Interpreting Election Results
The elections of Nov. 7 should serve as a warning to President Bush and the Republican Party. Victories by David Dinkins in New York City, James J. Florio in New Jersey and L. Douglas Wilder in Virginia demonstrated that two political strategies President Bush has brought to the forefront of American politics have now exploded in his face.
First, the American people do not want the rights of women to choose an abortion to be abridged. The clock will not be turned back. Pro-choice Republicans will vote for Democratic candidates who are also pro-choice. Bush has seized on the one issue that is divisive enough to bring his party down and lose him the White House, and other Republican candidates their offices.
Second, the type of negative campaign that Bush and (Republican Party Chairman) Lee Atwater ran in the 1988 presidential campaign is no longer effective. Rudolph Giuliani waged a blistering, unrelenting attack on Dinkins and he still lost. Voters in New York City are clearly more interested in issues than in unfiled taxes from 20 years ago. J. Marshall Coleman ran a vicious negative campaign against Wilder in Virginia, as he constantly attacked Wilder’s integrity. Coleman’s negative TV adds backfired as he spent more time attacking Wilder than discussing the issues.
In New Jersey both candidates, Florio and Jim Courter, ran dirty campaigns. Again, in New Jersey, like in New York City and Virginia, exit polls showed the vast majority of voters wanted no changes in the current abortion laws.
President Bush and the Republican Party have made two grave errors. They have underestimated the integrity of the American public, a public that will no longer stand for dirty negative campaigning, and they have underestimated the clear majority in this country that supports a woman’s right to choose a safe and legal abortion. These errors will continue to cost the G0P in state and local races and, the abortion issue in particular, may even cost them the White House in 1992.
ANTHONY F. HERSHEY
Los Angeles
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