Rivals’ Attacks Met With ‘Dolenomics’

Answering criticism that he is insensitive to working Americans, Sen. Bob Dole fired back on Saturday with an economic agenda that opens a new line of attack against both Patrick J. Buchanan, his chief opponent in Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary, and President Clinton.

Sharpening his efforts to keep Buchanan from dominating the GOP debate on economics and to build a case against the president he hopes to oppose this fall, Dole declared: “These are the best of times for many who work on Wall Street, but the facts leave no doubt they are the worst of times for many who work on Main Street.”

Dole called his proposal, presented in a dinner speech to the Hudson Chamber of Commerce, “Dolenomics.” He outlined his “four freedoms of economic security,” which call for freedom from excessive federal regulation, unreasonable taxation, deficits, and “freedom to compete in a free and international marketplace.”

Although Dole has occasionally broached economic issues during his campaign, his speech marked his first effort to offer a detailed policy in an area that until now has been focused on by Buchanan and publishing magnate Steve Forbes, another GOP rival.

The latest polls in New Hampshire show Dole battling with Buchanan for the top spot in Tuesday’s primary. Polls also show former Tennessee Gov. Lamar Alexander in the hunt. In recognition of Alexander’s rising fortunes, the Dole campaign now has on the air two ads blasting him as “too liberal.”

Meanwhile, sources close to Phil Gramm, who dropped out of the race last week, said the Texas senator will fly to New Hampshire today to endorse Dole.

Asked Saturday morning if the reports of Gramm’s endorsement are true, Dole sidestepped the question: “It’d be nice if he did. We’re good friends. I’d really appreciate it.”

Forbes, whose self-financed campaign is sagging in the polls, affirmed Saturday his intention to stay in the race even if he falls short of his goal of a third-place finish.

“We’ll have to see what the result is on Tuesday,” Forbes said at a New Hampshire appearance Saturday. But later he declared he doesn’t expect to drop out. “No, I am in it for the full nine innings.”

In a flurry of activity during the final, snowy weekend before the nation’s first presidential primary, the major GOP candidates rumbled toward their showdown amid hastily arranged photo opportunities, a final burst of advertising and new charges of dirty tactics.

Buchanan, who last week suspended a top campaign aide after it was disclosed the aide had spoken on gun rights at meetings attended by white supremicists, was buffetted by charges that his backers in Louisiana distributed literature critical of Gramm’s interracial marriage.

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Buchanan denied the charge. And at an enthusiastic rally in Portsmouth, he continued to emphasize protectionist economic ideas.

He said as president he would cancel the North American Free Trade Agreement. “There will be no more $50-million payoffs to the banks,” he said, a reference to the bailout of Mexico.

He also derided Dole’s new emphasis on the economic squeeze confronting the middle class, which began after Buchanan finished a close second to the Kansas senator in Monday’s Iowa caucuses. Buchanan joked that he might sue Dole for intellectual property theft.

In Hudson, Dole focused on the plight of U.S. workers. Seeking to turn against Clinton an issue the president stressed against George Bush in 1992, Dole said that the average wages for Americans “haven’t increased one cent” since the Democratic administration took office.

Part of what Dole said Saturday restated his positions that reducing federal spending and taxes and balancing the budget are keys to economic revival. But he broke new ground in trying to define a hawkish trade policy that stops short of protectionism.

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He sought to simultaneously criticize Buchanan as a protectionist and rebut the political commentator’s attempts to portray him as too weak on foreign trade competitors.

“A Dole administration will quickly declare an end to the Clinton trade policy of surrender,” Dole said. “I will use the tools that Congress has provided to fight for U.S. trade involvement in every country around the globe.”

Turning to attack Buchanan’s protectionist ideas, Dole said: “Protectionism and isolationism are not the answer to competing against other thriving, successful economies in the world market.”

Earlier in the day, Dole made campaign stops clearly staged to attract television coverage. Replicating a similar 1988 campaign event by Bush, who defeated Dole in that year’s GOP primary, the Kansas senator rode in a snow plow as it cleared driveways in front of homes owned by New Hampshire Senate President Joe Delahunty and former New Hampshire Gov. John H. Sununu.

But after Dole’s campaign aides were pressed by reporters to explain why he was spending so much time as the primary approached with state politicians instead of meeting and greeting potential voters, additional stops were quickly arranged at Samantha’s, a restaurant near the New Hampshire-Massachusetts border, and at a fishing and gun show in downtown Manchester.

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Alexander had harsh words for Dole in Saturday’s stump speeches. He accused Dole of unfair campaign practices for recruiting out-of-state protesters to distribute leaflets that claimed Alexander increased taxes and fees 52 times during his two gubernatorial terms in Tennessee.

Five members of the Tennessee Conservative Union passed out the leaflets, which were labeled as being paid for by the Dole campaign committee and contained part of a 1985 Tennessee newspaper article stating that Alexander had advanced the idea of a state income tax but had been rejected by the state Legislature.

Alexander was clearly irked by political gamesmanship engineered by the Dole campaign, which admitted paying travel costs for the union members. “We looked at a new tax system, and I never recommended to Tennessee an income tax,” Alexander said testily. “I’m very surprised by this. Sen. Dole must be completely out of new ideas, which ought to be embarrassing for him, a man of his position.”

At each campaign stop, Alexander maintained he wanted to address issues. Yet he availed himself of every opportunity to lob verbal bricks at Dole for what he called his “mudslinging.”

From the porch of Joe’s Meat Shoppe in North Hampton, Alexander held up the mud boots he used as props in the closing days of his Iowa campaign. Noting the drifting snow blanketing New England on Saturday, Alexander said the Dole campaign brought a “new blizzard of mud” to New Hampshire.

Buchanan, meanwhile, was forced to answer Gramm aides’ charges of a racial smear campaign leading up to the Louisiana caucuses. The Gramm aides said a publication called “The Truth at Last,” distributed at some caucus sites, showed a photo of Gramm and his wife, Wendy, who is of Korean descent. A caption said: “Many conservatives will not vote for him due to his interracial marriage. He divorced a white wife to marry an Asiatic.”

The Gramm aides said they believe Buchanan backers were responsible for the leaflets.

Nelson Warfield, chief spokesman for the Dole campaign, told reporters traveling with Dole that Buchanan owed Gramm and his wife an apology. “If he’s serious about not running a racist campaign, then he should apologize,” Warfield said.

Buchanan, however, denied his supporters were involved in the incident, calling it “outrageous” and suggesting it was a smear campaign to derail his campaign.

Buchanan defeated Gramm in the Louisiana vote, a contest the Texas senator had expected to win and a loss from which his campaign never recovered.

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Times staff writers Ronald Brownstein, Bob Sipchen, Eleanor Randolph, Gebe Martinez, Michael A. Hiltzik and Robert Shogan contributed to this story.