Race Winding Up at a Frantic Pace : Dukakis Adds to Schedule in Final Attempt at Upset

Hoping for an upset victory, Democratic presidential nominee Michael S. Dukakis began a final, frenzied sprint for the White House on Sunday by intensifying his already-punishing pace and launching new attacks on Dan Quayle.

With the race apparently tightening in several key states, Dukakis’ schedule changed by the hour Sunday as aides scrambled to add new stops in a last-ditch attempt to win the required 270 electoral votes on Tuesday.

“They’re slipping and sliding,” a pumped-up Dukakis said of the Republicans while more than 12,000 supporters roared and stomped approval at a sunlit afternoon rally at Portland State University. “We’re rocking and rolling.”

Cleveland, St. Louis Added

Eschewing a bed for the final 48 hours of his 20-month campaign, Dukakis hastily added an overnight flight from Spokane, Wash., to Ohio for early morning rallies today in Cleveland and later in St. Louis. It came after Dukakis had stumped all day at four rallies in Colorado, Oregon and Washington.

Dukakis will fly back to California today for long-planned rallies in San Francisco and this evening in UCLA’s Pauley Pavilion. A final Election Day event was tentatively scheduled for dawn Tuesday in Des Moines as Dukakis flies back to Boston, but aides said another site may be chosen instead.

“You don’t need to sleep anymore,” Kirk O’Donnell, a senior adviser, told some of the 180 reporters struggling to keep up with Dukakis’ round-the-clock, round-the-nation pace.

“The race is very dynamic,” he said. “We’re making sure progress, and we want to maintain our momentum until Tuesday . . . . We have to persuade those undecided as fast as we can.”

Aides cited a poll published by the Cleveland Plain Dealer showing Dukakis now trailing Vice President George Bush by 6 percentage points in Ohio. Dukakis aides have long said their candidate must win four out of a list of five major battleground states--Illinois, Ohio, Michigan, New York and Texas--and with polls showing Texas almost irreparably lost to the Republicans, Ohio becomes must-win territory for the Democrats.

Another poll, in Missouri, reportedly showed Dukakis leading by 1 point there.

National Polls Released

Nationally, a new Wall Street Journal-NBC News poll sent a stir through the campaign Sunday when it showed the trailing Dukakis closing the gap to 5 points, 48% to 43%, with 9% of the voters polled undecided. That poll had him 9 percentage points behind on Oct. 28. But news of Dukakis’ apparent surge was tempered later in the day when a nationwide Gallup Poll being released today reported Bush ahead, 53% to 41%, among likely voters. And a Washington Post-ABC News poll released Sunday night showed Bush with a 10-point lead nationwide, 54% to 44%.

Racing to catch up on the penultimate day of the campaign, Dukakis emphasized what he hopes is his ultimate Election Day weapon: Republican vice presidential nominee Quayle.

“We’re taking our case directly to the American people,” Dukakis told about 7,500 supporters who gathered as the morning sun lit snowcapped peaks at a rally outside Denver. He accused Bush of “trying to keep Dan Quayle away from the American people.”

Mocks Indiana Senator

Dukakis repeatedly mocked the Indiana senator and said he was “chilled” by Bush’s statement in a TV interview Saturday with David Frost that he might put Quayle in charge of crisis management at the White House.

“Think about it!” Dukakis told the Colorado crowd. “The Cuban missile crisis with Dan Quayle in charge. The nuclear alert during the 1973 war in the Middle East with Dan Quayle in charge. A future crisis. War and peace at stake. With Dan Quayle in charge. That’s a risk we Americans cannot afford to take.”

“Dan Quayle isn’t a crisis manager,” Dukakis said with ridicule in his voice. “He’s a crisis that has to be managed.”

Dukakis demanded that Bush tell voters “before the election, yes or no, would you or would you not put Dan Quayle in charge of managing national security operations in a time of crisis?”

The two-term Massachusetts governor accused Bush of “following me around for months” on issues of education and environment. “This week he began following me on our message, telling voters he’s on your side.”

‘Place He’s Not Following Us’

But he said Bush is now shadowing him even as he travels, and mocked Bush’s simultaneous morning rally in Colorado Springs. “I’ll tell you one place he’s not following us, and that’s to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.,” Dukakis said as the crowd cheered.

Bush hopes to do well around Colorado Springs, where defense-related jobs are a major part of the economy. Dukakis, conversely, must do well among the young, working-class voters in communities like Westminster, the Denver suburb where he spoke Sunday morning, said Sen. Timothy E. Wirth (D-Colo.).

“This is Colorado’s Cleveland,” he said.

Dukakis, with his wife, Kitty, and daughters, Kara and Andrea, by his side, added new populist ammunition to his recent attacks on his opponents.

“If you believe, as we do, that it’s time to cut aid, and not deals, with drug-running dictators . . . that it’s time to invest in our children, and not the Contras . . . and that those children are too important to be left in the hands of J. Danforth Quayle when it comes to the war on drugs, then we’re on your side,” he said in Portland.

Defense on Gun Control Issue

Even at this late date, Dukakis found it necessary in Westminster, Portland and Tacoma, Wash., to defend himself against GOP ads that attack his support for limited gun control. He said he supports the rights of hunters and sportsmen to bear arms but opposes the availability of “Uzis and AK-47s” used by urban street gangs.

“This is a law enforcement issue,” he said in Portland. “I’m going to do everything I can to help law enforcement officers who are risking their lives for us.”

At a rally that drew more than 8,000 people to the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Kitty Dukakis introduced her husband using strong terms. “There is one ‘L word’ that my husband’s opponent has used in this campaign,” she said. “Lies! And on Nov. 8, the American people will say no to that strategy.”

Campaign Vice Chairman John Sasso said Dukakis was adding stops to his already-brutal schedule because of the newly encouraging polls.

“There are plenty of states in play that can get us to 270 (electoral votes) if we keep moving in the next 48 hours as we have in the last four days,” he said. “A lot of states are in play that the Republicans said were not in play three weeks ago.”

Sasso declined to list the states, but other Democratic officials talked about possible movement toward Dukakis in states ranging from Louisiana--where a heavy black turnout could swing the state Democratic--to Montana, where President Reagan’s veto of a Democrat-backed wilderness bill is proving controversial.

Sasso said Dukakis was focusing his fire on Quayle at the end because “people are deeply troubled by Quayle, for good and sufficient reasons . . . . He is a risk.”

Polls long have shown Quayle is a drag on the Republican ticket, and Democrats hope that doubts about Quayle will offset Republican charges that Dukakis is risky because he has no experience in foreign affairs.

Sasso argued that Dukakis was gaining last-minute momentum for three reasons. He said voters were “taking a hard second look at the candidates.” Secondly, he said that “the campaign of lies and distortion has caught up with the Bush campaign.” And lastly, he asserted: “Dukakis’ message, ‘We’re on your side,’ is getting through.”

Dukakis will stress that message in a 30-minute TV ad that will be broadcast on the ABC, NBC and CBS networks tonight. According to a partial transcript, the ad features Dukakis answering questions from sympathetic voters on issues from Social Security to agriculture.