CAMPAIGN TRAIL

BOB DOLE

A low-key and conciliatory Dole hopscotched across frigid Wisconsin on Saturday on the third day of a five-day Midwest swing, wooing disaffected Republicans by holding out a hand to his rivals.

“I’ve never been one to dismiss what others were saying in the Republican Party,” he told a crowd of about 600 in De Pere. “I think we have to listen all the time. Whether it was Steve Forbes or Pete Wilson or Lamar Alexander or Pat Buchanan, I’ve tried to listen because each one had a message. Each one was a good Republican.”

A special nod went to Buchanan, who, Dole admitted, “has touched a nerve when it came to people who are concerned about their jobs, about their future. And we will address that. In fact, I think it should be addressed now.”

Dole and Gov. Tommy G. Thompson, who traveled with the candidate, hit hard on the theme of welfare reform.

PATRICK J. BUCHANAN

As Buchanan stumped through Michigan on Saturday in pursuit of an upset that appears increasingly elusive, he won a surprising nod of support from Ralph Reed, the Christian Coalition executive director who has thrown in his lot with Dole.

During a gathering of Michigan Christian Coalition activists in a church in Clawson, a Detroit suburb, Reed said Buchanan had been unfairly tagged by the “liberal media” as “a fanatic, fringe, an extremist.”

Buchanan, who has spent much of the primary season claiming that Dole and his campaign aides were responsible for the “extremist” label, appeared heartened but slightly puzzled by Reed’s statement.

“I appreciate the [defense],” Buchanan said, adding that his critics are “calling all the people who vote for me--and believe in me and have joined our cause--extremists.”

In his speech to the crowd of 1,500 at the Zion Evangelistic Temple, Buchanan turned a respectful morning audience into a cheering partisan crowd. He called attempts to forge international trade groups “the secular substitute for God” and vowed to continue the “cultural war” he called to arms at the 1992 Republican National Convention in Houston.

Compiled from Times staff and wire reports