Campaign ’96 : IOWA : Forbes Decries Attacks on Him--and Draws New Fire in Turn : Publishing magnate’s aides say opponents are distorting his views on abortion and gays. Foes say he’s getting what he deserves for past attack ads.

Publishing magnate Steve Forbes, back in Iowa after a day’s break from campaigning, went on the defensive Friday, decrying what he said was an anonymous, organized telephone effort to distort his record as Monday voting here nears.

The Forbes camp offered no evidence to back up its charge, and all of those it singled out for blame--the campaigns of Sen. Bob Dole and Patrick J. Buchanan, as well as Christian Coalition founder Pat Robertson, whose followers are a key segment of the Iowa GOP--denied responsibility. And few of Forbes’ rivals showed him much sympathy, given that the millionaire surged into contention here partly because of his self-financed negative ads.

Buchanan, in a telephone interview from the campaign trail in western Iowa, scoffed at the dirty-tricks allegations as a sign of “a certain measure of panic in Steve Forbes’ camp.”

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“What’s happened is the little rich kid who’s been sitting on his estate throwing rocks at all the cars passing by finally had someone get out of his car and clock him one,” Buchanan added. “I didn’t do it, but he deserved it--and you can quote me on that.”

As he flogged the flat tax throughout Iowa on Friday, Forbes grew increasingly defensive. In stark contrast to his buoyant mood in recent weeks, when polls has showed him nearing Dole and he coyly refused to call his rivals by name, Forbes blasted both Dole and Buchanan at a town hall meeting in Delaware County.

Dole and other Senate leaders, he said, “have allowed our tax code to become the playground for lawyers and lobbyists. Look what they did with it. . . . Where does he stand on term limits? Hard to figure it out. He wouldn’t even allow the Senate to vote on term limits.”

As for Buchanan, while he is a “decent man,” Forbes said, he doesn’t have faith in the American people, but “talks about making Fortress America” with protectionist foreign policies.

Earlier in the day, Forbes said the Christian Coalition “does not speak for most Christians. It tries to speak for its membership, which is as it is in America. There is no one universal church in America. . . . We’re allowed to worship God in our own way.”

It was an angry Forbes who began his campaign day railing against the alleged smear campaign against him, in which he said his views on such issues as abortion and gays in the military were being distorted.

Citing what he said were thousands of anonymous phone calls to prospective voters and a brochure about him “that would make you throw up,” an angry Forbes said that “part of the leadership” of the Christian Coalition “is not enthusiastic about my candidacy. They may have disagreements, but it’s quite another thing to demonize.”

Forbes campaign manager Bill Dal Col placed blame for these efforts on Dole, the Senate majority leader, along with Buchanan and Robertson, but offered no evidence of such a link. Instead, he asked rhetorically, “Who else could it be?”

Monica Hildebrandt, a spokeswoman for the Christian Coalition, said her group has been making calls intended to increase turnout among religious conservatives in Iowa, but that it has not been discussing Forbes’ issues--or any other candidate’s.

The coalition does intend to distribute in Iowa this weekend about 250,000 voter guides through 800 churches. The guides list Forbes as opposed to the group’s position on banning abortion. On the issue of gays in the military, the guide says Forbes’ position is unclear.

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Dole and his aides also denied Forbes’ charge but resisted the type of rhetoric used by Buchanan in brushing off the rival candidate. Dole’s aim, instead, was to solidify his own support among social conservatives.

“Maybe establishment politicians like Steve Forbes and Bill Clinton are uncomfortable with religious conservatives,” Dole said in Ottumwa, Iowa. “They think people of faith have no place in politics, but they are wrong. Today America’s greatest challenges are moral and cultural.”

“We need groups like the Christian Coalition working for us.”

Dole began his Friday campaign swing in Davenport, Iowa, and will return there again this weekend. The city, which has a heavily Catholic population and is a stronghold of anti-abortion sentiment, last month became the first city in the nation to restrict abortion within its boundaries.

A tightening caucus race formed the backdrop to Forbes’ testy swing through eastern Iowa, where he addressed voters on an ice-covered parking lot in Manchester, Iowa, and later shared vegetable soup with prospective supporters here.

Polls in the past several days have shown Dole’s once-formidable lead in Iowa narrowed, support for Forbes stalling and Buchanan and former Tennessee Gov. Lamar Alexander moving up to threaten the front-runners.

“It really is wide open, almost chaotic now,” Buchanan said during a morning appearance on national television, where he celebrated the momentum he gained from beating Texas Sen. Phil Gramm in the Louisiana caucuses earlier this week.

Alexander joined in the sport of taking swings at Forbes and his bountiful ad budget. If Forbes is allowed to turn the Iowa caucuses into “an auction, our country will have lost something very special,” Alexander said in Davenport on Friday morning.

Gramm, for his part, resorted to an unorthodox tactic to recharge his suddenly threatened campaign--live television ads. The first aired Friday night and featured Gramm at the site of a drive-by shooting last year in Des Moines. Flanked by law enforcement officers, Gramm stressed his tough views on crime and punishment.

Said Alex Castellanos, Gramm’s media advisor: “We’re trying to do something ugly and real and raw and just connect.”

Gramm spent most of his campaign day in the Des Moines area and joined in barbs directed at Forbes and the charges he made. With four months of negative ads behind him, Forbes--of anyone in the GOP race--has no right to complain about having his views misrepresented, Gramm said.

“Steve Forbes has probably done more than anyone else to advance distortion in American politics.”

Gramm, as he has in the past, insisted Friday that he will finish no lower than third in Monday’s caucuses, an optimism that did little to offset his increasing difficulty in drawing crowds and his growing desperation for attention.

Gramm used a nearly deserted Asian restaurant in a rundown part of Des Moines on Friday as the stage for his get-tough-on-crime positions. No potential caucus-goers showed up at the restaurant, which was the scene of a summer gang killing--and last night became the scene of his first live commercial.

“I am absolutely committed to getting violent criminals by the throat,” Gramm told a reporters-only crowd, adding that he would push for the death penalty for all murders and 10 years in prison without parole for anyone convicted of using a gun in commission of a crime.

Times staff writers Ronald Brownstein, Henry Chu, Nancy Hill-Holtzman and Robert Shogan contributed to this story.