GOP’s Alexander Pays for Being Ahead of the Curve : Presidency: The Tennessean had railed against the Democratic Congress. With GOP at helm, he recasts theme.

As he pursues his quest for the 1996 Republican presidential nomination, Lamar Alexander is trying to recover from the odd political misfortune of being right too soon.

Quicker than any of his rivals to sense the resentment of Washington and Congress that pervades the country, the former Tennessee governor and education secretary began last year to offer voters a timely remedy for the perceived excesses of the Democratic Congress: “Cut their pay and send them home.”

He never dreamed the electorate would go so far as to turn command of Capitol Hill over to his own party for the first time in 40 years, opening a conservative revolution in Washington. With Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) now running the House as Speaker and with Republicans controlling the congressional agenda, suddenly Alexander’s theme had been robbed of much of its punch for GOP primary audiences.

Now Alexander, who will formally announce his candidacy Tuesday, is striving to recast his message. And that’s no small order. The updated approach must be compatible with the new GOP majority--and with his own desire to go to Washington as chief executive.

Even more challenging, the new strategy must enable a soft-spoken Republican from a moderate-sized state to capture the hearts of GOP voters in a field seemingly dominated by the better-known Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.), his chief rival, and the fire-breathing conservative Sen. Phil Gramm of Texas.

These days, Alexander is telling voters that the swollen federal bureaucracy and the moral decay undermining the nation’s spirit are the heinous legacy of Democratic congressional rule and cannot be purged without a Republican President to work alongside the Republican Congress. Specifically, Alexander argued at the Carroll County Lincoln Day dinner here earlier this month, what the country needs is a President like himself--someone trained in state government “who is committed not just to fixing things in Washington but . . . to moving responsibility out of Washington back to where it belongs and to leading a spiritual revival.”

Moreover, he warned the 400 guests--who paid $25 each for roast beef, a baked potato and chocolate cake--that conservative dominance on Capitol Hill may already be in danger. “Now that we’ve captured Washington, we have to make sure that Washington doesn’t capture us.”

As he pushes that argument and tries to distinguish himself from the rest of the field, Alexander has stretched the idea of returning power to the states much further than most other party leaders. But while that theme has clear appeal to GOP voters, Alexander’s straight-forward espousal of it at times puts him at variance with the conservative proposals of other Republicans.

Take welfare, for example. House Republicans are pushing proposals to limit welfare grants to two years. Speaking at a New Hampshire state party dinner in Manchester, Alexander said he was “in favor of a two-year limit on welfare” but was opposed to Congress imposing it. “Don’t decide that in Washington. Send it back” to the states to decide.

Similarly, he says, he opposes abortion but also opposes any federal action to require states to ban the practice. He supports tougher penalties for criminals but opposes the move by House Republicans to require states to increase sentences.

On all these issues, Alexander takes a consistent stand: “Send it back” to the governors and legislatures. “We know what to do.”

Compared to Gramm and Dole--neither of whom would ever win a congeniality contest--Alexander also stands out by virtue of his mild demeanor. But that is a mixed blessing. Alexander’s strategists hope he will wear better than either of his rivals during the campaign. But the candidate concedes that his measured style and restrained delivery may make him seem too moderate to the conservatives who usually dominate Republican primaries.

“I can stand up and say, ‘Let’s cut out their entrails and hang ‘em by their toes,’ and everyone would just say, ‘What a nice speech,’ ” Alexander says.

With that low-key manner and relatively complicated rationale for seeking the presidency, Alexander is banking heavily on New Hampshire’s traditional receptivity to retail-style politics. Here, patience and intimacy are the hallmarks of campaigning among the minuscule Republican electorate--only about 175,000 voters--that will decide the first-in-the-nation presidential primary next February.

That environment seems cut to order for Alexander--a slim, carefully tailored figure with an angular face and usually sober mien, whose strengths as “a living-room campaigner” are widely touted. As he acknowledges: “I wouldn’t have the chance to compete for the presidency if it wasn’t for the New Hampshire primary.”

What’s more, Alexander appears to have an organizational head start here. This is partly a result of supporters recruited through a monthly satellite television program that Alexander conducted from May, 1993, until last month. The show was beamed at about 3,000 gatherings around the country, more than 200 in the Granite State.

Yet even in New Hampshire, Alexander sometimes has problems getting his message across. State Sen. Carl Johnson, one of about two dozen potential supporters who listened to the candidate at a small reception before the Lincoln Day dinner, walked out shaking his head.

“I’d have to spend some more time with him, maybe one-on-one, before I could make up my mind about supporting him,” Johnson said.

“In terms of making the charisma meter tick, we need to do some work,” conceded Tom Rath, the former New Hampshire attorney general who is a leader of Alexander’s effort in this state.

In his 54 years, work is not something Lamar Alexander has ever tried to avoid. Energy and ambition are part of his heritage and have contributed greatly to his climb from humble origins. He became not only governor of his state, but president of its university as well. Along the way, he made himself a millionaire, thanks to a series of shrewd investments, aided by good fortune and good connections.

Some of these deals raised questions about possible impropriety during Alexander’s confirmation hearings as education secretary in 1991, and they are likely to come under further scrutiny as the presidential campaign heats up.

When President George Bush appointed him to the education post, Alexander recalls that one newspaper reported he had grown up in a lower-middle-class family in the mountains of eastern Tennessee. Alexander’s mother was so distraught by what she regarded as a slur that she sought consolation in the Bible.

“We never thought about ourselves that way,” Mrs. Alexander told her son. “You had a library card from the day you were 3 and music lessons from the day you were 4. You had everything you needed that was important.”

Alexander also had some helpful advice from his grandfather: “Aim for the top, there is more room there.”

