‘92 REPUBLICAN CONVENTION : Clinton Casts for Flagging GOP Hearts : Democrats: In smaller industrial cities, Bush’s rival hopes to pull steadfast Republicans over the fence with Reagan’s old calling card: optimism.

Nancy Valladares ought to be the sort of voter George Bush can count on.

White, middle class, strongly opposed to abortion rights and a Bush voter in 1988, Valladares and her like-minded neighbors have put Battle Creek, surrounding Calhoun County and the rest of Michigan into the Republican column in each of the last five presidential elections.

But Thursday morning found Valladares standing for more than two hours under bright sunshine waiting to shake hands with her new political hero: Bill Clinton.

“I’m pro-life, but I’m going to vote for Clinton,” she said. “Those Republicans have been in for 12 years. What have they done for anyone? Abortion is an important issue for me, but it’s just one issue.”

Valladares took some time in coming around to Clinton--earlier this year she signed a petition for Ross Perot. Now, however, she says, she is solidly for Clinton. “I’ll never vote for Bush again.”

On the final day of the GOP convention, voters like Valladares drew Clinton to Battle Creek for a rally and a full hour of handshaking with a large and enthusiastic crowd--complete with construction workers with American flags on their hard hats cheering him on from a neighboring job site.

Ignoring the huge lead he took in the polls after last month’s Democratic National Convention and regardless of what the surveys end up saying about the size of the “bounce” Bush receives from his party’s gathering, both candidates have laid plans for a close contest that will be partially decided in places like Battle Creek--the smaller factory cities of the large industrial states.

Although the GOP has laid the base of its contemporary presidential successes in the South and Mountain West, it is states such as Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania--through which Clinton will travel by airplane and bus over the next four days--that have provided the deciding votes for Republican candidates in most recent elections. In each case, the votes from smaller cities like this, coupled with more affluent suburban areas, have combined to overwhelm the traditionally Democratic vote of the region’s major cities.

But now, after years of economic difficulties, the Democrats believe they can win here. And as he spoke, Clinton displayed one of the key Democratic strategies in that effort--stealing what was once one of Ronald Reagan’s most powerful themes: optimism.

Republicans, Clinton told the crowd, have become a party of negativism, convinced that they can do nothing to correct America’s problems.

“We’ve tried it their way. It’s time to change,” he said. Solving problems from sub-par education to high-priced health care “will not be easy,” he added, but “the future can be better than the past.”

“Nobody ever promised any generation of Americans a free ride, but we’ve had greater challenges,” he said, citing examples of national triumphs presided over by George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt.

“Don’t tell me we can’t do this, or it can’t be better. We can do it.”

Clinton also carefully stepped around potentially controversial issues on which Republicans hope to trip him up in heartland states--the environment and free trade.

Michigan’s Republican Gov. John Engler said recently that Clinton’s advocacy of higher fuel efficiency mandates for new cars--a move the automobile industry opposes--”is going to be a killer issue” in the state. Clinton supports legislation to mandate that new cars achieve an average of 40 miles per gallon by 2010. Environmental groups have pushed a slightly more ambitious goal, but the Bush Administration has opposed all legislation on the issue.

The issue is only one of several environmental questions Republicans hope to use against Clinton here--saying his policies would cost jobs--even as they attack him in states such as Colorado and California for having a weak environmental record in Arkansas.

Campaign aides worry about the fuel-efficiency issue, in part because the United Auto Workers union, a major force for Democrats here, supports the industry’s opposition to new mandates.

In his speech, Clinton sidestepped the issue, making no specific pledges but saying that environmental efforts can be used “to create jobs, not undermine jobs. There are ways to do that.” Money taken from the defense budget, Clinton argues, should be used to develop environmental technologies.

Trade may be an even more volatile issue here, where Bush’s general support for a free trade treaty with Mexico draws strong opposition from union leaders. Clinton has avoided any specific commitment on a proposed treaty recently negotiated by the Bush Administration, noting that its details have yet to be released.

The Republicans, Clinton said here, “say the only way to expand the American economy is through free trade, and they have it half right.”

Trade, he said, is important, but “most other countries don’t operate by the same rules we do.” The government must “be tough,” he said, and insist that other countries open markets to U.S. products.

The Impact From Past Conventions

Here is how Republican presidential candidates have fared against the Democrats in polls over the last three decades, and the critical “bounce” they’ve received from convention exposure. The numbers to the left are the percentage of respondents who would vote for a candidate at that time.

Source: Gallup national polls