Dole Sews Up GOP Nomination With Midwest Victories

Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas clinched the Republican nomination Tuesday with victories in four Midwest primaries, finally claiming the prize he first sought 16 years ago and making him almost surely the last of the World War II generation to vie for the White House.

Before Dole could savor his victories, however, billionaire entrepreneur Ross Perot resurfaced Tuesday, saying for the first time that he would run for president again if members of his Reform Party ask him to, a development that would complicate Dole’s general-election prospects.

Dole, whose quest for the White House began in 1980, told a victory rally in Washington: “Tuesday night is about my favorite night of the week.

“It’s just 230 days until Tuesday night, Nov. 5, and Bill Clinton will be on his way home.”

Dole soundly defeated his main rival, Patrick J. Buchanan, in each of the four Midwestern contests. In Illinois and Ohio, nearly complete returns showed Dole winning more than 60% of the vote, with Buchanan winning less than a quarter. In Michigan and Wisconsin, Buchanan did somewhat better, winning just over a third of the vote, apparently boosted by “Reagan Democrats” crossing over to vote in the GOP primary. Dole was winning just over half the vote in both states.

“Nothing is going to stop it now,” Dole enthused. “. . . I think it’s safe to say now that I will be the nominee.”

Earlier Tuesday, Dole picked up several delegates formerly pledged to Lamar Alexander and Steve Forbes. In Tuesday’s voting, he swept nearly all the delegates at stake in Ohio, Illinois and Wisconsin--which award their delegates to the winner of each congressional district--and the lion’s share of Michigan’s delegates, who are committed in rough proportion to each candidate’s vote. A count by the Associated Press indicated Dole would end the night with just over 1,000 delegates--a handful more than the 996 needed for the nomination.

Nonetheless, Dole held short of making an official declaration, hoping to preserve some measure of suspense for California’s vote next week. “We think it’s California here we come,” he declared.

Dole spent the primary day at the Capitol, tending to his job as Senate majority leader. Buchanan, for his part, moved on to California.

From the beginning of the 1996 race for the White House, Republican and Democratic strategists assumed that no matter what the results of the primaries, the autumn campaign would include Perot’s Reform Party and probably Perot himself.

But until now, Perot has been coy about his intentions, and, for him, uncommonly quiet. On Tuesday, he spoke out.

“Let’s assume the dust clears and that’s what the members of this party want. Then certainly I would give it everything I have, because probably there’s not a luckier person alive in this country today,” Perot said during an interview on a San Antonio radio station.

At the same time Tuesday, the Reform Party worked to put Perot’s name on the November ballot in Texas and Florida, among other states. Already, the party has qualified for a spot on the November ballot in California and four other states.

Perot can run as an independent, as he did in 1992, whether or not his new party is on a state’s ballot. Having the party on the ballot, however, would provide him some additional electoral leverage.

Dole said he would try to talk Perot out of running, arguing that a third-party candidacy “helps Bill Clinton.”

Asked specifically what he would do about Perot, Dole said in a CNN interview: “We confront him before he gets in. We say, ‘Ross, we are the reform party. Take a look at your checklist, take a look at what we’re trying to do in the Republican Party. I think every issue that you raise, we have had or will have had a vote on.’

“I would say, ‘Ross, what else do you want?’ ”

But clearly, Perot’s reemergence rattled Dole on what should have been a night of celebration.

“In fact, my wife called me earlier tonight and said, ‘Have you heard what Ross Perot may do?’ I said, well, I’ve heard about it. Let’s take one day at a time. But it does concern me,” Dole conceded in an interview taped for ABC-TV’s “Nightline.”

Dole’s supporters likewise voiced anxiety. “Bill Clinton is going to be defeated if it’s a two-man race,” Gov. Tommy G. Thompson of Wisconsin said Tuesday night on CNN. “I think there’s always a problem if Ross Perot or someone else gets in.”

In 1992, after his on-and-off candidacy, Perot won 19% of the vote with his own brand of entrepreneurial populism. This time, perhaps because of Perot’s erratic performance four years ago, he would begin no better off.

A nationwide Gallup Poll released Monday showed Perot favored by 16% of the electorate, with Dole at 36% and Clinton leading at 46%. In California, a Times Poll showed that Perot would draw 15%, behind Clinton at 52% and Dole at 30%.

Many Republicans fear that Perot could draw disproportionately from voters who would otherwise lean to the GOP, although The Times Poll indicated that at least in California, he would draw roughly equally from both sides.

Some of those potential Perot voters now support Buchanan, which was made clear again Tuesday.

Despite Dole’s victories, Buchanan actually ran better than the senator among Perot voters in Michigan and Wisconsin, according to a survey of voters leaving the polls. Dole did, however, beat Buchanan among Perot voters in Ohio and Illinois, the exit poll indicated.

And Buchanan, opening his campaign in California, claimed that his showings in Michigan and Wisconsin prove his appeal among working-class Democrats, whose support Dole will probably need if he is to defeat Clinton in November.

