Dole Focuses on Clinton in Swing Through State

Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, pressing his general election case against President Clinton, used the somber backdrop of San Quentin’s execution chamber to portray his November opponent as an obstacle to legislation that would speed executions of convicted murderers.

Once again largely ignoring Republican challenger Patrick J. Buchanan--and Tuesday’s California primary--to focus on Clinton, Dole said the state’s record of three executions since 1968 “kind of makes you wonder--Is this America?”

“Justice delayed,” he added, “is justice denied.”

About 7 million Californians are expected to vote Tuesday in an election that was hastened by 10 weeks to increase the state’s influence on the selection of a GOP nominee--but in reality has become almost an afterthought. State officials are predicting a 42% turnout, which would be the worst showing here in a presidential primary.

Dole, surrounded by cops and crime victims at the notorious prison, first wrongly accused Clinton of vetoing three bills that would have limited the allowable habeas corpus appeals for death row inmates.

Later, pressed by reporters to offer specifics, Dole aides cited one vetoed measure to diminish appeals, one to cut frivolous lawsuits by inmates and another that would have reimbursed states for the costs of incarcerating illegal immigrants.

In all three cases, those were relatively minor sidelights to bills that Clinton vetoed for unrelated reasons, according to administration officials.

*

Despite the confusion engendered by his pitch, Dole stuck with a full-throated, traditionally Republican assault on Clinton-appointed judges and insisted that he would appoint no-nonsense conservatives to the courts.

“We don’t need judges who will try to find excuses for more criminal behavior,” the senator said. “We need judges who will stand up and fight for the rights of the victims.”

Buchanan, meanwhile, continued to shadow-box with the uncooperative Dole, issuing what amounted to a one-sided fusillade against the presumptive nominee. Much of the day, he chastised Dole for failing to adequately hew to conservative ideals.

He also warned that Dole’s positions would drive Buchanan conservatives and “Reagan Democrats” into the welcoming arms of Texas billionaire Ross Perot. In recent days, Perot has ratcheted up his public flirtation with a November independent bid, and Buchanan said repeatedly Saturday that he expects Perot to run.

“There’s a sense that the Republican Party has collaborated [with Clinton and the Democrats] on NAFTA and GATT, on the $50-billion Mexican bailout, on tax increases, on quota bills, and all the rest,” Buchanan said at a Modesto rally. “Ross Perot is moving right and directly into that vacuum.”

As the last weekend of primary campaigning here opened, Dole for the second day hammered on issues that have drawn emotional responses from California voters. On Friday, he visited the California-Mexico border to support a House-approved bill that would deny public schooling to illegal immigrant children. He also endorsed a national version of 1994’s Proposition 187, which was designed to cut state services to illegal immigrants.

On Saturday came crime, and with it the emotional appeals of victims whose lives have been torn asunder. Speaking along with Dole at San Quentin was Steve Baker, whose teenage son was killed by Robert Alton Harris. Harris was executed in 1992 in the first use of capital punishment in California in a quarter-century.

*

Today, Dole was expected to discuss affirmative action at a rally in Orange County’s Little Saigon, in addition to making a stop at Yorba Linda’s Richard M. Nixon Library. Buchanan was to campaign in Ventura, Carpinteria and Santa Barbara before returning to Los Angeles in late evening.

In making his death penalty assault on Clinton, Dole was picking on a Democrat who--though one would not have known it from the senator’s remarks--not only supports capital punishment but signed death warrants for several inmates while he was governor of Arkansas.

As death penalty protesters chanted in the background, both Dole and Gov. Pete Wilson accused Clinton of thrice vetoing the habeas corpus measures. Later, after scrambling for an explanation, Dole aides lowered the threshold and accused Clinton of vetoing “three criminal justice reforms.”

The one habeas corpus measure vetoed by Clinton was contained in a proposed November extension of the nation’s debt ceiling that Republicans had loaded up with unrelated additions. Clinton vetoed that bill because of the other measures, including an increase in Medicare premiums that he opposed, administration officials said.

*

The two other proposals--limiting lawsuits by inmates and reimbursing states for costs connected to illegal immigrants--were in an appropriations bill vetoed for, among other things, killing the administration’s plan to put 100,000 police officers on the streets.

