Bush Stumps for Giuliani in N.Y., Hits Reagan Policy

George Bush did for a Republican mayoral candidate Thursday something that he had steadfastly declined to do for himself last year: He attacked Ronald Reagan.

Not by name, of course. But the implication was clear--and clearly appreciated by the campaign of Republican mayoral hopeful Rudolph W. Giuliani, who has been racing to drop his connections with the former President as he seeks office in heavily Democratic New York.

“Some years ago,” Bush said, “the ranks of the homeless here swelled” because an Administration he did not name adopted a policy in which “hundreds of mentally ill people were stripped of Social Security benefits.”

The “some years ago” in question were the years that Bush served as Reagan’s loyal vice president, a role in which he did not criticize the Administration’s highly controversial attempt to strike thousands of people from the Social Security disability rolls.

Giuliani, then the U.S. attorney in New York, infuriated Reagan Administration officials by refusing to defend the policy against court challenges. At the time, Administration officials accused Giuliani of “grandstanding” to gain political popularity. Thursday, however, Bush said that Giuliani “did the right thing.”

The last time Bush came to a GOP fund-raiser here, he was unable to pronounce Giuliani’s name. This time, he nearly pronounced the former prosecutor a candidate for sainthood.

“America’s greatest crime fighter,” he declared. “The real thing.” “Unflagging idealism.” “Larger than life.” These are only a few of the words of praise the President lavished on Giuliani, whose effort to be the first Republican elected mayor of New York in a generation has been floundering.

Giuliani had planned his campaign on the assumption that he would be running against the scandal-stained record of incumbent Mayor Edward I. Koch. But Koch lost the Democratic primary to Manhattan Borough President David N. Dinkins. Ever since, Giuliani’s campaign has been in trouble. Dinkins now leads in all published polls and could become the city’s first black mayor.

Bush’s visit, paid for by GOP campaign funds, was designed to give Giuliani more than a rhetorical boost. The $1,000-a-head fund-raiser was expected to raise some $800,000.

Earlier in the day, Bush made campaign appearances for two other Republicans in trouble--a day devoted to countering the charge by some GOP activists that the President is not working hard enough for his party’s candidates.

He began the day flying south, to Gulfport, Miss., to campaign for Republican congressional candidate Tom Anderson, who is trailing in most polls in his attempt to win a seat vacated earlier this year by the death of freshman GOP Rep. Larkin Smith.

Then, he flew back north again, landing in New Jersey for a brief televised handshake with Rep. Jim Courter, who is badly losing so far as Republican standard-bearer in the race for governor.

Both races have been disappointments to the GOP, reminders that they still cannot consistently translate their dominance of presidential politics into victories on the state and local level. New Jersey has had a highly popular Republican governor for eight years and the party was hopeful of retaining the seat. And the Gulfport-area congressional district is the one House seat from Mississippi that the Republicans consistently have been able to win.

The first test of Bush’s efforts to revive these three GOP campaigns will come next week, when Mississippi voters go to the polls.