Pennsylvania Voters Hesitate to Snap at ‘Change’ Bait : Primary: Candidates are belaboring the point in a state that swept a reformer into the Senate. But interviews indicate a more temperate attitude reigns.

Ever since Harris Wofford swept through this city six months ago en route to staging the political upset of the year and becoming a U.S. senator, “change” has been the hot button of the political season.

From Democrats Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr. and Bill Clinton to potential independent Ross Perot, presidential aspirants cast themselves as the true candidate of change. Even President Bush, the quintessential champion of the status quo, sprinkles references to “reform” and “revolution” into every speech like so many plump raisins into a pudding.

But interviews with about 20 voters in a tidy working-class neighborhood on the weekend before the state’s Tuesday primary produce a more ambiguous message than Wofford’s defeat of former U.S. Atty. Gen. Dick Thornburgh would suggest. Almost unanimously, those interviewed say that they want change but fear risk. Many also say they doubt change is really possible and have grown so disillusioned with government they may not vote at all.

President Bush, who visited the area about a week ago, has disappointed them, people here say. But Clinton seems to lack experience, they add, and Perot remains an all but unknown quantity.

“It’s time for some changes in this country. We need some fresh people in government across the board,” said 42-year-old Jim LeVan, an office equipment salesman. But, he added, voting for Clinton might simply be too risky. “I don’t think you take somebody who just started at the company and make him CEO.”

Clinton, he added, has some good ideas, but he questions if he has “the credentials to run the United States of America. I don’t think he has the experience level.”

If history holds any lessons in this year that already has baffled conventional wisdom repeatedly, then the opinions of LeVan and his neighbors could be crucial to the outcome of November’s election.

Pennsylvania, with large concentrations of Democratic voters in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia and hundreds of thousands of Republicans in smaller towns in between, has been a closely watched battleground in American politics. Jimmy Carter’s ability to carry Pennsylvania in 1976 helped put him in the White House. His party’s inability to carry the state since has been crucial to keeping subsequent Democrats out.

And with much of the rest of the state evenly balanced between the two parties, the Lehigh Valley--the cities of Allentown, Bethlehem and Easton and the surrounding countryside--more often than not determines the result. “State outcomes are determined there,” said Paul Tully, the Democratic Party’s national political director.

This neighborhood, the 4th District of Allentown’s 15th Ward, illustrates the point. Wofford took 65% of the vote here and won statewide. One year earlier, Democratic Gov. Robert Casey took 73% of the vote in the district and gained reelection. But in 1988, Michael S. Dukakis won only a small majority here and in other Allentown city wards and lost the state.

Republican strategists know the importance of this turf, which was why earlier this month Bush dropped in on Dieruff High School, which sits at the center of the ward and serves as the district’s voting place. He gave a speech there on education before flying off to Kennebunkport, Me., for the Easter weekend.

Clinton has not yet been here, concentrating his time before Tuesday’s primary on the larger pools of Democratic voters in the state’s two major cities. But in the fall, strategists say, the Lehigh Valley will be high on his itinerary as well. And when he does come, he will find many voters with questions on their mind.

The questions do not primarily revolve around the so-called “character issues” that dominated the discussion of Clinton three weeks ago in New York’s primary. In fact, the latest Pennsylvania poll, conducted by Millersville University Prof. Terry Madonna, showed Pennsylvanians with a generally favorable view of Clinton: 52% favorable to 27% unfavorable, a marked contrast with New York, where his unfavorable ratings exceeded his favorable ones.

Instead, the generally conservative, relatively elderly electorate appears to have questions about the experience and effectiveness of the relatively young governor of a small, distant state.

Bob McClafford, 67, a retired Teamster, and Ray Stauffer, 63, a retired carpenter, are the sort of voters Clinton can count on--the sort who once made things easy for Democrats in the days when the party had a million-vote margin over the GOP in statewide registration, an edge now down to 300,000.

“I always vote Democratic. I’ve got to work for a living,” said McClafford as he sat in the living room of the small, brick house he and his wife built for $7,000 on a GI loan in 1951. “I’m going to vote for any Democrat they put in there.”

Stauffer, standing on the porch of his brick row house, gave a similar response. “My Dad voted Democratic. I guess I’m just following along.”

But, McClafford warned, many of his friends act differently. “The people are funny. No matter what they say, they don’t like changing horses in the middle of a stream.”

McClafford remembers his fishing buddy in 1984 swearing that he would never vote to reelect Ronald Reagan, then going into the voting booth and doing just that. “Everybody says they’re against Bush, but I think they’ll put him back in because they’re afraid to make a move.”

A block away, Joseph Andreas, 49, seemed to illustrate McClafford’s point. “I think the country is going down,” he said. That sentiment, and the fact that he is a registered Democrat, might make Andreas seem a likely Clinton voter. But no. “There are some major decisions which you have to make in that job for the future of the country,” he said, referring to the presidency.

Bush impressed Andreas with his handling of the Persian Gulf War, and by comparison, he said, the Democrats don’t seem to measure up. “I don’t know if Brown or Clinton could do the job.” And although he remains pessimistic about the future, Andreas, like many here, does not directly blame Bush for the problems he sees.

“A President can’t always get what he wants,” Andreas said. “There’s a lot of friction with the Congress. Overall, I think Bush is doing a decent job.”

That lack of blame, coupled with the gap in age and experience between Bush and Clinton, may be the President’s crucial advantage.

The most important factor in presidential politics, Republican National Chairman Richard N. Bond said, is “whether people like the candidate.” In the fall, he said, “that ‘like factor’ is going to be out there operating on George and Barbara Bush’s behalf.”

Earlier in the political year, in New Hampshire, voters spoke bitterly about Bush, voicing a sense of betrayal in the depths of a horrific economic slump. But here, as flocks of robins hop across tiny lawns, the mood and the words are kinder and gentler. A decade ago, as major industries moved away, Billy Joel’s song “Allentown” made the town a symbol of economic decay. More recently, however, new businesses have moved into the valley, prospects have turned up and with the economy starting to show signs of national recovery, voters here seem disinclined, at least for now, to turn against the President they know and take a risk on a stranger.

The nation’s problems are difficult, they say, and Bush, although he may not be perfect, seems to be a decent man. The President is trying, Andreas said. “You can see he’s trying.”