GOP Sees 5 Industrial States as Key to Victory : Campaign: Strategists seek to make up for expected loss in California and Democrats’ inroads in the South.

Republican campaign strategists are pinning their hopes for victory on President Bush making a strong showing in five major industrial states where he will charge that if Bill Clinton takes over the Oval Office, the Democrat will make the ailing economy worse.

“We’re going to say that he would be disastrous because of the tax implications of his program and what it would mean for the deficit,” said Bush pollster Fred Steeper.

He was referring to Clinton’s economic program calling for $150 billion in tax increases over four years, which Republicans contend will really cost $500 billion, as well as his plan for about $200 billion in new federal spending over that time.

The GOP target states--stretching from New Jersey and Pennsylvania in the Northeast to Ohio, Michigan and Illinois in the Midwest--have a combined total of 99 electoral votes; 270 are needed to win. Republicans figure that they need to capture at least three of the five to make up for the expected loss of California and for likely Democratic inroads in the South--reliable Republican bulwarks in the past. California, with its 54 electoral votes, constitutes a full 20% of the 270-vote majority.

Although all five target states have troubled economies, Bush has some weapons. Ohio, with 21 electoral votes, Illinois, with 22, and Michigan, with 18, all have Republican governors who can be counted on to help with the organization so vital in a close contest.

As for the two states with Democratic governors, Republican strategists consider New Jersey’s James J. Florio more of a liability than an asset to Clinton’s efforts to win the state’s 15 electoral votes, because of public outrage over tax hikes imposed by his Administration.

And in Pennsylvania, with its 23 electoral votes, Gov. Robert P. Casey is unpopular because he, too, has raised taxes. In any event, his relations with Clinton are strained over abortion, which Casey passionately opposes; Clinton supports abortion rights.

All five states have substantial Roman Catholic populations, which Bush advisers view as a potentially rich base of support because of their affinity for the more conservative approach to what Bush campaign Chairman Robert M. Teeter calls “fundamental social values.”

Catholics “have been an important part of the Reagan/Bush coalition and they are very important to us this year,” Teeter said.

At least as important, Bush strategists believe that they can use economic issues against Clinton. In addition to warning of Clinton’s reversion to what they call the Democratic “tax and spend” tradition, Bush will contend that Clinton’s plan to reduce defense spending more than Bush would cost the country another million jobs. The GOP expects that to be especially persuasive to voters in these manufacturing states, already hard hit by unemployment.

On top of that, Bush will charge Clinton with what senior campaign adviser Charles Black calls “environmental extremism”--an accusation already leveled against Clinton’s running mate, Tennessee Sen. Al Gore. The GOP will argue that the Democrats’ call for tough fuel standards for autos would cost “thousands of jobs” in the industry, which is particularly important in Michigan and Ohio.

Even so, none of these five states offer easy pickings for the Republicans. The Democrats’ 1988 nominee, Michael S. Dukakis, came close to winning both Michigan and Pennsylvania. And recent polls have shown Bush trailing Clinton in four of the states and tied in one--Ohio.

In 1988, Dukakis carried only 10 states and the District of Columbia, earning 112 electoral votes; Bush carried 40 states and racked up 426 electoral votes.

But at this point in the 1992 campaign, according to state polls taken after the Democratic Convention, Bush leads Clinton in only two states: Utah, with five electoral votes, and Idaho, with four. This lopsided situation reflects the lead of about 20 points that Clinton enjoyed at the onset of the Republican Convention that began here Monday.

Republican strategic planning for the fall has been based on the assumption that their convention, which concluded Thursday night, would narrow the gap and allow them to reclaim their traditional base in the Rocky Mountain West and the Great Plains as well as in much of the South.

Noting that Republican fortunes were at low tide as the convention began, Bush campaign manager Frederic V. Malek told reporters: “I think what happens is that as the level of water rises--that is, as the polls become closer--many of the Southern states and the Rocky Mountain states will come back into our court.” That would free the campaign to focus its resources on the battleground states in the Midwest and Northeast, he said.

In fact, there was an indication that this trend was under way even before the President’s climactic acceptance speech. Four new surveys taken since the start of the convention showed Bush gaining.

One, conducted Saturday through Tuesday for the Houston Chronicle and the Hotline political newsletter, showed Bush only 12 points behind Clinton; it has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 points. Another poll, conducted by CBS News during two convention nights, showed the President trailing his Democratic challenger by 11 points. Two other polls showed similar results.

“It looks like we’re back in the ballgame,” said Steeper.

Still, Republicans concede that they are in a tough spot--probably the toughest since the post-Watergate presidential election of 1976, when Jimmy Carter built up a 31-point lead over Gerald R. Ford, then eked out a narrow victory.

As they look ahead to the fall, Republicans have two big problems. One is the ailing economy, which is probably going to cost them California and hurt their chances almost everywhere else. The other is the Southern moderate tone of the Democratic ticket.

“He (Clinton) went to New York and he made the Democratic Party Republican; that’s very smart,” former Illinois Republican governor and Bush adviser James R. Thompson told reporters in Houston after a meeting of the Illinois delegation Thursday.

The combination of these circumstances appears to have undermined the longtime Republican advantage in the Electoral College--sometimes referred to as a “lock” because Republicans have carried 38 states, with 408 electoral votes, in each of the last three elections. Those states alone give the GOP 138 more electoral votes than they need to win.