“It validates everything we’ve said,” Buchanan told reporters before an evening rally in Rancho Cucamonga.

Still, Buchanan conceded that something extraordinary would have to happen for him to win here.

“Maybe we can pull off a miracle in California,” he told supporters. At a press conference outside the Ronald Reagan State Building in downtown Los Angeles, Buchanan attacked federal judges who invalidated voter-approved Proposition 187’s restrictions on social services for illegal immigrants. He called the judges “little dictators in black robes” and urged a federal statute that would impose Proposition 187-like restrictions nationwide.

Speaking to reporters, Buchanan was likewise sanguine as he dismissed speculation, spread largely by his own aides, that Dole might turn to him as a running mate.

For his part, Dole indicated that he was ready to talk to Buchanan, but only if the challenger is ready to talk about bringing the party together.

“I don’t know what Pat Buchanan wants, what he has in mind, what he expects Bob Dole to do as the candidate, as the titular head of the party. But again, I’m willing to talk with Pat Buchanan or any of his representatives. . . . It would seem to me that he’d be saying, ‘What can I do to help Bob,’ ” Dole told ABC.

Dole is not scheduled to arrive in California until Friday. He plans to spend the weekend campaigning in the state before heading to Seattle Sunday night.

On Tuesday, a jovial Dole relaxed in his role as leader of the Senate.

“It’s nice to be back up here again,” Dole said as he convened a Capitol Hill news conference to criticize the latest budget proposal from Clinton.

Dole said he spoke via telephone with Clinton earlier in the day, telling the president that Congress would soon give final approval to the line-item veto, which both Clinton and Dole support.

“We mutually agreed to make the effective date 1997,” Dole said, referring to when the presidential power to veto individual spending items would take effect. “And one of us will get to use the line-item veto.”

For now, Dole said, he plans to save his campaigning for the weekends. “I’m going to be a full-time senator.” Which, in his case, might be indistinguishable from a presidential candidate as he pushes a legislative agenda sure to bring him into direct conflict with the White House. That agenda includes another try for welfare reform, tax breaks for families with children, regulatory rollbacks and a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution.

“We’ve tried, he’s vetoed it,” Dole said.

Tuesday evening, hundreds of Dole supporters gathered at a Washington victory party in a ballroom at the Omni Shoreham hotel, where the stage was draped in a red-white-and-blue banner reading “Bob Dole Hero of the Heartland.”

But exit polls, in the four Midwest states continued to show unease about Dole’s vision for America and an unbridgeable gap in the GOP over abortion.

According to the poll, conducted by Voter News Service, a consortium of four television networks and the Associated Press, nearly 3 out of 5 Wisconsin voters said Dole had no new ideas to bring to the campaign. In Illinois, the split was 50-50 on the question of new ideas.

On abortion, Michigan GOP voters were split about evenly on whether the GOP platform should call for a ban on abortion. In Ohio, 2 in 5 voters said they wanted Dole to pick an antiabortion running mate, while 1 in 5 said they wanted a vice presidential nominee who supports abortion rights.

Before Tuesday’s Midwest primaries, Dole had won 22 states’ GOP primary elections and caucuses in five frantic weeks of campaigning--among the most bruising for the party in 20 years.

Buchanan, in an even more frenzied effort, was victorious in only two early contests. Publishing magnate Steve Forbes, who dropped out of the campaign last week, also won two elections in the opening days of the 1996 nominating contest.

Since March 2, however, Dole’s lock on the nomination has grown increasingly firm.

Dole’s ally in the cause, House Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia, never one for understatement, rallied the GOP with a warning that Nov. 5 “is going to be one of the most decisive days in American history.”

Among other things, the general election will be a contest of generations. Clinton is the first president of the Vietnam War era. Dole, a small-town Midwesterner who spent four years recovering from wounds he received in Italy in 1945, would be the eighth man from a remarkable generation that has dominated the presidency like none other in modern times: a line of World War II veterans that included Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald R. Ford, Ronald Reagan and George Bush.

La Ganga reported from Washington and Balzar from Los Angeles. Times staff writer Stephen Braun in Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., also contributed to this story.

* DOLE TOUTS WELFARE THEME: In Midwest campaign, senator sounds call of reform. A11

* RELATED STORY: A5

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GOP Primary Returns

How the leading candidates did in Tuesday’s contests:

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Dole Buchanan ILLINOIS % OF VOTE 65% 23% DELEGATES 69 0 MICHIGAN % OF VOTE 52% 34% DELEGATES 34 23 OHIO % OF VOTE 66% 22% DELEGATES 67 0 WISCONSIN %OF VOTE 53% 34% DELEGATES 36 0 TUESDAY’S DELEGATE TOTAL 206 23 DELEGATE TOTAL TO DATE 1,005 109

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996 delegates needed for GOP nominatino