Persistent Gender Gap Stalks Bush Campaign : Women--53% of the Electorate--Have Trouble With Traditional GOP Agenda, Polls Indicate

A few days ago in Louisville, a relaxed George Bush brushed off the hand wringers and adopted a “What, me worry?” approach to the gender gap troubling his campaign.

“What you do is spell out your position on the issues and the gender gap goes away and you win the election,” the vice president said. “That’s what happened in ’84 and that’s exactly what I want to have happen in 1988.”

It is unlikely to be so easy. Less than five months before November’s election, while holding his own among male voters, the vice president is confronting consistent dissatisfaction on the part of women, who constitute 53% of the electorate. The yawning gap is largely responsible for Bush’s runner-up status behind Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis in polls in recent months.

Illinois congresswoman and Bush adviser Lynn Martin calls the gender gap the “400-pound gorilla” of the campaign. Irene Natividad, chair of the National Women’s Political Caucus, calls it “explosive.” Bush, in somewhat more casual terms, calls it “the women thing.” His advisers call it a “concern.”

The gender gap itself is not a phenomenon new to this election, but what is novel is its acknowledged capacity this year to decide the national winner in a close election.

“This is the election when the gender gap will really determine who becomes the President of the United States,” declared Andrew Kohut, president of the Gallup polling organization.

The gap is not based exclusively on concerns that formed the women’s movement, but rather draws on a collision of varied issues. Women, according to polls, have trouble with the Republican Party’s advocacy of foreign intervention and its repudiation of government as a tool to protect needy segments of society. Men, generally, are more supportive of aggressive military moves and more scornful of a nurturing government.

And because women are relatively new entrants into the workplace and receive less pay than men, they also take a more pessimistic view of the economy--leading them to seek a more protective, Democratic-style government, analysts say.

“They want what the Democratic Party has always offered--economic protection against adversity,” said Times political consultant William Schneider.

Although some Republican leaders dismiss the gap as a temporary blip that will vanish as the campaign lurches on, some Bush partisans and Republican political consultants are dismayed at the absence of a concerted appeal to women voters by the vice president’s campaign.

Mary Louise Smith, the former head of the Republican National Committee and an avid Bush supporter, said she and others have struck a “wall of resistance” when attempting to push campaign officials toward a strategy to embrace women voters. She attributes the inertia to a desire to accommodate the party’s conservative wing.

“Throughout the whole campaign or Administration, if you will, there doesn’t seem to be the understanding, the sensitivity. They don’t see the opportunities to relate to women,” she said. “It’s almost like there’s a block there.”

In essence, the gap is an exaggeration of Bush’s overall, much-debated problem--difficulty in presenting a cogent, independent image of leadership after almost eight years spent as a loyal vice president.

Furor over the “gender gap” has in recent weeks propelled a great deal of talk about solutions. Republicans and women’s activists, groping for results, suggest everything from picking a woman vice presidential nominee to outlining specific programs to deal with child care and other concerns.

Bush himself took the public step last month of meeting in front of reporters with Republican women in Cincinnati, where he vowed to do a “better job of getting that message out” among women. Aides said that a child-care proposal is being drafted and that Bush plans to address the concerns of women voters in myriad ways as the campaign advances.

‘Everything Open’

“Everything is open right now,” said Sheila Tate, Bush’s newly named campaign press secretary and the first visible woman official in the Bush campaign.

But his task looms large. Bush is battling years of accumulated resentments and concerns, according to those who portray the gender gap as a permanent and troublesome issue for the vice president and all Republicans.

Some, like Republican consultant John Deardourff, see the Democratic-Party leanings of women as part of a more pervasive GOP problem--the slow loss of all but white male voters.

“It’s another distressing sign that when you become so ideologically rigid and you move so far on the political spectrum, you’re bound to leave a lot of people behind,” Deardourff said.

“We now have the support of 1 in 20 black voters and 1 in 3 Hispanic voters and it looks as though we are gradually losing the support of a significant majority of women. . . . We’re going to run out of enough white male voters to elect very many people.”

Until the early 1960s, women traditionally voted more conservatively than men, according to Schneider. Then that gap disappeared. Today’s gender gap did not exist until 1980, when the ascendancy of Ronald Reagan cast into concrete the strength of the party’s right wing.

Although there was a gender gap of up to nine points in election results in 1984, Reagan still managed to corral 55% of the women’s vote with an aggressive party-wide appeal to women voters. And Reagan held such an immense lead among male voters that the gap did not figure in the election’s results.

Bush’s straits are more severe. In recent polls, male preferences have been essentially split between Bush and Dukakis, making the way women vote the determining factor in the election. A May Gallup poll, for example, showed Dukakis leading among men by 5 points--and among women by 20. Even last week’s Gallup poll, which showed the race narrowing, had an 8-point Dukakis lead among women while men were evenly split.

Pollsters and politicians alike say the gap is not particularly directed at Bush, who won equal support from men and women in 1980, when he first ran for President. But he is bearing the brunt of the gender gap now for both his alliance with the Reagan Administration and the Republican Party--and for the absence of a long-term connection with women voters.

“You’re talking about women undergoing eight years when their issues were not addressed, and he’s a candidate running on that Administration’s record,” said Natividad of the National Women’s Political Caucus, a bipartisan group.

“He inherits some of Reagan’s own negatives and his own lack of record--it’s a double whammy.”

Bush’s wholehearted adoption of the Reagan Administration’s conservative social agenda has come back to haunt him among some women. “He has changed some of his views on some issues to be in accord (with Reagan) and to keep from being a divisive factor and I clearly think that is reflected in the standings,” said Smith, the former RNC chairwoman and Bush ally.