One of the linchpins of this success has been California, which Republicans have carried in 9 of the last 10 elections--the only exception being Barry Goldwater’s 1964 landslide defeat. Without the state, the GOP has not won the White House since 1880.

But the cruel irony for the Republicans is, now that California is a richer prize than ever before, it appears headed out of the GOP orbit because of the recession. With their once-flourishing economy in a shambles and their state treasury all but drained, Californians gave Clinton a 62% to 28% lead in a Field Poll survey taken a week after the Democratic Convention.

“I’m not sure about many things in this campaign,” former Reagan pollster Richard B. Wirthlin said Thursday. “But one thing I am 99.9% sure of is (that) Clinton, unless there is a major, major mistake and the whole thing comes apart, will win California.”

“You can put together a coalition without California,” he added. “But it becomes immensely more difficult. And then the key states become New Jersey, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois and Pennsylvania.”

Privately, some aides in Bush’s own campaign have arrived at the same conclusion about California. But no one will admit it for the record.

Thus, Teeter said Thursday: “In a close national election, overall California will be a close state.”

“We have reason to hope in California,” Malek said earlier in the week. “What we would like to see, obviously, is more jobs created in California but that’s probably not going to happen in the next few months.”

Instead, Malek said, Bush strategists are hoping “that people in the state will be looking at Bush’s “ basic message” with its long-term promises of job creation and increased export opportunities.

In addition, Black said that he expects Bush to try to make a campaign issue out of California Gov. Pete Wilson’s proposal for welfare reform, which will be on the November ballot as an initiative. It would reduce welfare benefits by 25%, limit those who move to California to whatever benefits they would have received in their former state and provide no extra money for additional children born while a family is on welfare.

“I don’t doubt that before this is over the President will be for the welfare reform initiative and Gov. Clinton won’t,” Black said.

Just as the sluggish economy is hurting the GOP in California and elsewhere, so is the Democratic shift toward the South and toward the center.

In the South, Republicans concede Clinton’s home state of Arkansas to him--with its six electoral votes--and admit that they will have a hard time holding on to Gore’s Tennessee, with its 11 electoral votes. In addition they anticipate that they will have to fight harder than in the past to hold on to Kentucky, with 8 electoral votes, Louisiana with 9, and to the border state of Missouri with 11.

But if the President’s poll ratings rise nationally, as aides believe is already happening, they expect him to move in front in the two big Southern states of Texas, with 32 electoral votes, and Florida, with 25, and to hold the smaller states in the Deep South as well.

“I think we’ll get momentum out of the convention and we need to work hard and campaign hard for the next two weeks between the convention and Labor Day to keep up the momentum,” said Black. “You’ll see the President in the South some, working to tamp down states that have traditionally been part of his base.”

Bush will head out of the convention today for Mississippi and in the next three days also will campaign in Missouri, Georgia and Texas before going to the Midwest battleground state of Illinois.

But the impact of Clinton’s professed centrist philosophy could extend well beyond Dixie, points out UCLA political scientist John Petrocik, who cites the contrast between Clinton’s appeal and that of Dukakis.

“In 1988 you had a Democrat who was perceived as a liberal, which means there were a whole series of states in the South and West where he was unattractive and (which he) had little chance of carrying,” said Petrocik, adding that Clinton has a better shot.

Petrocik, who was a consultant to Bush’s 1988 campaign, noted that Dukakis was more competitive in a number of other states, particularly in the industrial Midwestern giants of Michigan and Illinois. But the potential support there for a liberal Democrat was not sufficient to win.

“Now what you’ve got is an election in which the issue difference between the candidates in those states is smaller and a lot of people who were in the Republican camp in 1988 are now going to be voters in the middle and available to either campaign,” he said.

Times staff writers Cathleen Decker and Douglas Jehl contributed to this story.

This Fall’s Battleground States

The Republicans’ traditional bulwarks, California and the South, could go Democratic in this presidential election. To help make up the difference, President Bush’s strategists are aiming at five big states in the Northeast and Midwest: New Jersey: Governor: Democrat James J. Florio

1992 Poll

Clinton: 51%

Bush: 37% Electoral votes: 15

‘88 Results:

Bush: 57%

Dukakis: 43% Pennsylvania: Governor: Democrat Robert P. Casey

1992 Poll

Clinton: 45%

Bush: 36% Electoral votes: 23

‘88 Results:

Bush: 51%

Dukakis: 49% Michigan: Governor: Republican John Engler

1992 Poll

Clinton: 54% Bush: 30%

Electoral votes: 18

‘88 Results:

Bush: 54%

Dukakis: 46% Illinois: Governor: Republican Jim Edgar

1992 Poll

Clinton: 50%

Bush: 30% Electoral votes: 22

‘88 Results:

Bush: 51%

Dukakis: 49% Ohio: Governor: Republican George V. Voinovich

1992 Poll

Clinton: 43% Bush: 43%

Electoral votes: 21

‘88 Results:

Bush: 55%

Dukakis: 45% Choices for President since 1960

GOP Dem. Illinois 6 2 Michigan 5 3 New Jersey 6 2 Ohio 6 2 Pennsylvania 4 4

Source: Poll based on surveys taken by American Research Group of Manchester, N.H., which interviewed 400 likely voters in each state from July 16-30. Margin of error is plus or minus 5 percentage points.