Clinton Woos Women’s Vote in Sacramento

President Clinton on Tuesday ended a two-day California swing by seeking to bolster his strong lead among women voters both statewide and nationally, but his campaign found itself forced to defend the slow start of an administration initiative on domestic violence.

Addressing a rally outside a counseling center here for battered women and their families, Clinton claimed credit for the Violence Against Women Act, which funnels money to local programs tackling the effects of domestic violence. The act also added federal penalties for some domestic abuse cases.

“We can never be successful until we deal with this issue of domestic violence and treat it as a public, not a private, issue,” he said. “This is a terrible, terrible problem.”

But Republican Bob Dole’s presidential campaign seized on Clinton’s remarks to charge that the administration had spent only $473,000 of the $175 million authorized by the bill. And it complained that the U.S. Department of Justice had sought prosecution of only 18 men accused of violence against women.

Clinton campaign officials responded that the slow disbursement of money was caused by last winter’s two shutdowns of the federal government, which occurred as GOP congressional leaders--including then-Senate Majority Leader Dole--haggled with the president over budget issues.

“There are going to be consequences when you close the government down,” said Joseph Lockhart, the Clinton campaign’s deputy press secretary.

And he said the law envisioned that federal prosecutions would be relatively infrequent. “This is mostly a local law enforcement issue,” he said.

The cross-fire over the issue hinted at Clinton’s intense focus on maintaining his strong lead among women voters--and Dole’s need to undermine that margin to come within shouting distance of the president in the polls.

A poll for USA Today released this week showed Dole lagging Clinton nationally among men by a margin of only 6 percentage points--but trailing among women by 27 points. And a Los Angeles Times poll of California voters released last week showed Clinton with a 29% lead among women (he led by 27 points among all voters).

Clinton also used his Sacramento appearance to announce that he has ordered federal officials to work on developing an alternative to the 911 emergency call system, which is increasingly clogged with nonemergency calls. He said he was directing the Department of Justice to work with the Federal Communications Commission to develop an easy-to-remember alternate number for nonemergency calls.

“We cannot do what we need to on the issue of domestic violence unless we do something about the stunning fact that the 911 emergency number system today is completely overburdened,” Clinton said.

Clinton’s initiative followed in the mold of many others he offered this year that appear to have a broad popular appeal but only a glancing connection to the federal government’s usual role--as well as only a minimal commitment of federal tax dollars.

On Monday in Monrovia, he extolled a variety of local efforts to fight youth crime and increase school attendance.

Also in Sacramento, Clinton attended a fund-raiser and met with a group overseeing the conversion to nonmilitary use of the former McClellan Air Force Base. After two more fund-raisers in San Francisco, Clinton left on an overnight flight to Washington.

Just hours before he left San Francisco, the White House announced that it would increase its fiscal 1997 request for assistance to state AIDS programs by $65 million, to $117 million.

Clinton, whose relations with the homosexual community have been strained by his opposition to same-sex marriage legislation, said in a statement that such aid has been made more important by the availability of new drugs that can greatly slow the progress of the disease.

The state AIDS drug assistance programs are intended to help pay for new drug therapies for about 69,000 people who don’t qualify for the Medicaid program for the poor or for private insurance.

The trip West was primarily focused on fund-raising, and with Clinton as the star attraction, parties in California and Colorado on Monday and Tuesday were expected to funnel nearly $5 million to the Democratic Party.

An event Monday night at the Century Plaza raised about $800,000 from Southern California’s Asian community, which comprises 10% of the state’s population and is actively being courted by the Clinton campaign.

As Clinton politicked Tuesday, Dole was using his hometown of Russell, Kan., as a setting for his media campaign. Dole arrived in Russell on Monday evening for one of the multiple celebrations of his 73rd birthday.

Clad in khakis and a blue chambray shirt and followed by a film crew, Dole breakfasted at his sister’s home, joined in a round-table discussion with young people at the local library and drank a chocolate shake at the Dairy Queen.

These and other scenes are to provide footage for campaign commercials and a 10-minute biographical film to air during the GOP national convention in San Diego next month.

Times staff writer Maria L. La Ganga contributed to this story from Russell, Kan.