Some in GOP Say Dole Unable to Avert Defeat

With President Clinton having escaped relatively unscathed from the final campaign debate, even some Republican strategists conceded on Thursday that the White House appears beyond the reach of challenger Bob Dole.

Reflecting this attitude, political operatives in both parties increasingly are focusing on the presidential contest mainly to gauge its impact on the struggle for control of Congress.

For their part, Dole’s managers rejected such negative judgments, along with post-debate poll results that showed their candidate making no headway, and announced a costly new initiative they claimed is designed to win California and its 54 electoral votes.

The strategy calls for Dole to spend more than $1 million a week in advertisements here and for either himself, his wife, Elizabeth, or running mate Jack Kemp to make frequent appearances in the state between now and election day.

But the downside to this decision is that, as the campaign acknowledged, it means stripping away candidate time and funds from three other potentially key swing states--Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Connecticut--where Dole needs every penny and every minute to have a chance of winning. And the decision to pull back in these states follows a move earlier this week to reduce advertising in Ohio.

Even as these strategic shifts were being made, Republicans who had been hoping that Dole, by mounting an assault on Clinton’s character during the Wednesday night debate in San Diego, would somehow alter the dynamics of the presidential race, admitted their disappointment over his performance.

“He didn’t make the case that Clinton isn’t fit to be president,” William Kristol, one of the architects of the GOP’s 1994 midterm election triumph, said in a radio interview in Washington. “I think most Republicans feel the presidential campaign is basically over, barring an act of God.”

Similarly, John Petrocik, a political scientist at UCLA and sometime GOP campaign consultant, said of the presidential race: “I see one battleship under full steam and the other with broken screws rolling in the tide. I think the contest is over and has probably been over for a long time.”

And Don Sipple, who had the task of shaping Dole’s campaign message until last September when he quit in a dispute over policy and power, said he views the presidential campaign as “pretty much over.”

As a result, some Republican professionals are hoping that Dole will use his resources and energies in ways that help the GOP maintain control of the Senate and House. Party leaders are particularly concerned about the latter chamber, given recent polls suggesting Democratic prospects for a takeover are improving.

But Democrats have that same idea for Clinton. Indeed, some Democratic strategists welcomed the news that the Dole campaign will make an all-out bid for California because they believe that will produce a counter-effort by the president and his campaign. The strategists believe that, in turn, would aid the Democratic bids for half a dozen or so GOP seats regarded as vulnerable--seats on which control of the House could hinge on election night.

“If [the Republicans] are for real about California, we believe this will help us overall by driving up interest in the campaign,” said Steve Rosenthal, political director of the AFL-CIO.

The labor organization is making an intensive effort in 99 House districts around the country to wrest control of Capitol Hill from House Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia and his GOP cohorts. Rosenthal anticipates that a stepped-up effort by Clinton in the nation’s most populous state would help unions turn out some of its members who otherwise might stay away from the polls on Nov. 5.

Some Democrats were puzzled by the plans for a major Dole effort, based on their reading of the recent poll that apparently was part of the justification for such a gamble.

The survey, by San Francisco-based pollster Mervin Field, found that Clinton’s once-huge margin over Dole had shrunk of late, though it still remained in the low double digits. Moreover, the poll showed that nearly 90% of Clinton’s supporters said they are “certain” to stick with their choice.

This means that to win the state, Dole would have to get more than 80% of the vote from those Clinton voters who are not certain, as well as all of the 14% who called themselves undecided in the poll.

California Republican leaders, however, say another factor in the Dole strategic shift was private campaign polling that they say showed Dole within single digits of Clinton in the state.

Regardless, Democrats suspect that Dole’s newly announced push in California is aimed mainly to help out GOP House candidates.

Meanwhile, Clinton has to make some important choices in terms of whether he wants to boost his own candidacy or help Democratic congressional candidates.

Clinton and his aides “have to decide whether they are going to go all out to win as many of the 50 states as they can or whether they want to help take back the House,” said a top aide to Democratic House Leader Richard A. Gephardt.

Noting reports that Clinton plans to increase his efforts in normally Republican Florida, where polls show him leading Dole, this aide said: “If they used the money they are going to budget for Florida and put it in states like Wisconsin and Washington [where several seats held by freshman Republicans are considered vulnerable], it would help us more.”

Trying to make the best of adversity, some Republicans see Clinton’s lead in the presidential race working to the advantage of their House candidates.

“If Dole continues to have problems down to the last 10 days of the campaign, Republicans running for Congress are going to have a message to voters that says, ‘Don’t give Clinton a blank check,’ ” said Glen Bolger, a GOP consultant whose firm is working with more than 50 GOP House candidates around the country.

Bolger added: “That’s a message that will work very well, because people don’t want another Democratic Congress run by a bunch of liberals who would move Clinton further over to the left.”

Democrats scoff at such talk of a reverse spin. “The better the campaign the president runs, the better the local candidates will do, simply because a strong presidential performance discourages Republican turnout,” said Alan Secrest, a Democratic consultant working for 30 House candidates around the country.

And most Republicans concede that a big Clinton win in their state will hurt their local candidates. “How the top of the ticket does will be a big, big deal,” said Richard Williamson, who speaks from experience. Four years ago, he ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate in Illinois against Democrat Carol Moseley-Braun when then-President Bush finished more than 700,000 votes behind Clinton in the state.

“I did better than Bush by 500,000 votes, and I still lost,” said Williamson.

Times staff writers Maria L. La Ganga and Ronald Brownstein contributed to this story.

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