Bush Holds Final Session on Ticket : Simpson Bows Out as Running Mate Contender, Gives Support to Sen. Dole

George Bush’s decision on a vice presidential running mate moved into its final phase on the eve of the Republican National Convention on Sunday, as Sen. Alan K. Simpson of Wyoming became the fifth potential contender to withdraw from consideration--declaring that his decision was unequivocal.

Simpson threw his support to Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole, who along with Rep. Jack Kemp leads a list of about half a dozen GOP political figures still under consideration for the No. 2 spot on the ticket, according to Bush campaign sources.

In an interview, Simpson, a friend of Bush, said he had personally told Bush that the vice presidency was not his “cup of tea” and that he thought Dole would strengthen the GOP ticket, especially in the Midwest, where polls show it lagging far behind Democratic nominee Michael S. Dukakis.

Even as Simpson took his name out of consideration, Bush and his most senior advisers Sunday conducted what one called the final staff meeting to discuss the running mate question.

Bush held a luncheon session at the vice president’s residence with longtime confidant James A. Baker III, who is resigning as Treasury secretary to become the campaign’s chairman. Bush also consulted with Nicholas F. Brady, the Treasury secretary-designate who is also a longtime adviser, and with Robert S. Teeter, a pollster and senior political adviser.

There will be “no more meetings,” a senior member of the Bush team said. “He’s on his own”--the decision is now Bush’s alone to make.

Other Bush assistants were assembling a campaign team for the yet-to-be-selected candidate, and speech writers were even at work drafting the address the candidate will deliver Thursday night in accepting the nomination--a text, one aide said, that would need to be modified only to reflect whatever particular strengths the running mate is presumed to bring to the ticket.

Bush’s search for a running mate dominated talk among delegates here, but Ronald Reagan grabbed a share of the spotlight after arriving in New Orleans for his final GOP convention as President.

Reagan Assails Democrats

Reagan, in a rousing speech before thousands of cheering Republicans at the New Orleans Convention Center, tore into the Democratic platform as “one of the most artful dodges in American political history.”

The platform, he said, “was an outright refusal for the liberal leadership of the other party to level with the American people, to deal with the issues--to tell the American people . . . what the liberal leadership really has in store for us should they be victorious.”

Meanwhile--in separate television interviews designed to boost their chances of being selected--Dole, Kemp and Sen. Dan Quayle of Indiana took turns bashing the Democrats in general and Dukakis in particular.

Others still under consideration, Bush campaign sources said, include Sen. Pete V. Domenici of New Mexico; former Sen. Howard H. Baker Jr. of Tennessee, who until recently served as Reagan’s chief of staff; former Transportation Secretary Elizabeth Hanford Dole, Sen. Dole’s wife, and former Gov. Lamar Alexander, president of the University of Tennessee.

Gov. George Deukmejian of California, Gov. James R. Thompson of Illinois, Sen. Nancy Landon Kassebaum of Kansas and Sen. William L. Armstrong of Colorado all withdrew their names from consideration.

Dole and Kemp are by far the choice of convention delegates for the vice presidential spot, according to a Los Angeles Times/CNN poll, and they apparently have much stronger backing than other candidates among key Republican officials.

In withdrawing from contention, Deukmejian said he would favor Dole or Kemp. And New Jersey Gov. Thomas H. Kean, who earlier was considered a possible running mate and who will deliver the keynote address here Tuesday night, told The Times he was personally urging Bush to select Kemp.

Personal Decision for Bush

However, Bush campaign officials stressed that for the vice president it will be a personal decision that may be known only to his closest confidants until his choice is officially announced.

“You can make a case for or against every one of them,” said former Nevada Sen. Paul Laxalt, referring to all the potential running mates. “In the end, I think it will be a highly personal choice. The comfort factor will count a lot.”

Asked if that militated against Bob Dole because of the enmity between Bush and the Kansas senator, Laxalt, co-chairman of the Bush campaign, retorted: “Why? Who would have thought it would have been Bush in 1980?”

Of the speech Reagan will deliver to the convention when it opens in the Superdome tonight, a source close to Reagan said that “the President has probably spent as much time on this speech as on any speech since the first inauguration, in terms of the sheer amount of writing and editing. He’s obviously treated it as an important speech.”

Reagan has been thinking about the speech and “fiddling with it” for two months, the source said, adding: “There’s a warm embrace of George Bush. He will remind the Democrats of some things that will make them very uncomfortable,” looking back to the state of the economy in 1980 and the state of U.S. foreign policy when the Soviet Union had just invaded Afghanistan and American hostages were being held in Iran.