Supported ERA

Before he became vice president, Bush supported the equal rights amendment and opposed the constitutional amendment to ban abortion, for example, but reversed those positions when he joined Reagan on the GOP ticket.

Illinois Congresswoman Martin suggests with some regret that Bush has yet to play his own political hand substantially enough to turn opinion his way.

“Because the Republicans are the minority party, to win, the personality has to supersede the party,” Martin said. “Bush’s has not yet. . . . Somehow the person I know has to be known by the men and women that make a difference.”

Bush’s moves to bridge the gender gap are complicated by the moderate tone adopted by Dukakis in his nomination-winning primary campaign. Although polls show Dukakis’ lead shrinking recently, the Massachusetts governor is still seen by most Americans as a middle-of-the-road Democrat, more centrist than Walter Mondale was in 1984. The sense of moderation has an appeal to women voters who want change without radicalism, according to many consultants.

“The problem is a Republican problem and I don’t know of anything about Dukakis that’s likely to frighten women unless he’s willing to go far to the left,” said Times consultant Schneider.

“Voting for Bush in the minds of some voters is taking a risk--continuing eight years of Reaganism.”

Avoiding Condescension

Just how to convince women to take that risk is a problem in itself. According to campaign press secretary Tate--a former aide to First Lady Nancy Reagan--Bush will find ways to address women voters without appearing “condescending”--a tone that would backfire on him.

“I mean, I would throw my body in front of the door before we’d have women’s magazine editors called in for a briefing on ‘women’s issues,’ ” she said. “It’s not what women want as far as I’m concerned.”

Any strategy will likely stand out if only because of the absence of previous efforts to include women in his stump speeches and informal discussions. His arenas have tended to be high-tech firms rather than offices and schools. Bush and his senior campaign aides present an all-white, all-male face. Except for infrequently declaring his support for equal pay for equal work, Bush has rarely acknowledged women in any form.

Asked about the gender gap several weeks ago as he opened strategy meetings at his Maine home, for example, Bush skirted the issue and ended up talking about how he would cut into Dukakis’ popularity among the ethnic Americans who voted for Reagan.

Pressed on how he planned to court women, Bush added: “The women’s thing is more complicated. What I have to do is more clearly define what I feel on certain women’s issues. One of them would be day care. And I’ll be doing that. We’ve got time.”

Bush has in recent weeks hired several women onto his campaign staff, including Tate and some policy framers. Seven of the top 13 positions on the Bush campaign’s senior staff list are now held by women, although his most trusted advisers remain a sextet of men. Dukakis, in contrast, last fall appointed a woman to head his campaign and has long had women in high-profile positions.

Tate said Bush, in addition to explaining his position on child care, may single out the economic status of women for attention later in the campaign.

The Republican Party will help its standard-bearer by reprising its effort to attract women, again centering on the nation’s economy and on world peace, issues that rank high in the minds of women voters. In 1984, Republicans highlighted women at their convention--which they will repeat this summer--and ran television ads featuring women.

“We hope to present through the campaign the accomplishments of this Administration, what we’ve been able to do with the economy since we inherited it 7 1/2 years ago and what we’re going to do in the future to provide jobs,” said national GOP Chairman Frank J. Fahrenkopf Jr.

The chairman said Republican data indicates that the party’s most severe problems are among single mothers ages 18 to 35 and married women with financial problems--but he suggested that Bush would win over women by November as Reagan did in 1984.

“Michael Dukakis has also a gender gap,” he said. “He’s got a male gender gap as Mondale had.” Actually, however, few polls have shown Dukakis trailing Bush among men.

Considerable Revamping

Outsiders suggest that Bush will have to undergo a considerable revamping before his efforts show fruit.

“Voters need to see a connection with George Bush and what their concerns are day to day,” said Linda DiVall, a Republican pollster who helped prepare the Republican effort to attract women in 1984. She said Bush’s emphasis on education and fighting drugs and his publicized attempts to reach out to black voters could easily be extended to appeal to women.

“The sign it sends is: ‘Don’t assume because Ronald Reagan had a problem in this regard that I have the same thing,’ ” she added.

Consultant Schneider and Gallup President Kohut opt for a more dramatic turn: naming a woman as a vice presidential candidate. Their logic is not that a woman candidate would on her own strengthen the ticket--surveys showed that Rep. Geraldine A. Ferraro of New York did not boost the Democratic ticket in 1984. Rather, they say, the choice would shatter conceptions about Bush himself.

“George Bush has to distinguish himself from the past in a dramatic way,” said Kohut. “The gender gap is so rooted in the fundamentals of thinking of men and women that it will not take a little thing but a big thing.”

But that strikes many women as window dressing. “We did learn from ’84 that a woman on the ticket as a symbol of one’s commitment isn’t enough. It’s the top of the ticket that counts,” said Natividad of the National Women’s Political Caucus.

Most suggest that, realistically, Bush will have to relate to women voters in a more personal way the issues he has already chosen to target--education, drugs, crime, taxes--and hope for the best.

“If he wants to be the ‘education President,’ ” said Smith, highlighting one of Bush’s common refrains, “then talk about the strengths of women in education and the opportunity to provide greater opportunities for women.”

“You can’t just talk about the national defense,” added Martin. “You have to talk about what national defense means in terms of a draft. Drugs--you have to talk about what it’s doing to our families.

“There has to be a perception that he’s committed, and part of that is style. Gushing isn’t his style.”

Skepticism Abounds

As to whether Bush can turn around the gender gap entirely, skepticism abounds.

“It’ll be hard to change it in four months,” said GOP consultant Deardourff. “These attitudes . . . represent the cumulative impact of years.”

But he was not closing the door on the vice president’s chances.

“There’s a reason to think that at least at an earlier point he was more open-minded,” Deardourff said, “and maybe he can recapture some of that ground.”