Bush’s Sun Setting in the East as Economy Dims : Politics: Even in New Jersey, ’88 backers are jumping over to Clinton or Perot. New York and Pennsylvania numbers run against the President.

In the 1980s, the Garden State Plaza and other shopping malls that line the highways of northern New Jersey thrived along with the state’s economy. And New Jersey voters regularly gave Republican presidential candidates the biggest majorities of any Northern industrial state.

But in 1992, a stillness has fallen here, reflecting dismal economic conditions. And the consequences of this decline, as interviews with voters in the Garden State Plaza and with political analysts suggest, could turn out to be disastrous for President Bush’s fragile hopes for reelection.

“George Bush has an obsession with world problems, and that doesn’t help with the economy,” said Joseph Santoria, a father of three whose computer development business has suffered from the downturn. Santoria, a 1988 Bush voter, plans to cast his next ballot for Democrat Bill Clinton.

“I don’t know that Clinton has the answers,” he said as he browsed through the Nordstrom store that dominates the mall. “But we need a change.”

New Jersey along with New York and Pennsylvania make up a triad of Northeast industrial states, with a combined total of 71 electoral votes, more than a quarter of the 270 needed for a majority. And if the bad news for Bush is that he is trailing in New Jersey, with its 15 electoral votes, the worse news is that his chances of winning are even dimmer in its two bigger neighboring states.

New York, with 33 electoral votes, went for Democrat Michael S. Dukakis in 1988, and the obstacles to Bush reversing that verdict in 1992 seem all but insurmountable.

“What is happening in New York is like what is happening elsewhere, only more so,” said Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist Institute of Public Opinion, whose survey taken last month showed Clinton with a 19-percentage-point lead over Bush.

“New York is very tough for us,” said David Carney, director of state operations for the Bush campaign. “George Bush has basically given us the state,” said Craig Smith, Carney’s counterpart at the Clinton campaign.

In Pennsylvania, Republicans are putting up more of a fight. But for Bush to succeed, he will have to counter an anti-Administration trend that has been building for months, signaled by the upset victory of Democratic Sen. Harris Wofford in a special election last fall.

That leaves New Jersey as Bush’s best hope among the three. The President put in a full day of campaigning here Thursday and is expected to return at least once before Election Day.

It is a measure of the difficulties he faces here that the hopes of his strategists are based as much on the drawing power of independent candidate Ross Perot as on Bush’s own appeal.

“Before Perot pulled out of the race last summer, Clinton was last in a three-man field,” recalled Bill Palatucci, state coordinator for the Bush campaign. “We can’t go back to that. But what I’m hoping is that Perot can get up a good head of steam.”

Holding up local newspapers with headlines that blared: “Perot Makes Gains” and “Perot Back in Spotlight,” Palatucci added: “My point is that the guy he’s going to take votes from is Clinton. And in a three-way race, we have a hell of a chance.”

“Bush can’t win New Jersey if he needs 50% of the vote,” said Cliff Zukin of Rutgers University’s Eagleton Institute of Politics, which released a poll last month showing Clinton leading Bush with 52% of the vote to 39% in a two-man race.

“The only way Bush can win New Jersey is if Perot becomes a real alternative and gets 15% of the vote or more,” Zukin said.

Perot plans to appear in New Jersey Sunday, his first public campaign rally since entering the race. But it is no clearer here than anywhere else how much support Perot can gain, or which of the other two candidates he threatens most.

Some voters who were interviewed at the Garden State Plaza during a recent weekday were impressed with the Texas tycoon’s much-vaunted business success. “He’s a self-made billionaire,” said Lenny Stelz, a computer engineer. “He knows what it’s all about.”

A Bush voter in 1988, Stelz, a longtime Republican, is unhappy with the President’s handling of the economy. But he believes Clinton lacks the experience necessary for the Oval Office. “Clinton won’t get the job done. He’s not going to do much of anything.”

Bush can still count on a hard core of support in this state, which he carried with 57% of the vote in 1988 and which no Democratic presidential candidate has won since Lyndon B. Johnson’s 1964 landslide.

But economic conditions are particularly severe here, where a recent U.S. News & World Report survey based on personal income, employment, home prices and bankruptcy rated New Jersey 49th among the 50 states, ahead of Ohio. The downturn has cost Bush the support of many of the so-called Reagan Democrats, the factory workers and clerks who were drawn to the GOP by the prosperity of the 1980s.

“We’re having trouble getting the union guys and all those people who live in Cape Cod homes and drive Federal Express trucks,” said New Jersey coordinator Palatucci.

Bush is also turning away what Palatucci calls the “Murphy Brown vote”: suburban housewives who resent his opposition to abortion rights and working women who are troubled even more than male voters by the economic slump.

For example, Lucy Magnus, a clerk at Nordstrom’s Garden State Plaza store, voted for Bush in 1988 but is going to switch parties in 1992. “I am not happy with the way things are going. I think he’d be better for women,” Magnus said of Clinton, not only because of his support for abortion rights, but because she prefers his plan for bringing the economy back to life.

Republicans claim that Bush can win back such votes by stressing his own Agenda for American Renewal, released with much fanfare last month. Former Republican Gov. Thomas H. Kean said GOP polls show that if voters are asked to compare the Bush and Clinton economic plans, without labeling them, the Bush proposals come out ahead.

“But if you add the name George Bush to it, they say, ‘Oh,’ ” Kean added, “and they’re not so sure.”

As one mall shopper, Anthony Marolda, a retired utility worker and 1988 Bush voter who is now leaning toward Perot put it: “I don’t think the President is in control of certain things.”

To the extent that that perception is shared by other New Jersey voters, it may be an even more serious threat to Bush’s chances than the economic statistics.

The recession has not been as severe in Pennsylvania--the state ranked 35th on the U.S. News & World Report chart of economic conditions--but it has been bad enough to give most voters a low impression of Bush. His unfavorable rating was 49%, compared with 29% favorable in the most recent statewide poll, taken by the Millersville University Center for Politics just before the presidential debates.

And Bush’s task is viewed as more difficult because Democrats have traditionally had a strong base in Pennsylvania for presidential elections.

In 1988, Dukakis lost the state by only about 100,000 votes out of nearly 4.5 million cast, a margin of three percentage points.

“This is a very frustrated state” because of the economic slowdown, said Saul Shorr, a Democratic consultant in Philadelphia. “And Clinton can appeal to a core Democratic constituency that has been built up over the years--blacks, Catholics and urban voters--and align that with disaffected people in suburbs who were Reagan Democrats.”

“Unless something unforeseen happens, it’s virtually impossible to imagine that Bush can carry Pennsylvania,” said G. Terry Madonna, the pollster for Millersville University, whose survey showed Clinton ahead of Bush 46% to 34%, with Perot at 7%.

Though Perot’s strength appears to have increased, Democrats say their own surveys show Clinton still has a double-digit lead. Still, Republicans claim that Bush can win the state with the help of Perot. They also hope Clinton’s campaign will be weakened by antagonism between his organization and the state’s Democratic governor, Robert P. Casey, who was kept from addressing the Democratic National Convention about his opposition to abortion rights.

Another potential plus for Bush, his strategists say, is his school choice proposal, which would allow parents to get federal vouchers to help pay tuition for parochial schools. Dick Filling, executive director of the Bush campaign in the state, predicts Bush’s advocacy of this plan will help him win Catholic votes in the Philadelphia suburbs.