Actually, both Clinton and Dole have supported cutting back allowable death row appeals to one. Dole, however, insists on a timely appeal and Clinton does not.

While Dole spent most of his Saturday firepower on Clinton, he did issue oblique catcalls to Buchanan and Perot.

Dole noted that at least a quarter of California’s agricultural products are destined for foreign markets and suggested that the anti-trade positions of Buchanan and Perot were shortsighted.

“We’re not going to build a wall around California,” Dole said in rural Clovis. “We need to trade. We need to export.”

Later, at an evening barbecue in Bakersfield, Dole had more direct comments about Perot. “I want to say to the supporters of Ross Perot and the Reform Party the Republicans are the reform party, we are making changes,” he said.

For his part, Buchanan stuck with a grueling campaign schedule that took him, on a whistle-stop-by-bus, from Modesto to Pinole to San Francisco to San Jose. Along the way, Buchanan used Perot as his stalking horse, saying that the Texas independent would have more reason to join the race if Dole turned his back on the working class and conservatives now attracted to Buchanan.

Told early in the day that Perot had said Friday that he might not make a decision on a presidential bid until September, Buchanan appeared slightly surprised. He then contended that would help his efforts to pull the party to the right at the August national convention.

“I think the fact that Ross Perot has suggested that he may run has enormously strengthened my hand with the Republican establishment,” he said. Perot’s voters might just as well be his own, Buchanan said, because, “Buchanan issues are Perot issues.”

He also questioned whether his voters could trust Dole, remarking acidly that even after Dole appeared to clinch the Republican nomination last week, he voted for a Senate bill that among other things gave money to the Department of Education and its “Goals 2000” plan. Conservatives oppose both.

“That tells you what will happen when the pressure is off,” Buchanan said in Pinole, north of San Francisco. “It’s back to business as usual, deal-cutting and splitting the difference.”

Dole’s spokesman, Nelson Warfield, said that there was no free-standing bill on the Education Department, which both Dole and Buchanan want to eradicate. He said he would have to check whether the measures were included in a larger bill--much as the measures Dole criticized Clinton for were included in larger bills.

As the battle for Tuesday’s primaries entered its final weekend, not everything was utterly serious.

Buchanan, for one, was taken aback during a brief breakfast stop at a McDonald’s just outside Modesto. As he ordered two Egg McMuffins and two orange juices for himself and his wife, Shelley, assistant manager Paul Diaz told him that the meal was on the house.

“We’ll take care of it, Mr. Dole,” Diaz said.

Buchanan narrowed his eyes and then let loose his trademark braying laugh. “OK, that’s it. We’re moving out, hit the streets,” he joked, before relenting and eating his breakfast.

Dole’s glancing blow with the surreal came in Las Vegas, where he touched down for an afternoon rally and found himself greeted by an Elvis impersonator, in white polyester and rhinestones, and a Marilyn Monroe look-alike, resplendent in red velvet.

For the record, Elvis declined to say whether he’d vote for Dole. “Let’s just say he’s a good guy,” the faux King said. Marilyn was dismayed; a German citizen, she cannot vote.

The low turnout projections dismayed California officials who, when they moved the primary from early June to late March, hoped to rev up public enthusiasm for voting.

Besides the presidential contest, there were still pressing matters on the ballot. This is the first year that term limits, imposed by voters in 1990, bear their full impact. Twenty-five members of the Assembly and 10 senators were barred from seeking reelection. Up for grabs are nominations in 52 congressional districts, all 80 Assembly districts and 20 of the 40 state Senate districts.

A dozen ballot measures are also on the ballot, the most controversial among them Propositions 200, 201 and 202. Assaults against attorneys, they seek to institute no-fault auto insurance in California, to require losing parties in shareholder lawsuits to pay legal costs, and to limit attorneys’ contingency fees in personal injury, death and property loss lawsuits.

La Ganga reported from San Quentin, Clovis and Las Vegas; Braun from the Central Valley. Also contributing to this article were Times staff writers Paul Richter and Bill Stall. It was written in Los Angeles by Times political writer Cathleen Decker.

* VOTER GUIDE

Special section previews the key issues and races in Tuesday’s California elections. B1