Dole Vows Not to Cede California to Clinton

Campaigning at the birthplace of a man who had more than one political resurrection, Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole vowed Sunday not to cede California to Bill Clinton despite the president’s broad lead over the presumptive Republican nominee in statewide polls.

“We’re not going to write off California in 1996,” Dole declared at the Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace in Yorba Linda. “We’re going to fight to the bitter end. . . . Those polls will change.”

The Kansas senator later renewed his endorsement of the California Civil Rights Initiative, a proposal, due to be on the November ballot, to scrap government-sponsored affirmative-action programs in the state.

“We ought to do away with preferences,” the senator said, standing under a five-language banner at a shopping mall in the Little Saigon area of Westminster, where he also denounced Clinton for upgrading U.S. relations with Vietnam.

Attacking affirmative action, Dole declared: “This is America. It ought to be based on merit. That’s what the United States is all about.”

While Dole spent the Sunday before the California primary defining differences between himself and his November opponent, his strongest remaining GOP challenger continued to air threats of a third-party candidacy.

In recent days, former commentator Patrick J. Buchanan has played “good cop, bad cop” with himself, sometimes backing away from his threat to run against Dole and Clinton in the general election and sometimes seeming to sanction it. On Sunday, Buchanan was the bad cop again.

“All the options are open,” he declared in a morning appearance on NBC-TV’s “Meet the Press.”

As he has for days, Buchanan accused Dole of leaning to the political center.

“I know who they want me to endorse, but I’m not sure yet what they want me to endorse, and this is where we come to our problem,” Buchanan said. “The problem is, is the Republican Party going to represent middle America or corporate America? . . . I don’t know what Sen. Dole is going to do when he goes to the convention.”

Sunday marked the final day of in-state campaigning for Dole, who after his Yorba Linda and Westminster appearances flew to Seattle for a rally. He is scheduled to spend today on a sentimental journey to his hometown of Russell, Kan. Buchanan, after spending Sunday traveling from San Jose to Carpinteria, Santa Barbara and Los Angeles, was to visit San Diego and Sacramento today before leaving for Spokane, Wash.

At the Asian Garden Mall in Westminster, about 2,000 people listened as Dole tailored his remarks to the strong anti-Communist sentiments of first-generation Vietnamese Americans.

They cheered him enthusiastically when he stressed patriotism and conservative ideals and chanted “Dole ‘96, Dole ’96.”

About 475 people attended Dole’s visit to the Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace, including many of Orange County’s most influential Republicans. A blue sign saying: “Dole: He’s One of Us” was prominently displayed near the stage, while rows of U.S. flags served as a backdrop.

Dale Dykema, president of the conservative Lincoln Club of Orange County, said Dole originally was going to speak only to the club’s board of directors. But after interest grew, the entire membership was invited.

Dykema said the Lincoln Club is likely to play a prominent role in Dole’s campaign by helping increase voter registration and “making significant campaign contributions.”

“Orange County can be pivotal to what’s going to happen in the rest of California,” Dykema said.

The Sunday campaigning illustrated what much of this primary season has been--at least since early March, when Dole regained his footing and began his uninterrupted sweep of states: Dole looked ahead to Clinton in November, while occasionally poking at Buchanan and potential third-party candidate Ross Perot and also asking them to join his team.

And Buchanan looked ahead with certainty only as far as August’s Republican National Convention in San Diego, where he wants to have a central role in crafting the party’s message, even if Dole is the nominee.

Both men have conceded that Dole will be the victor here Tuesday and thus claim all 163 delegates in the winner-take-all primary. A Los Angeles Times Poll published last week showed Dole ahead of Buchanan among likely voters, 52% to 18%.

The same poll, however, showed Dole trailing Clinton by a 58%-37% margin, explaining Dole’s efforts during the weekend to negatively define Clinton and also to vow a hard fight in the state with the biggest chunk of electoral votes.

Dole’s assurances about fighting here until the “bitter end” were prompted by the concerns of state Republicans that, for the second straight presidential election, California would essentially be handed over to the Democrats.

In 1992, President Bush opted not to contest California, and the resulting vacuum of interest torpedoed the chances of other Republicans further down the ticket.

Dole, speaking to several hundred GOP activists at the Nixon library, noted the traditional volatility of California polls. He specifically reminded the audience of Gov. Pete Wilson’s come-from-behind victory in 1994 over Democrat Kathleen Brown.

“I know there’s a poll out that shows President Clinton slightly ahead--20 points,” Dole said. “That’s slightly ahead when you talk to Pete Wilson.”

Earlier, as he landed at Ontario International Airport, Dole said he was confident that his three days of campaigning here would be the start of a groundswell for his candidacy.

“We are not going to cede California,” he punned. “We are going to seed--S, double E, D--California. . . . We’ve been seeding it all weekend, and I think the seeds are going to start to grow.”

For good measure, however, Dole also pleaded Sunday with two men--Buchanan and Perot--who are considering independent bids whose votes could come at least partially at Dole’s expense.

“I would hope that Pat Buchanan would find it in his heart as a good Republican to join forces and close ranks and bring people together,” he said.

