Quayle Taunts Democrats for Lack of Support in South

Vice presidential nominee Dan Quayle campaigned through the South on Friday, taunting Michael S. Dukakis and his running mate for failing to attract support in what is expected to be a solidly Republican region.

“You know, they used to have a 50-state strategy,” Quayle said here. “Now they have a new Southern strategy: south Massachusetts, south New York and southern Illinois.”

With a Republican victory in the Deep South viewed as a near-certainty, the Democrats and Vice President George Bush have forsaken the states in recent weeks to focus on key battlegrounds. But Quayle, whose job has been to reward the loyal and rally the faithful, has come South time and again and sought Friday to deliver a few memorable parting shots.

He warned a noontime rally here that Dukakis just “really doesn’t understand this part of the South.” The Massachusetts governor, he said, “thinks an alligator is something you buy in a Boston shoe store.” His energy policy? “He’ll just drain Boston Harbor.” A cotton gin? “A drink served at a Boston cocktail party.”

“I think we’ll just let him stay back in Massachusetts,” Quayle said. “That’s where he belongs.”

As for his Democratic counterpart, Quayle noted that Sen. Lloyd Bentsen had been chosen hoping “not only to carry Texas, but to carry Louisiana.” Now, he said: “Look who’s back in Louisiana asking for your vote--Dan Quayle.”

In the speech here, Quayle cited new reports of economic turmoil in Massachusetts to warn of “economic chaos” in a Dukakis presidency. Noting that the state’s bank accounts were overdrawn by $190 million last month, Quayle turned a Democratic line against Dukakis, saying he has been “writing hot checks to keep his state’s finances afloat.”

“He tells us he’ll do for America what he did for Massachusetts,” Quayle said of Dukakis. “Let me ask you this question: Do you want him to do to Louisiana what he did for Massachusetts?” The crowd shouted: “No!”

Quayle had planned to repeat the attack at a rally later Friday at Auburn University but changed his mind as he faced jeers and boos that succeeded at times in shouting him down. After one 30-second interruption, he countered with a pledge to “boo Michael Dukakis out of the election.”

The Indiana senator at times has tried awkwardly to muffle such cockiness. “It’s almost over,” he told reporters early Friday. “But it’s not over till it’s over. Don’t anybody report anything else.”

The mood of his campaign, however, was better reflected by a hand-drawn sign held high in the noontime crowd at a downtown park here: “Caution,” it said. “Landslide Ahead.”

Moving at a leisurely pace in the campaign’s final days, Quayle’s entourage spent more than two hours Friday driving between the Montgomery, Ala., airport and Auburn University, in Auburn. Another airport would have been closer, but aides explained that the Bush campaign owed a favor to Emory Farmer, the state party chairman who is mayor of Montgomery.

Bush campaign officials had even decided to let the vice presidential nominee take a day off Sunday, two days before the election. But that decision was reversed Friday after reporters interpreted the decision as reflecting unprecedented determination by the Bush campaign to keep Quayle out of the spotlight.

Quayle’s exuberance is now soaring.

On Friday he proclaimed: “Yes, we will say, ‘Good Night, Mike,’ because Michael Dukakis has never said good morning to America. George Bush will say good morning to America. And on Nov. 9 Americans will wake up to the morning of President George Bush.”