Bush, Seeking to Narrow Gender Gap, Switches Focus to ‘Family Issues’ : Republicans: He embraces leave programs for workers, but remains opposed to legislation mandating such furloughs.

President Bush sought Friday to close the gender gap separating him and Bill Clinton, embracing family leave as a necessity in the workplace while remaining adamantly opposed to legislation ordering larger companies to grant it.

On the day that a new national poll showed women favoring Clinton by a 54%-36% margin--while among men the two candidates were tied at 46% each--Bush ventured into the heartland of corporate America and, in his first campaign speech focusing on “family issues,” told employees at the AT&T; headquarters here: “The other side’s ideas sound enticing, but you have to ask, ‘Will they work for me?’ ”

As he campaigned in a state that is crucial to his reelection hopes--and one in which, according to a statewide poll completed Sunday, Clinton has an 11-point lead--the President’s campaign organization was working on several other fronts:

--Trying to keep alive the questions surrounding Clinton’s efforts to avoid the military draft as a young man, the campaign prepared its first “negative” television commercial focusing on the issue, a GOP source said.

“It’s a good issue. It’s an important issue. And we’ll make every use of it at every opportunity in the campaign,” the official said, adding that the commercial was likely to be aired next week.

GOP sources said Bush was expected to spend part of his Camp David weekend reviewing proposed new television commercials, including those focusing on Clinton’s draft record.

--And, in an effort to pound home the idea that Clinton favors European-style state intervention in the economy, deputy White House chief of staff Robert B. Zoellick suggested in a television interview that the chaos in Europe’s currency markets was relevant to the presidential campaign in this country because it was caused by the same sort of policies Clinton favors.

“It’s an example of how some of the elite planners in Europe got out of touch with their people. And frankly, that’s one of the reasons why I think what Bill Clinton wants to do isn’t going to work. He and his advisers come from the same school, and they would send us in the wrong direction,” he said.

He added later that a Clinton Administration would seek the same kinds of “government restrictions and government mandates” as those in force in Europe.

Bush flew to this North Jersey suburb of New York City for a half day of campaigning.

Speaking to a crowd of about 500 men and women at AT&T;, the President described “the movement toward equality of the sexes” as “a move toward human justice at its most basic level.”

After Vice President Dan Quayle’s attacks last spring on the television show Murphy Brown’s treatment of unmarried motherhood, Bush sought in particular to identify with the difficulties of single mothers, telling his audience: “Many women are trying to do it all alone. Look, divorce happens. And I know it from my own family--my own daughter.”

Bush’s daughter, Dorothy, was recently remarried, several years after divorcing her first husband and moving to Maryland with her two young children.

“I’ve seen what single mothers are up against, the kind of pressures, trying to do 36 hours of work in a 24-hour day,” Bush said.

Four years ago, even as he was on the way to sweeping Michael S. Dukakis into political oblivion, Bush suffered from a “gender gap,” running into only limited success throughout the autumn as he sought to persuade women to vote for him while building a campaign image on muscular rhetoric and rally-round-the-flag themes.

A national NBC/Wall Street Journal poll published Friday suggests that the President is encountering similar difficulties this year, with only 36% of women supporting him compared to 46% of men. Earlier this week, the CNN/Gallup Newsweek survey found a similar gap. The ABC/Washington Post and CBS/New York Times polls this week show a much smaller gender gap of one to two points, however.

The Bush campaign offered a full-court press on the issue Friday, asserting that 40% of the President’s appointees are women, that he has appointed more than 75% more women to senior executive positions in the government than did President Jimmy Carter, the most recent Democrat to hold the presidency, and that 18.5% of his judicial appointees are women, compared to 15.5% of Carter’s.

The question of family leave has been a divisive one for the President and his allies.

Rep. Marge Roukema of New Jersey, who is the leading Republican on the issue, was said by spokesman Steve Wilson to be “dismayed and disturbed” about Bush’s opposition to the legislation, which would order companies to provide a parent with unpaid time off to care for a baby, among other provisions.

She was said to be in the state, but did not attend the Bush speech. Among those who greeted Bush here was former Gov. Thomas Kean, who two years ago signed legislation almost exactly like the family leave legislation Bush is expected to soon veto.

Bush described as a “noble goal” the legislation’s intention. But he said “the other side puts their faith in government, government mandates. On issue after issue, their solution comes down to giving more power to government.”

On Wednesday, the President proposed alternative legislation, offering tax credits to smaller businesses to make up for the cost of granting employees extended unpaid time off, with health and other benefits provided, to cope with family emergencies or the birth or adoption of babies.

The President also offered as “something that really bothers me” the failure of divorced fathers to support their children.

“It’s time that the long arm of the law taps every deadbeat dad on the shoulder and says: ‘Pay up, or else,’ ” he said.

In Little Rock, Ark., meanwhile, George Stephanopoulos, Clinton’s director of communications, said it was “about time” Bush addressed these issues.

“George Bush is out now courting the women’s vote,” he said. “Where was he three months ago when he vetoed the women’s health initiative, and when he vetoed legislation that would give women the right to choose” an abortion?

Times staff writers Douglas Jehl and Doyle McManus in Washington contributed to this story.

Today on the Trail . . .

Gov. Bill Clinton in Little Rock, Ark.

President Bush in Camp David, Md.

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