Quayle Says He Stood Up to Reagan to Aid Steelworkers

As protests trailed his movements across industrial Ohio, Republican vice presidential nominee Dan Quayle on Friday presented himself as a senator who went to bat for working-class steelworkers and forced President Reagan to invoke restraints against foreign steel producers.

Quayle, speaking over the din of the gritty Mercury Stainless Steel plant here, said that he and other industrial area Republicans had confronted President Reagan several years ago when waves of low-priced imported steel threatened to shut down domestic producers.

Mixed Reception

“I wasn’t afraid to stand up for the steelworkers of Indiana and I’m not afraid to stand up for the steelworkers of Ohio and the steelworkers of America,” said Quayle, who received a mixed response from the audience.

“We said enough is enough, and we talked in those terms to the President of the United States.”

The Indiana senator said he and Rep. Ralph Regula of Ohio, who accompanied Quayle on his tour Friday, had met with Reagan in the Cabinet Room after they had endorsed a proposal for mandatory quotas.

‘Right Across the Eyes’

“We looked him right across the eyes . . . . Our President wasn’t happy that good, solid Republican senators and congressmen were telling him he needed to impose quotas,” he said.

“And it was after that meeting that they finally came to grips with the voluntary restraint agreement.”

The voluntary agreements with more than a dozen nations were invoked in the fall of 1984, after the Administration had rejected mandatory quotas, and are credited with helping the ailing steel industry. Quayle said that he would recommend renewal of the agreements when they expire next year.

By detailing his confrontation with Reagan, Quayle gained a bit of distance from the President, whose policies many of the workers blame for an 18-month closure of the plant.

Bankrupt Plant Reopened

The Justice Department in the mid-1980s cleared the way for a takeover of the plant that ultimately resulted in bankruptcy. The mill was resuscitated later after a local outcry.

His appearances Friday were also designed to convince voters that Quayle is a blue-collar man at heart. Paradoxically, on the same day Quayle’s office in Washington released records showing him to have a net worth of $1.2 million.

At the Massillon plant, he made a point of repeatedly congratulating the workers on the plant’s rebirth; throughout the day, he told folksy tales of his children and his Midwestern upbringing.

He said he and the Republican Party share the “ideology of the middle class,” and he noted Indiana’s industrial strength.

“I can identify with steelworkers,” Quayle, clad in a fresh suit and white shirt, told a knot of sweaty T-shirted steelworkers at a metal-crafting firm in Youngstown, Ohio, Friday afternoon. “I can identify with workers that have had a difficult time . . . . There are some sections that have been left out” (of the nation’s economic recovery.)

Greeted by Protesters

However, outside the Massillon and Youngstown plants, Quayle was greeted by chanting protesters, many carrying “Dukakis for President” signs.

“I don’t know why you came to town if you don’t want to meet the workingmen and -women,” one Youngstown protester yelled through a bullhorn after Quayle rejected his entreaties to come to a barricaded area to which the protesters were restricted.

In Massillon, Quayle found his audience dominated by workers in Dukakis-Bentsen shirts supplied by their steelworker union local.

After Quayle’s speech, electrician Mike McElfresh declared: “Hogwash! We don’t buy it.”

Much of the workers’ antipathy toward Quayle stems from his opposition to a law that requires owners of large firms to notify their employees in the event of a planned plant closure.

Quayle defended that posture in Youngstown, saying that the law will add “a lot of regulations.”

Praises Republican Party

The candidate praised the Republican Party as the party of jobs and opportunity--two of Vice President George Bush’s favorite descriptions.

“Who do you want to be President? Somebody who’s created industrial jobs or someone who’s lost industrial jobs?” he asked, referring to an increase in such jobs under the Reagan Administration and a loss of manufacturing jobs in Massachusetts under Dukakis.

The campaign was still being confronted by critics angry about Quayle’s Vietnam War-era service in the National Guard. At one stop, campaign workers hastily recruited tall supporters to stand along Quayle’s walking path to block protesters from the view of television cameras.

Quayle appeared alternately winning and awkward as he courted the blue-collar vote.

Emotionally Cites Children

To a Rotary Club in Canton, he emotionally cited his three young children as reasons why he feels a personal connection to the war on drugs--winning the audience’s applause.

But, in Youngstown, he talked again of his children and their individual interests in sports--soccer for his middle child, Benjamin, horseback riding for his daughter, Corinne.

Of his oldest child, Tucker, he added proudly, “He plays lacrosse.”

The reference to the sport seemed lost on the steelworkers.

“It’s a long way off yet,” one worker said as he left the gathering, referring to Quayle’s appeal.