Powell Said Very Close to Announcing Decision : Politics: Sources say he’ll disclose his plans on presidential race either today or Thursday. In a speech, he cautions GOP on cuts in social programs.

Retired Gen. Colin L. Powell plans to hold a press conference either today or Thursday to announce his decision on whether to enter the presidential race, sources familiar with Powell’s decision said Tuesday.

The sources would not disclose Powell’s decision, which has been the subject of intense speculation for several weeks during which Powell has consulted with family members and a wide range of political figures about his future.

In a speech Tuesday to a group of travel agents in Philadelphia, Powell gave little hint of which way he might decide, joking that “I’ve been busy, as you’ve noticed.

“I know that there’s a role for each and every one of us to play,” Powell said. “I’m searching for the role I should play.”

Powell’s imminent decision comes as the current front-runner in the Republican race, Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole of Kansas, stepped up his own efforts to build an institutional wall of support against his nine announced competitors and the potential of a Powell candidacy by gaining the endorsement of New Hampshire’s popular conservative governor, Steve Merrill.

Merrill has been the most aggressively courted Republican elected official in the country. His decision to endorse Dole--scheduled to be announced at a news conference in Manchester this morning--offers the Kansan a potentially substantial boost.

Some party figures said Tuesday they viewed the governor’s endorsement as the first sign of conservatives coalescing around Dole in an effort to head off a Powell candidacy. Indeed, some Republican sources who have recently spoken with Merrill believe he decided to back Dole partly for fear that the moderate Powell might carry New Hampshire and change the party’s direction if he entered the race.

In his speech Tuesday, Powell again struck some of the notes that have raised eyebrows among conservatives. At one point, Powell urged Republicans in Congress to exercise caution in cutting social programs, warning that the poor “might be hurt by all this change and turmoil.”

As he has in the past, Powell also took note of the nation’s racial tensions, saying that he was troubled by “the racial divides that exist within our society.”

“We have to start thinking as a family again,” he said.

Merrill has already signaled that he would be willing to confront Powell in a state that most observers agree would be essential to any Powell candidacy. In a television interview Monday night, Merrill complained that Powell’s boosters in New Hampshire “have been quite on the liberal side here--some of them don’t even support me. So if he did become a candidate, I would have a lot more trouble supporting Colin Powell than I originally thought I would.”

The Dole campaign has been shaken by polls showing that Powell, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, would run even or ahead of the front-runner in Iowa, New Hampshire and among Republicans nationally, if he entered the race. Merrill’s endorsement, which was avidly sought by all of the leading contenders, provides the front-runner a badly needed psychological boost.

“The Merrill endorsement, as it happens [today], shows the fact that conservatives around the country recognize that Dole is the only candidate in the race who can beat Clinton and carry on the conservative revolution,” said Scott Reed, Dole’s national campaign manager.

Added a prominent Dole supporter: “When people say, ‘I don’t want Colin Powell as the nominee’ and ask who is the only one who can stop him, they are gravitating to Bob Dole.”

For all of Dole’s rivals, the expected endorsement underscores the organizational and financial advantages systematically accruing to the front-runner. Dole has raised more money, and garnered far more political endorsements, than any of his competitors.

As the race gathers speed in the coming weeks, Dole’s opponents are likely to try to turn these advantages against him--arguing that he is pursuing endorsements so aggressively because he lacks a message that would win him voter support on his own.

“The problem with the Dole campaign is not that they need one more senior endorsement; it’s that they don’t have a message,” said Tom Rath, the chairman of Lamar Alexander’s campaign in New Hampshire.

With the announcement today, Merrill would become the 14th Republican governor to endorse Dole. On Friday, Dole is expected to be endorsed by moderate Pennsylvania Gov. Thomas J. Ridge.

In addition, Dole has won endorsements from 23 of his fellow senators and 80 members of the House of Representatives.

Exactly how much this institutional support is worth remains a matter of dispute. But in his unsuccessful 1988 bid for the GOP presidential nomination, Dole painfully learned how valuable support from a governor can be in a New Hampshire primary. After Dole seized the early advantage by capturing the Iowa caucus, support from then-Gov. John H. Sununu helped George Bush rebound in New Hampshire and set him on the path to the nomination. Bush rewarded Sununu by naming him chief of staff in the White House. Dole is expected to name Merrill as general chairman of his national campaign--the highest ranking position in his organization.

Merrill’s endorsement would help Dole strengthen his position in at least three different respects. In the most conventional sense, Dole can draw on Merrill’s political organization around the state. Second, an endorsement from Merrill offered the best opportunity for any of those chasing Dole to energize their campaigns in New Hampshire. By locking up the governor, Dole makes it more difficult for any of his rivals to emerge from the pack in a state where none of them now attracts more than 10% support in the polls. “Having had that possibility [of an endorsement] removed from us,” said Rath, “it denies us another opportunity to make a breakthrough.”

Perhaps most important, Merrill offers an impeccably conservative imprimatur to Dole in a state where his conservative credentials are under constant attack--not only from his rivals but the Manchester Union-Leader, the fiercely right-leaning newspaper. The Union-Leader has endorsed conservative columnist Patrick J. Buchanan, who has fallen to third in recent New Hampshire surveys behind magazine mogul Malcolm S. (Steve) Forbes Jr.

Merrill’s decision is perhaps more damaging to Texas Sen. Phil Gramm than any other candidate. Among the Republican contenders, Gramm is probably closest to Merrill ideologically.

But Gramm alienated the New Hampshire governor as well as the locally influential newspaper by seeming to promote the efforts of Arizona and Delaware to infringe on the state’s cherished first-in-the-nation primary status.

“Gramm just got in the way of his own message,” said one source close to Merrill.