Dole, Buchanan Plan Different Strategies Before State Primary

When Kansas Sen. Bob Dole brings his presidential campaign to California, he’ll head straight for locations heavy on symbolism: San Quentin prison, the U.S.-Mexico border and Little Saigon in Orange County.

Dole aides said the Republican candidate will campaign in California on the weekend before the state’s March 26 primary, focusing on issues he is expected to use against President Clinton in the fall.

The abbreviated three-day schedule indicated that the Dole campaign was confident of easily winning the Golden State’s presidential primary over conservative commentator Patrick J. Buchanan.

At San Quentin, Dole is expected to hammer away on the death penalty and the need to be tough on crime. At the border, it will be illegal immigration. And at Little Saigon, in Westminster, Dole is expected to endorse the “California civil rights initiative” designed to eliminate state affirmative action programs.

Aides said the trip schedule, covering March 22-24, was still tentative and that changes were possible. One source said the California campaign had sought to have Dole here for five days, but had to settle for three.

Buchanan has scheduled a weeklong blitz, insisting there still is hope for an upset win in California that would derail, at least temporarily, Dole’s cruise to the GOP nomination in San Diego in August.

As for departed candidate Steve Forbes, his California office still was in operation Friday as aides wrapped up details of the publisher’s candidacy. Forbes withdrew from the contest last week.

Bill Saracino, who was Forbes’ West Coast campaign coordinator, said Friday that some Forbes supporters are following Forbes into the Dole camp and others are going to Buchanan.

“It’s a mixed bag,” Saracino said, “but I’m going to vote for Steve.”

Forbes and seven other former candidates remain on the California ballot, which was printed before Dole began his winning streak and the other candidates began to drop out.

Dole is expected to emphasize issues that have resonated with California voters. Gov. Pete Wilson, Dole’s general chairman in California, made crime and illegal immigration the key issues of his 1994 reelection campaign.

Wilson also emphasized affirmative action in his aborted presidential campaign in 1995, and with the initiative on the ballot in California this fall, analysts expect it to be a major issue.

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With 165 delegates at stake in California’s winner-take-all primary, it is possible for Dole to exceed the 996 needed to cinch the Republican presidential nomination March 26.

Dole’s other appearances are expected to include a visit to an aerospace plant, possibly in Palmdale, to focus on Clinton’s decision not to order additional B-2 bombers.

Dole also plans a brief foray into the San Joaquin Valley--Fresno or Bakersfield--to talk about agriculture and the importance of exports to the California farm economy. That stop would seem to be aimed at Buchanan, who has been critical of foreign trade agreements made by Clinton with Dole’s help as Senate majority leader.

While Dole’s events are largely planned to reach large audiences via the media, Buchanan’s schedule is heavy with local rallies of his grass-roots conservative supporters.

Peggy Mew, Buchanan’s California coordinator, said Buchanan will kick off his California effort with a rally in Rancho Cucamonga on Tuesday and will continue through the following Monday with stops at San Diego, Burbank, Bakersfield, Fresno, Sacramento, Pinole, Milpitas, Carpinteria, Santa Barbara and Orange County.

“It’s going fantastic,” said Mew, an aide to state Sen. Richard Mountjoy of Arcadia, Buchanan’s California chairman. “We’re very busy.”

She said volunteers were walking precincts, calling potential Buchanan voters and working the shopping centers.

“We’re doing the grass-roots,” she said.

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Most California political experts expect Dole to win the state comfortably. Buchanan got 26% of the vote in the 1992 primary against then-President George Bush, who already had cinched the nomination.

One source noted that about the best a real conservative candidate has done in recent years was former commentator Bruce Herschensohn’s 38% percent of the GOP vote in the 1992 U.S. Senate primary. He defeated moderate Tom Campbell and Sonny Bono.

Herschensohn, however, said that is not necessarily a good gauge for measuring how well Buchanan might do this year.

“The problem is Pat is not really giving the conservative philosophy,” Herschensohn said in a telephone interview from Cambridge, Mass., where he is a fellow at John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

“There are many conservatives for him, obviously, but there are many opposed to him also,” Herschensohn said.

Buchanan is more of a populist on issues like trade and U.S. intervention around the world, he said.

“I love the guy, but you don’t vote for a president based on personal feelings,” said Herschensohn, who said he had supported Forbes because of his flat tax proposals.