“For Bush, that’s pretty much it,” the source said. “The rest is up to him.”

Bush hopes to keep his selection of a running mate secret until Thursday in order to build suspense and assure a large television audience for the final day of the convention, when he is to make his own acceptance speech.

“There won’t be any leaks of this one because I’m not gonna tell a soul,” Bush said.

Campaign manager Lee Atwater said: “I’m for doing anything that will build up a TV audience.”

Atwater said one reason the Democratic convention in Atlanta last month was “the least watched in American history” was that Dukakis announced his selection of Sen. Lloyd Bentsen of Texas as his running mate before the convention.

Atwater noted that the audience for Dukakis’ acceptance speech on the convention’s final night was 21 million viewers, about 4 million fewer than watched civil rights leader Jesse Jackson two nights earlier.

Some Republican officials have expressed concern that Bush’s acceptance speech may be overshadowed by his selection of a running mate if he waits until Thursday to announce his choice. Frank J. Fahrenkopf Jr., chairman of the Republican National Committee, said he thought the announcement should be made Wednesday.

Simpson also suggested that Bush should announce his choice earlier “out of fairness to the guy picked because he ought to be able to sit down and put together his thoughts and an acceptance speech.”

However, Bush campaign sources in New Orleans said they are not waiting for the selection to be announced before preparing the nominee’s acceptance speech and making plans to take charge of the running mate’s campaign.

Stuart Spencer, the Southern California political consultant who is one of Reagan’s closest political advisers, has been chosen as the senior political liaison between the Bush campaign and the vice presidential nominee’s operation. Others tentatively assigned positions in the campaign include Joseph Canzeri, a former White House official during Reagan’s first term, and Lanny Wiles, who also served during the 1980 campaign and during Reagan’s first term.

Bush’s acceptance speech, prepared by Peggy Noonan, a former Reagan speech writer, and by Teeter, the senior campaign adviser, has been delivered to Bush and “now it’s his,” one source said.

Although Dole and Kemp long have been considered among the top prospects for a spot on the Republican ticket, more recently Bush campaign sources have been talking up Domenici and Quayle.

Domenici, former chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, is known to be a favorite of Nicholas Brady, Bush’s longtime friend, and Quayle is a favorite of Teeter.

Indiana Gov. Robert D. Orr said he understood that one of the reasons Bush is considering Quayle, a handsome 41-year-old two-term senator, is that Quayle “consistently runs well among women when polls are taken on him.” Other delegates, however, said the selection of Quayle could be a problem for Bush because in 1981 questions were raised about the senator and two congressmen sharing a townhouse in Palm Beach, Fla., with Paula Parkinson, a pretty lobbyist.

The incident, which occurred during a golfing holiday in 1980, was first disclosed by a Delaware newspaper in March, 1981. At the time Quayle said he barely remembered Parkinson and jokingly suggested that the media could make “something homosexual out of” the mostly male gathering.

Campaign by Right Wing

Although Bush is not expected to run into any serious opposition in his selection of a running mate, leaders of the party’s most right-wing element have conducted an increasingly visible and vocal campaign designed to narrow his maneuvering room.

Sen. Gordon J. Humphrey of New Hampshire, for example, established a New Orleans office for his Coalition for a Winning Ticket, where volunteers have been calling delegates and seeking to pressure Bush to name a running mate acceptable to them.

Although Humphrey himself has limited influence within the party, he has threatened to disrupt an otherwise unified convention by putting forward an alternative candidate should Bush’s choice depart from what he considers conservative orthodoxy.

Humphrey and other right-wingers have been steadily narrowing the list of people they consider acceptable. Simpson, for example, who has one of the most conservative voting records in the Senate, has been rejected by the right wing because he has not supported right-to-life positions on abortion. And Domenici, who supports conservatives on the abortion issue, has drawn opposition for his past advocacy of tax increases.

Dole said Sunday he expects Bush to turn to a member of the Senate for his running mate “because that is the nursery for vice presidents.”

A number of Senate Republican aides, who declined to be identified, scoffed at rumors that the choice might be either Domenici or Quayle. They noted that Domenici, ranking Republican on the Budget Committee, is strongly identified with proposals for raising taxes and cutting Social Security benefits, and that Quayle’s name was linked to the Parkinson case.

Staff writers James Gerstenzang, Robert Shogan, Henry Weinstein, Sara Fritz and David Lauter in New Orleans, and Cathleen Decker in Washington, contributed to this story.

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