Campaign ’96 / REPUBLICANS : Buchanan, in Delegate Hole, Digs for Democrats : After poor showing in Super Tuesday races, he pushes working-class issues in Rust Belt campaign stops.

Shaking off the Super Tuesday defeats that all but doomed his chance for the Republican presidential nomination, Patrick J. Buchanan has launched the latest gambit in his populist campaign: seeking “converts” among working-class Democrats in the Rust Belt.

Buchanan conceded on Wednesday that Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole has a “prohibitive” delegate lead after his sweep of Tuesday’s primaries in seven states. But Buchanan did not slacken his pace, pitching his tough “America first” trade policies in Democratic strongholds in Ohio as he struggles to remain a force Dole must reckon with.

“We are losing delegates, but we are winning converts,” he said while stumping in Cleveland.

In the Midwest, Buchanan aims to expand his base beyond its core of committed GOP conservatives by drawing in disgruntled laborers who believe that President Clinton and congressional Republicans have sold them out with the North American Free Trade Agreement and other trade policies that make it easier for U.S. companies to move operations abroad to places where labor is cheaper.

The workers targeted by Buchanan were a key part of the coalition that won Ronald Reagan two White House terms. Buchanan, a former Reagan aide, hopes to persuade them to cross party lines and back him in next Tuesday’s primaries in Ohio, Michigan, Illinois and Wisconsin.

On Wednesday, he had some reason for optimism about the strategy.

Among those who flocked to see him at a farmers’ market in downtown Cleveland and a rally in Hartville, an industrial town near Akron, were several lifelong Democrats who have come to believe that Buchanan speaks for them.

“I’m going to change my affiliation to Republican next week so I can vote for Pat,” Jerry Lenarz, 42, a steelworker, said after listening to a fiery Buchanan speech in Hartville. “He says what I like to hear and believes what I believe.”

Lenarz said he started paying attention to Buchanan because, as a member of the National Rifle Assn., he appreciates Buchanan’s unswerving opposition to gun control. He became a believer when he heard Buchanan’s attacks on NAFTA and other trade accords that Lenarz thinks are sending manufacturing jobs out of America.

He now views Buchanan as the nation’s last hope.

“If Buchanan doesn’t win, I’m going to sit back and watch the deterioration of this country,” Lenarz said.

Buchanan is traveling by bus through the Midwest in his bid to convince a skeptical, disaffected working class that he is a new breed of Republican.

“This campaign is about all of us, all of us in America,” Buchanan told a crowd of several dozen people Tuesday after a tour of a steel-door factory in Youngstown, Ohio, that produces steel for railroads.

His remarks received only tepid applause--mostly from managers, not workers. It was a response that illustrates the challenge Buchanan faces as he tries to woo wage earners who lack college educations and who traditionally have viewed the Republican Party as the representative of big business and the rich.

Many of the workers at Youngstown Steel Door said they did not know anything about Buchanan, even though this is his second race for the presidency. Others said there is no way they could ever trust a Republican.

“We’ve never had a Republican president do anything for the working man,” said Joe Cuva, 50, a burly welder with blackened hands who has worked at the mill for 10 years. “All they ever did is push us back. It doesn’t matter how well [Buchanan] talks, I couldn’t vote for him unless we see some result. Talking is one thing, doing is another.”

Buchanan seeks to overcome such deep distrust of his party by tapping into worker anger over collapsing industries and the loss of well-paid manufacturing jobs in places like Youngstown, where most of the steel mills closed in the 1980s.

Younger laborers, who do not have decades of loyalty to the Democratic Party, appear more willing to take him seriously. They are drawn not only by his tough talk on trade but also by his opposition to affirmative action hiring policies, his call for a crackdown on illegal immigration and his antiestablishment rhetoric.

Never before has Jim Kula, 30, a laborer at the Youngstown factory, considered voting for a Republican. But Buchanan intrigues him.

“I might vote for him,” Kula said, explaining that he has been watching the conservative commentator on television in recent weeks. “I like his foreign policy. I like that he’s against NAFTA and that he wants to build a wall between the United States and Mexico. I would like to keep foreigners, illegal aliens, out of this country.”

Nonetheless, Buchanan’s party affiliation remains a stumbling block for Kula.

“Republicans really never have been for the working class,” he said. “If he gets into office, will he really help us?”