President Who? Democrats Shun Campaign Help

Hey, Democratic candidate, do you want President Clinton or Vice President Al Gore to come campaign for you this fall?

“Only if they’re coming to endorse my opponent,” said freshman Democratic Rep. Don Johnson of Georgia.

“I don’t intend to ask President Clinton to come out here,” said Wyoming Democratic gubernatorial candidate Kathy Karpan. “Why be cute about it? Of course he’s a liability.”

“I’d rather kiss (Republican congressional candidate) Zach Wamp on the lips at noon in front of the courthouse than have to campaign with Clinton right now,” said a Tennessee Democratic Party leader.

The White House appears to have gotten the message. In preparing its strategy for this fall’s midterm elections, the President’s political advisers have decided that he will respect the wishes of candidates in many parts of the country and stay away.

Sensitive to the possibility that Clinton’s low poll ratings could hurt Democratic congressional candidates, advisers say Clinton’s chief role between now and Nov. 8 will be to employ his proven fund-raising skills in selected states while articulating a broad vision of the party’s principles and its direction for the future.

In a sense, the President will also be trying to put some distance between himself and his own Administration, seeking a platform above the bloody legislative trenches where he has waged so many battles over crime, health care and the budget. He plans to spend the next two months looking forward, not back, asking Americans to think about where their nation might go rather than about the zigzag course it has just completed.

In short, he will attempt to reprise the “new Democrat” who campaigned on pledges to reduce the size of government, reform the way Congress operates, end the current welfare system and break the shackles of partisan politics.

The strategy is a recognition that while the party in power traditionally loses some congressional seats in a midterm election, this year is shaping up as an opportunity for a major daylight heist by the GOP.

Tony Coelho, the new de facto head of the Democratic Party, concedes that Democrats will likely lose 18 to 22 seats in the House, potentially giving the GOP a larger presence in the lower chamber than at any time since Dwight D. Eisenhower was President. Coelho expects the Democrats to lose at least three seats in the Senate, although a net loss of seven Senate seats--giving Republicans a majority there--is not implausible.

Democratic leaders insist that this fall’s elections are not a referendum on Clinton and the Democratic agenda, but rather a collection of discrete local races. While they concede that Clinton may be a liability in some parts of the country--the South, Southwest, the Plains and the Mountain states are considered virtual “no-fly” zones for the President--he remains a big draw in the Northeast and the West, particularly in California.

GOP leaders are doing all they can, however, to portray the anticipated results of the elections as a vote of no confidence in Clinton.

“This is the best political environment for Republicans I have ever seen, and the reason is Bill Clinton and his policies,” said Republican National Committee Chairman Haley Barbour. “He has reminded people of what they like about the Republicans.”

Given the chilly climate, what’s a President to do?

Political analyst Stuart Rothenberg said that Clinton ought to confine his participation in the campaigns to fund-raising efforts. “If I were Dave McCurdy (a conservative Democratic congressman running for Senate in Oklahoma), I’d buy Clinton a one-way ticket to Boston and have him stay up there until November.”

Republican pollster Frank Luntz agrees. “If I were a Democratic candidate, I would invite the President in for a candlelight fund-raiser--after all the local news deadlines--and make it too dark for photographers and just light enough for donors to sign their checks. Then I’d get him out of town fast.”

Even Clinton’s own pollster, Stanley B. Greenberg, is advising Democratic candidates nationwide to emphasize their independence and downplay their ties to Clinton and the national Democratic Party. If they are attacked for their votes for Clinton programs, Greenberg advised in a memo that surfaced last month, they should respond: “I didn’t do it for him. I did it for you. “

But Democratic National Committee Chairman David Wilhelm warns that candidates who turn their back on the President and the party’s accomplishments risk making a difficult situation worse. Wilhelm argues that the Democrats have a solid record to run on and a fat target in Republican obstructionism to run against.

“If Democrats run defensive, reactive campaigns and allow Republicans to define who they are and who we are, then we’re going to be in trouble,” Wilhelm said this week. “But if Democrats seize the agenda, there is so much positive to talk about, and that works in any district in the country.”

California, with its critical Senate and gubernatorial races, will be the White House’s priority this fall, according to political aides. The national Democratic Party is pouring $1 million into the state for voter registration and get-out-the-vote efforts, the most it has ever spent in a single state in a non-presidential election year.

Clinton will headline a Kathleen Brown fund-raiser in Los Angeles on Sept. 18 and probably will visit the state again before the Nov. 8 election. He has appeared twice on behalf of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who is in a close reelection fight with Republican Rep. Mike Huffington (R-Santa Barbara).

In addition, First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton is scheduled to be in San Francisco and San Diego Thursday and Friday on behalf of Brown while Gore will be campaigning for Feinstein on Sept. 23 in San Francisco.

Clinton also is expected to make appearances in New York to support the reelection bid of Gov. Mario M. Cuomo and in Pennsylvania to try to bolster Sen. Harris Wofford, a stalwart supporter of Clinton on health care reform.

Wilhelm and White House aides said Clinton will appear locally as well as on a national stage to trumpet the accomplishments of his first two years in office, take credit for a robust economy and offer a broad vision of where he intends to lead the country in his remaining time in office.

The White House is preparing a series of speeches--beginning Friday at a Baptist convention in New Orleans--for Clinton to review his record and lay out the themes that will undergird the rest of his presidency.

The speeches will attempt to detach Clinton from Congress and from specific legislation. He will talk about universal health care as a national imperative, not a Clinton policy initiative. He will talk about crime as a national shame, not as a piece of Democrat-engineered legislation. He will talk about values, about community, about caring, aides said.

Centrist Democrats have been encouraging Clinton to take a more confrontational stance toward Congress and seek to rise above the partisan political “static” that so confuses and infuriates voters.

Al From, head of the moderate Democratic Leadership Council, wrote a long memo to Clinton last month urging him to return to his centrist roots and renew his pledges to the “forgotten middle class.”

“Generally what I suggested is that he has to reframe the debates in a new context, to get out of the partisan straitjacket that has dominated us since 1981,” From said in an interview. “What happened to him in the past two years was that instead of reframing the challenges for the 1990s, he has been taking the Democratic side in the partisan battles of the 1980s.”

Barbour dismisses efforts by Clinton to reclaim the political center and rise above the fray with appeals on values. He says they ring hollow coming from a man who campaigns from the middle but governs from the left, who speaks of a return to old-fashioned values but who never lived them.

In all, the political season looks like a fairly dismal time for Democrats. Still, loyalists say Clinton and simple good fortune have given them a defensible record and a growing economy to run on.

“It is foolish for Democrats to cut and run from their President,” said Paul Begala, a White House political consultant. “One, people want their President to succeed. Number two, Clinton stands for change. That is a good thing in a country where 62% voted for change in the last presidential election. Three, nobody likes a coward. And four, this race is going to be run on their own merits; you have to stand and deliver on your own, just like every election.”

* CAMPAIGNS CRANK UP: State races intensify in traditional political season. A3