Dole Sends Top Aide to Ask Perot to Quit Race

Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole sent his top aide to Dallas on Wednesday to meet with Ross Perot and urge him to quit the presidential race, but Perot aides seemed to dash cold water on the idea.

Dole campaign manager Scott Reed met with Perot to make the pitch, according to aides to both men.

Neither Dole nor Perot would comment on the meeting. But even before the two met, Perot’s spokeswoman, Sharon Holman, said that “Mr. Perot has no intention of quitting the race, no intention whatsoever.”

Aides to President Clinton portrayed the offer to Perot as a sign of desperation on Dole’s part, and, indeed, the move seemed unusual at the very least. Perot has often derided Dole’s central proposal--a 15% across-the-board cut in tax rates--as a giveaway that would saddle future generations with debt. And he was harshly critical of Dole after Republicans insisted that he be excluded from the presidential debates between Dole and Clinton.

Moreover, with Perot currently garnering well below 10% of the vote in national polls, there is little reason to think a Perot endorsement--even if he could bring his supporters along with him--would greatly help Dole’s cause.

News of the meeting seemed to take even some senior Dole aides by surprise--leading to considerable doubt about what to make of the move. Perot, for his part, is scheduled to give a speech today in Washington where he may comment further on the Republican offer.

The move did, however, throw a new wrinkle into a race that has seemed frozen in place for weeks, if not months. It came as Clinton and Dole both began recasting their speeches to urge supporters to turn out and vote.

“This election is not over,” Clinton declared to supporters in Daytona Beach, Fla.

“Don’t pay any attention to those polls, they drive me crazy,” Dole said Wednesday night in Panama City, Fla.

Both candidates are worried about the same phenomenon--low turnout in a race that has generated little excitement. Democrats are wary of overconfidence, Republicans of despair. At stake, of course, are dozens of potentially close congressional races that could be determined by which side gets out its vote.

The two men are to some extent swimming against the tide, for turnout this election is almost certain to be lower than last time, according to Curtis B. Gans, director of the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate and one of the country’s leading experts on voter turnout. Gans cites several indicators: polls showing diminished interest in the contest, especially among young people; reduced viewership of the televised debates; and the major TV networks’ decisions to cut back their election coverage by about 40%.

In most of the country, the worry is particularly acute for Republicans, says Gans. The voters most likely to show up are almost always those who are upset. In 1994, the upset voters were conservatives angry at Clinton. Now, the most motivated voters appear to be Democratic-leaning: the elderly, women and environmentalists aroused by what they see as the extremes of congressional Republicans, Gans said.

To avoid that, Dole increasingly has shifted the emphasis of his speeches--not only arguing to his supporters that they should show up, but also stressing conservative themes most likely to rev up enthusiasm among core Republican voters.

Clinton, for his part, is continuing his line of claiming credit for social improvements--Wednesday it was increased child-support collections.

Clinton cited statistics released by the Department of Health and Human Services that show a 23% increase in collections in 1995 over 1994 and a 51% jump since 1992. The four-year increase represented “almost 4 billion more dollars for the children of America--from their parents, not from the taxpayers,” he told cheering albeit overheated supporters at a sun-washed rally here.

Much of the money was collected under a 20-year-old state-federal program that intercepts federal tax refunds owed deadbeat parents.

Clinton also promised federal help in creating and finding jobs for the hundreds of thousands of welfare recipients who will lose their benefits under the new welfare reform law passed earlier this year.

“It’s fine to tell people they have to go to work, but there has to be work there for them and education and training,” Clinton said. “We have a plan to work with communities like Daytona Beach all over America to move at least 1 million more people from welfare to work in the next four years.”

Dole was also in Florida, campaigning in heavily Republican areas, including the state’s panhandle region, in what a senior aide described as an effort to energize the GOP base in hopes of generating a big turnout.

Public and private polls indicate that Clinton leads Dole by about five percentage points in Florida, which has not been won by a Democratic presidential candidate since another Southerner, Jimmy Carter, carried it in 1976.

At an airport rally in front of several hundred supporters in Macon, Ga., before he reached Florida, Dole exhorted his supporters to get out the vote and help “get rid of the liberals and send us more conservatives!”

“The clock is ticking,” he said. “Many Americans are just beginning to focus on this election.

“We want to carry the South--all the way. Solid. All the way. Maybe not Arkansas. But maybe everything else,” he said.

Of Georgia and his opponent, Dole added: “ . . . This is a state that we must win. This is a state that we should win. I’m a conservative and he’s a liberal. Don’t let him fool you.”

At times, Dole seemed to have so much to say that he could barely squeeze it into his speech as he recited--virtually in shorthand fashion--his list of grievances against Clinton.

“He’s a liberal! He’s a liberal! He’s a liberal!” Dole proclaimed.

Dole barely left himself with enough time for a quick once-over of his own prescription for change, promoting his 15% cut in income tax rates, a 50% reduction of the capital gains tax and a $500-per-child tax credit.

Dole also vowed to preserve Medicare, cut drug use in half in a first Dole term, increase defense spending, push for constitutional amendments requiring a balanced budget and barring flag desecration, and work toward restoring voluntary prayers in schools. He also said he would sign a ban on late-term abortions that Clinton vetoed this year.

Broder reported from Daytona Beach, Fla., and Chen from Pensacola, Fla. Times staff writers Ronald Brownstein and Paul Richter contributed to this story from Washington.

* FRESH ANGLE IN POLITICS: Interest groups find a new way to spread their views. A21