Dole Vows to Secure Borders, End Preferences

Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole pressed the hot-button issues of immigration and affirmative action as he campaigned through California on Sunday, vowing to “secure the borders” and “wipe the shame of race-based discrimination from our land.”

Dole also won some helpful words from Reform Party candidate Ross Perot, who blasted President Clinton on ethics and for his lack of military service while once again insisting that he would remain in the presidential race.

Clinton, for his part, stuck to his strategy of discussing noncontroversial issues--Sunday’s subject was programs to combat breast cancer--while campaigning through states that once would have been firmly in the Republican column.

In Virginia, a state that has consistently gone to the Republicans in presidential contests since 1964 but in which polls now show him leading, Clinton spoke to a couple of thousand supporters at a rally in suburban Springfield.

“Most people in Virginia have been voting against members of my party for president for over three decades now,” Clinton said. “I know how hard it is to break a habit. But one of the things we all teach our kids is some habits have to be broken.”

Later, Clinton campaigned in Tennessee, where he lavishly praised Vice President Al Gore, a Tennessee native. Although polls show the Democrats well ahead in Tennessee, Clinton has made a special effort in the state, seeking to ensure that Gore does not suffer any embarrassment in his home state on election day.

Perot’s criticism of Clinton came on NBC-TV’s “Meet the Press.” “You should never let anybody be president of the United States . . . who does not have a strong moral-ethical base,” he said.

Comparing Clinton and Dole, he praised Dole, saying that “if you were limited to those two, you’d certainly--I think every American would pick him because he understands what he’s doing.”

“The other candidate has no experience in military or in combat,” Perot said, while “certainly Sen. Dole understands combat. He has certainly paid a terrible price.”

Clinton aides brushed aside Perot’s comments. Such attacks “probably just reinforce people’s preconceived ideas,” said White House political director Doug Sosnik.

Indeed, it is unclear how much help, if any, Perot’s criticisms of Clinton might be for the Republican ticket. Perot’s own support has been much lower this year than in 1992, and there is little evidence that those who do support Perot follow his views on other candidates.

Dole’s running mate, Jack Kemp, repeated the GOP campaign’s appeal for Perot to quit the race.

“I ask him once again: Please, Ross, if you want to reform this country, reform fiscal policy, tax policy, the ethics of the White House, support Bob Dole,” Kemp said Sunday on CBS-TV’s “Face the Nation.”

Kemp also criticized “summer soldiers and sunshine patriots” within the party who are distancing themselves from Dole. “Their criticism of Bob Dole is not only unhealthy for a great cause, it is disappointing.”

Perot rejected the GOP appeals to quit, saying he “absolutely” is in the race to stay. But his remarks clearly tracked with Dole’s strategy. Indeed, at one point, Perot used language that could have been lifted from one of Dole’s speeches, demanding to know “why is there no sense of outrage” in the country about Democratic Party fund-raising practices and other ethical questions that have been raised about the Clinton administration.

Dole repeated similar words Sunday, telling a crowd of about 1,500 supporters here, at a GOP rally outside Sacramento, that Clinton has turned the White House “into the animal house, the animal house. It’s no longer the White House.”

Like Perot, he also resurrected the issue of Clinton’s lack of military service during the Vietnam War, saying that the president “has been AWOL before, but this time he’s AWOL on [the war against] drugs.”

Vietnam was very much on Dole’s mind during the course of the campaign day, which opened with a rally at San Jose’s Gunderson High School before a crowd that was about half Vietnamese Americans.

Speaking in one of the more visually compelling settings that his campaign has created, Dole told a cheering, flag-waving crowd gathered in an outdoor courtyard that “quotas, set-asides and other preferences that discriminate by race or ethnicity are simply wrong in America, they’re absolutely wrong, and they do violence to principles of our Constitution.”

As his listeners roared their approval, Dole also blamed illegal immigration for California’s crowded schools and said “thousands” of Californians have been preyed upon by illegal immigrants.

But Dole also made a remark that highlighted his penchant for undermining his message by discussing the political strategy behind it.

When asked by reporters about the importance of affirmative action and immigration, Dole said that the two are “very important issues here--they’re wedge issues”--a term used by political consultants to describe an issue that is used to drive a wedge into the opposition’s support. Democratic candidates often accuse Republicans of using immigration and affirmative action as wedges to divide Democratic-leaning minority voters from whites, but Republicans usually deny the charge.

Vietnamese Americans, like Cuban Americans, have generally been strong supporters of Republicans. But some Republican strategists have been worried that Republican moves in Congress in the past two years to restrict federal benefits for new immigrants and proposals to reduce overall immigration levels may be eroding support even in those two communities.

Dole took pains to insist that his party is not anti-immigrant. “I don’t know anyone who resents the idea of someone wanting to come to America to build a better life. I don’t fault people for wanting to come to America. Let’s face it. We are compassionate. We are generous. We want to help everybody,” he said.

Standing in front of a billboard-sized poster that proclaimed “Celebrating Legal Immigration--the American Dream,” Dole praised Vietnamese Americans, saying “no people has ever given back more to America.”

“There should be no misunderstanding in anyone’s mind that legal immigration is a part of what America is all about. Legal immigration--it is good for our country and it should always continue. But illegal immigration is a very different matter and a very serious, growing concern for people who live in the great state of California,” he said.

Illegal immigration, Dole asserted, costs California taxpayers about $3 billion a year--$2 billion in education, about half a billion dollars for the cost of incarceration and another half a billion dollars for medical expenses.

“That is not a burden that should be borne by the taxpayers of the state of California,” Dole said, pledging that if elected he will “secure the border” or “if we can’t secure it, we’ll make certain you’re compensated for the cost it takes.”

Clinton’s day started with a Rose Garden ceremony in which he said he would shift $30 million in existing federal funds into a program to investigate the genetics of breast cancer. The money would come from $20 million currently earmarked for a Defense Department breast cancer research program and $10 million in a National Institutes of Health research fund.

Clinton said he is also setting up an Office of Cancer Survivorship at the NIH to advance the interests of cancer survivors and would open a World Wide Web site on the Internet for breast cancer information.

“These steps help us to put science at the service of our families and say we will do whatever it takes to continue the fight until there is a cure for cancer,” Clinton said, reminding listeners that his mother, Virginia Kelley, died of breast cancer in 1994.

Chen reported from Elk Grove and Richter from Nashville. Times staff writers Marc Lacey with the Kemp campaign and Gebe Martinez with the Gore campaign contributed to this story.