Dole Wins in a Landslide : Garcetti Runoff Likely; Open Primary Leads

In a stirring triumph that was 16 arduous years in the making, Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas on Tuesday claimed as his own the Republican nomination for president, winning overwhelming victories in California and two other western states to cap a turbulent but ultimately decisive primary campaign.

With 21% of the vote counted in California, where a dismal turnout was reported, Dole led former commentator Patrick J. Buchanan 67% to 16%. Exit polls predicted that Dole’s margin would hold over Buchanan and the third-place finisher, publisher and former candidate Steve Forbes.

In Washington, where 18 delegates were to be selected, Dole was leading Buchanan 64%-19% with 30% of the vote counted. And in Nevada, where 14 delegates were on the line, Dole easily defeated Forbes, 52%-19%. Forbes was still in the race when mail-in voting began in Nevada. Buchanan finished third there at 15%.

“The battle for the Republican nomination is over,” Dole told cheering supporters at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, D.C. “And the battle for America’s future is beginning tonight, and we’re going to carry it all the way to November and defeat Bill Clinton.”

On the Democratic side, President Clinton also swept California and its 363 party delegates, besting perennial candidate Lyndon LaRouche on his way to a second nomination this August in Chicago. In partial returns, Clinton led LaRouche 89%-11%.

Dole started the day with 1,003 delegates, according to tallies maintained by news organizations. With California’s winner-take-all primary and its 165 delegates, he was guaranteed 1,168 even before Washington and Nevada began proportionally dividing their share.

Sticking to a strict accounting of delegates legally tied to him, Dole asserted that he was actually under the nomination-garnering level of 996 delegates until Tuesday night. But much of that humility clearly was designed to keep alive whatever suspense there was until after California, the biggest electoral state, had cast its votes.

So on Tuesday night, wearing a grin both broad and relieved, Dole took to the stage at his victory party.

“I believe our country has reached a defining moment,” he told the crowd. “A new America is within our reach. The next president will lead us to the edge of a new millennium--and the right president will lead a freer, stronger, more confident country to unimagined greatness.”

Party unity on his mind, Dole took pains to congratulate his Republican challengers, saying that they had brought to the race “passion and energy and ideas” that would make the GOP stronger.

“The issues they have raised and the voters they have appealed to will be a crucial part of a winning Republican coalition this fall,” he declared. “We need to win in November. That’s what it’s all about.”

But there were no personal appeals to Buchanan, his last serious challenger on the Republican side, or to anyone else to join his campaign. Rather, Dole set his sights on just one man, Clinton, occupant of the house that Dole wants for his own next January.

Buchanan, for his part, congratulated Dole but insisted that he and his band of followers would campaign until the Republican National Convention in San Diego in August to try to wrest control over the party’s agenda. He left open the possibility of a third-party bid in November.

“We have to concede a certain reality tonight, there is no doubt about it,” Buchanan told supporters gathered at the Red Lion Inn in Costa Mesa. “Sen. Dole is going to go over the top in terms of the delegate count. . . . He’s going to be the Republican nominee. We have to congratulate him in his victory and we have to respect the decision of the party that has chosen Sen. Dole.”

Yet, in an example of the good cop-bad cop routine that Buchanan has artfully played out this year, he had a pointed message to Dole. “San Diego, here we come,” he told cheering backers. And he uttered his militant catch phrase: “Lock and load.”

Rapid Turnaround

The results closed out a month which began for Dole with his candidacy crippled by a second-place finish to Buchanan in New Hampshire. But, beginning with the South Carolina primary little more than three weeks ago, Dole righted his campaign and swept so many states so quickly that he realistically sewed up the nomination one week ago with strong victories in the Midwest.

Dole’s success came 16 years after he first sought the presidency, and in his third bid, after two humiliating losses to men who later became president--Ronald Reagan and George Bush. It sets up an intergenerational contest between the 72-year-old senator, the last senior American politician of the World War II era, and Clinton, the first baby boomer president.

Though different in demeanor and style, the two represent a class of politician that believes, to one extent or the other, in the power of government, a sentiment that has been buffeted by outsiders in this presidential year.

In California, the low turnout was particularly galling to those who had succeeded in moving up the primary 10 weeks in order for the state to play a decisive role in picking a nominee.

While statewide figures were not available, Los Angeles County election officials said that turnout was 34%, far below 1992’s 47% and 1988’s 46%.

The early primary strategy backfired when other states also moved up their primaries. And thus the state with the largest number of electoral votes was left exactly where it almost always is, the caboose on the presidential train.

