Elizabeth Dole Campaigns in Visit to Amgen

Making good on a May pledge to work hard for California’s electoral votes this fall, Elizabeth Dole paid her first campaign visit to Ventura County on Wednesday.

The wife of presumptive Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole made a brief tour-cum-photo opportunity at an Amgen laboratory in Thousand Oaks before making a 20-minute speech to about 600 employees.

“You are really on the cutting edge, aren’t you?” Dole told the audience at the biotechnology company that is a favorite of both Wall Street and politicians on the campaign trail. “There is so much potential because of the research that you’re doing.”

Dole’s laundry list address pushed all the right GOP buttons before the white-collar audience with rapid-fire references to everything from crime and charitable giving, to taxes and welfare reform.

Her comments hit a local nerve in the east county Republican stronghold, too. The former secretary of labor in the Bush administration received enthusiastic applause for promising that her husband intends to reform the Food and Drug Administration and reduce the capital gains tax. The FDA proposal would benefit the company in its efforts to rapidly get new drug products on the market; the tax measure would help Amgen employees, who are also stockholders.

“She’s very impressive,” said a camera-wielding Hillary Markowitz, 52, after Dole’s effortless monologue, much of it spent in front of, rather than behind, a lectern in an attempt to connect with her audience. “If she was running I would vote for her.”

Markowitz said she hasn’t decided whether Bob Dole will get her vote in November, though. And that’s precisely why his wife came to Ventura County at the start of a six-day swing through California.

After state Republicans complained that President Bush all but gave up on California in 1992, Elizabeth Dole vowed last month not to do likewise.

So, accompanied by aides to Gov. Pete Wilson, Dole is keeping her promise. She is also plowing the same furrow as the governor, not only visiting the company Wilson stopped by in 1994, but the identical laboratory.

“He’s very proud of this company because this is a California company that this year is going to hire 1,000 people,” said Lisa Caron Wolf, deputy director of Wilson’s Los Angeles office.