Dole Aims for White House Via Roadhouse

It is 4:44 a.m. on Saturday and Bob Dole is beaming at the Bendix Diner, a chrome-and-neon memory of an earlier America and at this chill moment the backdrop for the struggling Republican’s oddly electric “Non-Stop Victory Tour.”

“Welcome you, Bobby Dole,” shouts one jumping supporter among several hundred gathered here at an hour more appropriate for a mugging. “Bobby Dole, you da man. Bill Clinton, he’s goin’ in da can!”

At this moment, Dole is not quite 17 hours into his 96-hour sprint to the climax of the ’96 campaign, an odyssey that kicked off in Ohio on Friday in the company of two former presidents and continued via bus and truck through a grueling night of truck stop, bowling alley, interstate and turnpike.

Three hours later, Dole can be found at a rally outside Philadelphia with retired Gen. Colin L. Powell at his side. At this point, the inevitable fray had begun as fatigue nibbled away at the deep reserves of the self-described “most optimistic man in America”--age 73 and sleep-deprived.

“I can’t remember when we started,” he told supporters at an early, early breakfast event at the Lagoon Restaurant and Nite Club.

By this time, the GOP road show--perhaps better dubbed Dole After Dark--has seen midnight in Michigan, moonlight over a Hackensack suburb, dawn outside the City of Brotherly Love. From sundown until sunrise, there have been nine stops in a dozen hours, eight bus rides, one jaunt in an 18-wheeler, two plane trips, three states, three governors providing escort.

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And then there was the day to face--an airport rally in Indianapolis (drawing upon the city’s auto-racing heritage, Dole tells his listeners: “We’re going to pass the checkered flag and take the victory lap” in Tuesday’s vote), a speech by his wife, Elizabeth, in Covington, Ky., a swing by a high school at Chesterfield, Mo., and later stops in Nebraska, South Dakota and Colorado.

One of his main themes throughout the day is that the various ethical controversies swirling around President Clinton would doom a second term for his opponent. “If he’s reelected, he’s going to spend half his time with investigations,” Dole says in Indianapolis.

Still, Dole’s remarks generally were brief; there is little time on this winding, 19-state campaign-a-thon across America, which ends when the candidate casts his ballot Tuesday afternoon in a Russell, Kan., voting booth.

The journey is largely drive-by electioneering, both frantic and highly orchestrated, designed by a trailing candidate to climb his way out of a deep rut and shake a lot of friendly hands in the process.

Aboard his campaign airplane Saturday evening, high above the heartland, he says the trek was his own idea. “I couldn’t think of anything else,” he said. “It’s my last option.”

And as the Dole caravan careened along, his running mate launched his own version of it. Jack Kemp embarked upon a coast-to-coast, 24-hour campaign spree that began early Saturday in Orlando, Fla., and was to end this morning in Irvine, Calif., with several stops in between.

For Dole, the predawn appearance at the Bendix Diner marked his first return to New Jersey since his campaign largely abandoned the Garden State to sock away cash for its final advertising blitz in California.

While polls show Clinton with likely unassailable leads in both states, you wouldn’t have known it by the crowd outside of Anthony Diakakis’ eatery.

“He’s such a handsome man,” they commented, men and women alike. “Landslide!” they shouted.

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“If there’s this much enthusiasm in New Jersey and New York, we’re gonna win, just like the Yankees,” Dole shouts before embarking on a moonlight ethics lesson. “I’ll tell you one thing: I’ll keep my word, and I’ll behave myself in the White House.”

Hours earlier, on the roadways of Michigan, he had clambered into the red-and-white cab of an 18-wheeler, claimed the moniker Marathon Man, shouted “Keep on trucking” into the cameras and headed east on Interstate 96.

Twenty minutes later, Dole arrives at the Scalehouse Restaurant, a truck stop where several hundred bundled-up supporters have been waiting hours for the Marathon Man. He re-boards his bus, “Asphalt One,” and gets on the microphone. “All right,” he growls. “Thank you very much. Here we go on the Road to the White House. Eighty-eight hours to go. Here we gooooo!”

Indeed, it’s onto Meridian Township in Michigan and the snug and steamy Pro-Bowl East: “Good Booze-Warm Friends,” boasts the sign above the door. Township Clerk Virginia White is inside the crammed bowling alley, waiting to make contact with her candidate.

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Dole wanders by on his way out the door and she stretches out her arm, beseeching. “I gotta touch that guy,” she announces to no one in particular. “Hey, God bless!” she shouts as Dole grabs her hand and utters a one-size-fits-all greeting: “On to Detroit.”

It’s 11:15 p.m. Friday at Brighton High School, in a gym crammed with a crowd of about 1,000--a good 10% of whom comprise the Bulldogs Marching Band.

A fortunate confluence of events has made the late-night crowd an easy accomplishment. The high school football game has just ended and a dance is going on just down the hall as Dole reads Vice President Al Gore the riot act over one of the incidents that has raised questions about Democratic Party fund-raising practices.

“Gore, he’s taken fund-raising to a new low,” Dole cries. “He went to a Buddhist temple where they take a vow of poverty. He came out with $140,000. How much of this will the American people take? I’ve never seen such arrogance in the White House, and I’ve seen president after president.”

Three sisters and one of their friends stand at the edge of the crowd, “DOLE-KEMP” painted across their faces in black, blond curls bobbing as they scream for their man.

They’re married now, these Apostolic Lutherans, proud moms running businesses out of their Brighton houses.

None of the women is older than 35. None has fewer than four children; among the four they have 21. They know why they dragged little Nate--less than 3 months old, the newest baby among the sisters--to a noisy gymnasium closing in on midnight. Dole’s “worth it,” Nate’s mom, Anita Tervo, nods. “He’s definitely worth it.”

“We don’t believe in killing babies,” chimes in sister Eva Helmine.

As midnight comes, it is just three days before the election and Dole stops by the Crowne Plaza hotel for a 40-minute lie-down, a shower and a shave.

Before his airplane takes off at 2:55 a.m., the freshened-up candidate wanders back, pumps his fist and makes an offer to a weary press corps:

“I’ll get three good stories from each of you and we’ll call this thing off,” he jokes. A pause. “And I get to write ‘em.”

Times staff writer Marc Lacey, with the Kemp campaign, contributed to this story.