“Ross Perot, wherever you may be in Texas . . . if you want reform, we are the reform party,” said Dole, ticking off a list of Perot proposals that Republicans had approved in the past year.

“Let’s not get in the race and make it easier for Bill Clinton.”

Dole’s embrace of the anti-affirmative-action measure was part of an intense effort in recent days to play to each of the major issues that pull at the emotions of Californians. Among other things, the strategy has demonstrated that the senator, who historically has been loath to listen to his advisors, is closely mimicking the successful campaigns of his chief California surrogate, Wilson.

Since Friday, Dole has hammered Clinton and expressed his own conservative positions on immigration, crime, welfare, defense cutbacks, affirmative action and the move to make English the nation’s official language.

Dole’s endorsement of the civil rights initiative was not new; last November, he confirmed his support in an opinion piece published in The Times. Before then, he introduced a Senate bill that would duplicate the initiative at the federal level.

But his public endorsement Sunday was meant to draw a clear distinction with Clinton, who is expected to speak out against the initiative during the presidential campaign. Public opinion in California is running 2-to-1 in support of the measure.

The Westminster audience of before which Dole made his pitch was largely Vietnamese. While his supporters approved of his stance toward the initiative, perhaps the greatest response came to his exhortations about foreign policy and defense.

“Foreign policy is very serious business,” he said. “President Clinton doesn’t have a foreign policy. He wouldn’t recognize foreign policy if it walked into the room at the White House.”

He specifically criticized Clinton for renewing diplomatic ties with Vietnam--a move that had the support of some Republicans, most notably Sen. John McCain of Arizona, a former Vietnam War POW who is now one of Dole’s chief foreign policy advisors.

“If Bob Dole had been the president of the United States, I would not have normalized relations with North Vietnam because of their human rights policy, because of their lack of support for freedom and democracy and because of their lack of accounting, in my view, of prisoners of war and missing-in-action Americans,” Dole said.

After Dole’s speech, many older Vietnamese Americans admitted that they didn’t understand much of his message because of the language barrier.

“If he had really wanted to reach us, he should have had an interpreter,” said 74-year-old Thanh Nguyen. “I heard him, but I didn’t understand anything.”

Still, Nguyen who has voted Republican in the last four presidential elections, said she would vote for Dole in November.

Dole was accompanied by the state’s two leading elected Republicans, Wilson and Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren, who took turns boosting California’s political prominence--which has not been much in evidence this year--and bashing Clinton.

“California is the cornerstone of politics in America,” Lungren told the Nixon Library audience. “California will be the cornerstone of a Bob Dole victory this November.”

Wilson took off against Clinton, the man he had hoped to face in the fall when the governor launched his woefully unsuccessful presidential bid last year.

“For three years now, the American people have been misled and manipulated by a president who borrows Republican rhetoric to get elected and then governs as a liberal Democrat,” Wilson said. “We deserve better.”

As the state’s political hierarchy marched in lock-step with Dole, Buchanan campaigned in Santa Barbara with his long-familiar message against international trade treaties and his third-party threat in the air.

Referring to a heated campaign rally Saturday night in Sacramento, where supporters booed whenever Dole’s name was mentioned and one man bawled, “He’s another Clinton,” Buchanan said many of his backers were alienated from the Republican Party and would not easily rejoin the fold.

“I don’t think [a reconciliation] could be done right now if . . . we were required to do it,” Buchanan said.

As always, Buchanan also artfully held out an olive branch to party regulars--a habit in recent days, as he has alternated disdain for and embrace of the GOP establishment.

“I no longer see much disagreement with the stands I’m taking . . . from the leaders of the Republican Party,” Buchanan said. “And so I’m inclined to think that we’re going to do far better at that convention than people believe we are.”

That hot-and-cold relationship with party regulars even spilled out during a brief exchange between Buchanan and a veteran Republican loyalist in a shady grove of avocado trees in Carpinteria, where he spoke before hosting a Santa Barbara rally.

Buchanan had taken the stage to warn of the North American Free Trade Agreement’s dire impact on avocado growers through a provision that, if enacted, would bring Mexican avocados into the United States. The move, Buchanan said, threatens local growers with the spread of seed weevils, Medflies and “any number of pests [from] down there.”

Afterward, Martha Hickey, a local Republican activist who supports Dole, told Buchanan she was worried that a defection from the party would cost Republicans the presidency.

Buchanan tried to reassure Hickey, saying he hoped the divisions could be healed at the convention. But as he turned away, Hickey was still worried.

“We kill ourselves too often,” she said, her voice trailing off behind Buchanan as he moved off.

Voting for the Republican nomination that Dole has already locked up will resume today, when Utah holds caucuses that are the first step in determining the winner of its 28 national convention delegates.

Then Tuesday, voting will begin in California, Nevada and Washington state.

Braun reported from Carpinteria and Santa Barbara, La Ganga from Yorba Linda and Westminster along with Times staff writers Lily Dizon and Diane Seo. This story was written in Los Angeles by Times political writer Cathleen Decker.