The record low turnout was 43.05%, hit in 1940 when the presidential primary was held before the state primary. The state set up the current unified primary system in 1944, and the highest turnout since then was 72.6% in 1976.

Even on his night of triumph, not all the news for Dole was good. An exit poll of voters conducted by The Times showed, as it has in other states, that Dole has yet to summon fierce support even within his own party. Dole will leave the yet-unconcluded primary season as a distinct underdog to a president whose popularity has grown since the 1994 elections put Republicans in control of the Congress.

Clinton leads in national polls as well as in California, where a Times Poll published last week found Dole trailing the president, 58%-37%. Political analysts, however, expect the gap between the two to narrow both ion the state and nationally as the fall election heats up.

Dole’s triumphant seizure of the nomination--and Clinton grasp on the Democratic bid--did little to distill a November race which has the boggling potential of becoming a five-man contest.

Waiting in the wings alongside Buchanan, and ever more vocal since Dole’s position has solidified, is Texas billionaire Ross Perot. Despite Dole’s aggressive attempts over the weekend to push Perot out of the race, the 1992 independent candidate says he is intent on fielding a presidential candidate on his Reform Party ticket in all 50 states.

While he has not decided to run, Perot did say last week that he would run if drafted by the Reformers--not a distant possibility, given that he started the party.

Consumer activist Ralph Nader has also signaled his desire to be the Green Party nominee on November’s ballot, saying over the weekend that the two major parties both kowtow to big business and that he represents an alternative.

A tight presidential race would heighten the stakes for California, which usually carries more weight in the fall than during primary season. Both Clinton and Dole have vowed to contest the fall race here. Dole has taken particular pains to assure state Republicans that he will abandon them, as Bush did once he fell far behind Clinton here in 1992.

“I’ve been on battlegrounds before,” Dole, via telephone, told supporters gathered at a victory party in Sacramento on Tuesday night. “We’re going to fight for every inch of California in November. And we’re going to win that big one.”

Working in the Senate

With the nomination in hand, and little money to spend in pursuit of Clinton, Dole will now concentrate on the Senate, hoping to craft a record that will serve to distinguish him from Clinton.

He spent primary day in the Capitol, his location underscoring how much of the fall campaign will be fought with him and Clinton at opposite ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.

Senate Democrats, demanding a vote on raising the nation’s minimum wage, sought to send Dole a message that they will do their best to try to negatively define him in coming months.

Dole, spurning their efforts, curtly told the Democrats that they “ought to stop playing games.”

The early closure of the primary season also means an excruciatingly long campaign this year for vice president, a quadrennial interlude that usually is mercifully shorter.

In 1992, only six weeks separated Clinton’s clinching of the nomination--in California--and the Democratic national convention at which Al Gore was officially named the vice presidential nominee.

Dole, and the rest of America, could now endure more than four months of speculation about the second spot.

On Wednesday, he jokingly told reporters that making Buchanan and Perot his running mates would clear them out of the way in November. Alas, he laughed, “You can’t have two vice presidents.”

Later, in a CNN interview, Dole said that he was “nowhere” near beginning the vice presidential selection process. But he raised the enticing possibility that he would float the name of a running mate or senior administration officials before the August convention, if only to keep some interest in his campaign.

“There’s this long dry spell between the nomination and the convention; maybe one way to maintain interest would be to announce, if not the vice president, a couple of important Cabinet picks,” Dole said. “It’s going to be difficult to keep people engaged, so we’re looking for creative ways to do that.”

On Tuesday night, as he has at several successive primary night celebrations, Dole sought for now to engage voters by presenting a message meant to attract all manner of supporters.

“We are now just one election away,” he said, from a litany of popular goals--a balanced budget, cutting taxes, welfare reform, a simpler tax system, returning power to the states and restoring America’s leadership role in the world.

“We’ll say it over and over and over again until we make the American people understand there is a clear difference between Bob Dole on the one hand and Bill Clinton on the other,” Dole added.

* MORE ELECTION COVERAGE: A3, A10-A14

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Presidential Primary Results

Sen. Bob Dole padded his delegate total with wins in California, Nevada and Washington on Tuesday.

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Dole Buchanan CALIFORNIA DELEGATES 165 0 NEVADA DELEGATES 14 0 WASHINGTON DELEGATES* 14 4 TUESDAY’S DELEGATES TOTAL 193 4 DELEGATE TOTAL TO DATE 1,198 113

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996 delegates needed for GOP nomination

* Number of delegates is based on preliminary proportion of returns.