The young man took this counsel to heart. By the time he got to Vanderbilt University, where he was proficient enough at his studies and at running the 440-yard relay to win the National Collegiate Athletic Assn. scholar-athlete award, one classmate recalls that he was already talking about running for President.

Alexander earned a law degree at New York University, taking time between semesters to serve a summer clerkship at the Department of Justice, then under the rule of Atty. Gen. Robert F. Kennedy.

“Washington was a boiling pot of political action,” he later wrote in “Steps Along the Way,” a memoir of his political career. “Everyone played touch football. This was the age of the young, government-can-do-something, coat-thrown-over-the-shoulder crowd.”

Alexander was impressed enough by the “Kennedy movement,” David Broder reported in his 1980 book, “Changing of the Guard,” that he briefly considered becoming a Democrat.

But that would have meant breaking with eight generations of family tradition in a region of eastern Tennessee that had not sent a Democrat to Congress since the Civil War. Then too, Alexander noted, “to get ahead in the Democratic Party, you had to stand in a long line. The Republican Party was wide open.”

When Alexander did enter politics in 1967, it was as assistant to Tennessee’s first Republican senator since Reconstruction, Howard Baker, who became a formative influence on Alexander’s political career and who remains a friend and unofficial adviser.

Alexander’s success in winning the governorship in 1978 followed a defeat four years earlier in a bid for the same office. This time he had the help of consultant Doug Bailey, who recommended that Alexander break with orthodox campaign style and stage an attention-getting walk across the state.

Discarding his three-piece suit, Alexander donned a red-and-black plaid shirt and a pair of hiking boots. In six months he trudged more than 1,000 miles, spending nights in private homes and pausing often for interviews with the press.

Alexander’s long march not only helped him gain the Statehouse, it also taught him the uses of populist symbolism. Not a flamboyant personality or one who exudes warmth, Alexander has learned how to make himself more appealing to the average person. He does it with bumper-sticker slogans such as “Cut their pay and send them home,” with rituals such as the “homecomings” that he encouraged local communities in Tennessee to stage as a way to celebrate themselves, and with such gestures as driving across the country in his car, as he did last summer to prepare for his run for the presidency.

“He’s a listener,” said Mike Murphy, senior strategist for the campaign. “He sucks up people’s stories like a sponge.”

On last year’s two-month auto trip, Alexander took along a notebook in which he jotted down nuggets for later use on the stump. Among them were the bumper sticker that urged: “Make Welfare as Hard to Get as a Building Permit” and the book of poems written and presented to him by middle school youngsters in East Los Angeles titled “Farewell to Morning.”

Alexander’s two terms as Tennessee governor are remembered elsewhere in the country mainly for his efforts at education reform. Over the bitter opposition of the Tennessee Education Assn., the teachers union, he pushed through a system for rewarding outstanding teachers with pay raises and other recognition.

“He was very confrontational,” said Randy Tyree, the Democratic candidate for governor whom Alexander defeated in 1982. “The upside was he was willing to tackle the issue of schools. The downside was he went at it in the wrong direction. He hit it like it was the teachers’ problem instead of a system problem.”

In “Steps Along the Way,” Alexander listed “not finding a way to work better with the Tennessee Education Assn.” as his “greatest failure” as governor. In his own assessment of what he was able to accomplish, he is more modest than some of his boosters.

“None of us is enormously pleased with what we were able to accomplish in educational reform in the 1980s,” he said in an interview. “We made some progress, particularly among younger children, but all in all we have a long way to go. The most effective efforts we made were when we somehow were able to inspire local communities to do things for themselves.”

While Alexander’s school program earned him national attention, financing pay raises for teachers required a one-cent increase in the state sales tax. This boost, along with three hikes in the gasoline tax to pay for specific highway projects, has provided all the evidence needed by Gramm’s supporters to brand Alexander as a high taxer.

In rebuttal, Alexander points out that Tennessee was the fifth-lowest-taxed state in the nation when he left the governorship after eight years, the same position it had when he became governor.

Another item on Alexander’s resume that leaves him vulnerable is his two-year service as education secretary, which some Republicans say contravenes his self-depiction as an outsider.

For his part, Alexander now advocates the elimination of the department he once headed and claims that as early as 1981, when he was governor, he urged Reagan to cut off federal aid to elementary and secondary schools.

Ever since Alexander began thinking about running for the presidency, some Republicans have scoffed, contending he would not be able to raise the estimated $20 million needed to finance a full-scale campaign. But Alexander, with help from six former finance chairmen for the Republican National Committee, says he is “confident” he can get to the $20-million mark by Thanksgiving, starting with a massive dinner in Nashville next month at which he expects to raise $2 million.

Another set of doubts Alexander is trying to resolve are ideological, stemming from the suspicion that he is insufficiently dedicated to conservative principles and at heart is really a moderate, now a term of opprobrium in the GOP.

Alexander disavows the label. “What about my record suggests that word?” he demanded of an interviewer, claiming that his record as governor shows him to be an “activist conservative.” He cites his decision to close Tennessee’s office in Washington as a symbol of his determination to make the state less dependent on federal largess, his efforts to promote the idea of school choice among his fellow governors and his signing of legislation calling for a minute of silence to allow voluntary prayer in the state’s schools.

His presidential agenda seems like a logical sequel to the conservative goals of the GOP’s “contract with America.” In implementing his overall goal of shrinking the federal government, Alexander wants to turn welfare and Medicaid over to the states, using block grants to pay for these programs. He also wants to cede to the states $25 billion in funds now used for job training. And he favors federal legislation to curtail affirmative action, pointing out that as education secretary, he ended race-based scholarships.

Baker argues that Alexander’s absence of outward passion amounts to no more than a short-term handicap. Over the long run, Baker says, “I believe that Americans are smarter than politicians give them credit for being. They can spot the people who are real and genuine.”