (famed for the floods of 1889, 1936 and 1977) and then Altoona. At each stop there were brass bands, bunting and balloons.

With a towering lead in the polls here, Dukakis had nothing but praise for his sole remaining rival for the Democratic nomination, the Rev. Jesse Jackson. He offered little but scorn for the likely Republican nominee, Vice President George Bush.

Dukakis sounds increasingly confident of winning the Democratic nomination. At one point he invited Johnstown High School’s marching band and squealing cheerleaders to join him at “our inauguration parade in Washington next January.”

Cites Transportation Issue

He also told reporters that his plan to spend money allocated for two $18-billion Navy supercarrier task force groups on mass transit and high-speed railroads would be a “fundamental issue” in the campaign against Bush this fall.

“The American people are tired of crumbling bridges, congested airports, jammed highways, homeless people on the streets and in doorways . . . and they want a change,” he said.

Dukakis refused, however, to give details of his federal budget plan, as Jackson demanded last week. He instead alluded to his controversial first term as governor (1974-78), when he had to raise taxes a year after making a campaign pledge not to do so.

“I had to eat a lot of crow and I’m never going to make that mistake again,” he said.

Met by small but enthusiastic crowds in each town, Dukakis touted his state’s bust-to-boom economic record and said he understood the despair over unemployment and low investment in Pennsylvania.

“I know the pain, I know the suffering,” he told the crowd in Johnstown, where the unemployment rate is about 10%. “If we can’t bring good jobs and economic opportunity to towns like Johnstown, there’s something wrong with us.”

Appeal to ‘Little Guy’

The message seemed to have broad appeal. “He’s for the little guy,” said Bill Eicher, 45, a Greensburg custodian. “I’m for him 100%.”

“He’s for the middle class,” said Kellie Lamberson, 28, a hospital lab technician in Johnstown.

“He’ll do well with the average person,” agreed Steve Singel, general manager of an electronics distribution company.

Dukakis began organizing in Pennsylvania last October and, unlike Jackson, fielded full delegate slates in the state’s 23 congressional districts. About 45 Dukakis campaign staffers are now in the state.

Because voters must choose delegates as well as a candidate when they cast ballots, aides say they will deploy 20,000 volunteers to man telephone banks on election day and hand out lists of delegates’ names at the state’s 9,600 polling places.

“By the time the election is over, we’ll have dropped 3 million pieces of literature

here,” said campaign field director Charles Baker.