Parties Courting Perot’s Backers : Democrats: Clinton and Gore launch campaign, setting off by bus on ‘an American journey.’ Governor calls for building an all-encompassing political coalition.

Buoyed by the adrenaline rush of their nominations to the Democratic ticket, Bill Clinton and Al Gore set off Friday on what their campaign called “an American journey” with an overt appeal for the votes of people who had favored Texan Ross Perot.

At a rain-dampened send-off rally in New York City, Clinton summed up the new effort to broaden his support.

“We’re going to get on these buses in a minute,” the Arkansas governor said, pointing to seven lumbering vehicles idling behind him, “and we’re going to go to New Jersey and Pennsylvania and Indiana and Kentucky and Ohio and Illinois and Missouri and before we’re through, we’re going back to the heartland of America and into the hearts of America.”

He said Democrats need to reach beyond their own party, whose delegates nominated the ticket at their convention this week.

“We’re going to take the people who were for Perot, the people who are Democrats, the people who are Republicans, the people who have given up and dropped out and build a coalition to reclaim our country’s heritage.”

From New York to Camden, N.J., and later here in Coatesville, west of Philadelphia, Clinton and Gore and their wives, Hillary and Mary Elizabeth (Tipper), urged Perot supporters and disaffected voters to come over to their side--sometimes in hokey fashion.

On this first day of a bus journey of 1,004 miles, there was a swift attempt to curry favor with disaffected voters. It was an indication of just how unsettled the political environment had become in the brief 24 hours since Clinton accepted his nomination and Perot took his name out of the race for President.

Perot’s departure has shuffled the political deck profoundly, leaving both President Bush and Clinton overtly begging for votes. Clinton feels that the only way he can maintain his post-primary leap in the polls is by turning Perot supporters into Clinton voters.

That effort got off to a good start when three senior members of Perot’s newly disbanded presidential campaign in New York turned up at Clinton’s Manhattan rally to attest that they had endorsed the governor.

Matthew Lifflander, the former chairman of the city’s Perot campaign, and Thomas Hoving, the former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and a top Perot lieutenant in New York, said they admired Clinton’s dogged pursuit of the nomination.

“I know there are a lot of people out there for Perot who feel the same way as I did (when the Texan announced he would not run)--’I’m going to stand on the sidelin” Hoving said.

“You cannot stay out,” he added, his voice adopting some bitterness when he referred to Perot. “All those people who thought Ross Perot had guts--and he don’t--must come back to the economists’ choice who has guts.”

Ceremoniously showing his change of heart, Lifflander turned in his Perot pin, in exchange for a button bearing the likenesses of the Democratic duo, presented by Clinton himself.

Later, the suggestions of a Perot-to-Clinton switch got a tad cute. As the Clinton buses left a General Electric aerospace plant in Camden, where the candidates had spoken to workers, the campaign staff just happened to spot a car decorated with “Perot for President” bumper stickers.

Clinton greeted the driver, Neil Frieze of Pleasantville, N.J., and proceeded to stick a Clinton-Gore sticker on Frieze’s self-described “Perotmobile.” Tipper Gore did him two better, pasting three stickers on the car.

Campaign aides insisted the meeting was not set up, although it seemed curious that the presidential candidate and his running mate’s wife had bumper stickers at the ready.

Throughout the day Friday, Clinton, Gore and their wives, staff and trailing reporters made up a rambling caravan that, according to campaign officials, was meant to suggest images of generational migrations westward in search of opportunity.

The trip, which concludes Wednesday in St. Louis, will take Clinton through places as diverse as Utica, Ohio, a village of about 2,000, and Columbus, whose population exceeds 600,000.

In its early stages, the trip seemed to be generating the hoped-for effect. Hundreds of people lined the streets as the motorcade swept out of Manhattan toward New Jersey, and more were on hand when Clinton arrived two hours later in Camden.

The governor and his running mate, the Tennessee senator, began the first day of the general election campaign at the traditional morning-after-convention meeting of the Democratic National Committee, whose members were excited by the latest polls that show Clinton ahead of Bush.

The 1988 nominee, Michael S. Dukakis of Massachusetts, had a similar lead after his convention but squandered it by returning to his home state to attend to his gubernatorial duties. Clinton served notice that he plans no such recess.

“This is going to be a real grass-roots campaign,” Clinton said. “I promised Al Gore an airplane and I gave him an RV.”

As the audience chuckled, he added: “We hope to get out there where we can see people and let people see us. We want people to see that we don’t take polls seriously when we’re down or when we’re up.”

If there were any lingering concerns that Clinton, who virtually punched his way through the primaries to reach the nomination, would ease up either his schedule or his attitude, the Arkansas governor sought to assuage them.

“We came,” he said, “to fight till November.”

Gore, like Clinton, tried at every stop to appeal to former Perot supporters. Speaking to the party leaders in New York, he added a slap at Bush, who has responded to dissatisfied voters by insisting that he, too, stands for change.

“The other side is saying we’ve been in charge for 12 years and, if you want change, vote for more of the same,” Gore said. “That doesn’t make sense.

“They tried. They had their chance. They’ve driven the wagon into the ditch.”

Headed for the Heartland

Bill Clinton and Al Gore have embarked on a motorcade snaking across eight Eastern and Midwestern states in a reinvention of the whistle-stop campaign of a bygone era. Here is a tentative schedule: 1. Camden, N.J.; York, Pa. 2. Coatesville, Pa. 3. York, Pa. 4. McKeesport, Pa. 5. Pittsburgh, Pa. 6. Weirton, W. Va. 7. Wheeling, W. Va. 8. Utica, Ohio 9. Columbus Ohio 10. Wilmington, Ohio 11. Louisville, Ky. 12. Evansville, Ind. 13. Centralia, Ill. 14. Vandalia, Ill. 15. St. Louis