New Hampshire Senator Enters Presidential Race

Vowing to carry his battle against abortion into the White House, Sen. Bob Smith of New Hampshire on Thursday became the first Republican to formally declare for the party’s 2000 presidential nomination.

“I don’t want to get in your face on abortion, I want to get in your heart,” Smith said, unveiling one of the cornerstones of his campaign to a home state audience in Wolfeboro, N.H. The crowd gathered at a high school where he once taught and coached.

The two-term, staunchly conservative senator is little known outside New Hampshire, and his candidacy is viewed as among the least plausible in the emerging GOP presidential field. But Smith shrugged off his longshot status. “If you vote for the candidate you believe in, your vote is never wasted,” he assured his supporters in his speech.

In the current post-impeachment debate among Republicans over whether to focus on President Clinton’s misconduct, Smith left no doubt that he intends to make a point of the issue.

Smith voted to convict the president in the Senate, and branded Clinton’s acquittal “a sad commentary on the prevailing values of America today.” He called on Americans to help restore the values that he said prevailed during the Reagan presidency--”respect for life, respect for the sacrifices of our military, respect for our families . . . respect for the truth.”

In an interview earlier this week, Smith said his personal experiences had heavily shaped his views.

Smith, 57, cited the death of his father, a Navy aviator, in World War II as enhancing his reverence for life and hardening his opposition to abortion. He pointed to his own Navy service in Vietnam as bolstering his support for a strong national defense.

Measuring 6 feet, 6 inches tall and weighing well over 200 pounds, Smith cuts a hulking figure in the Senate, where detractors fault him for lacking finesse. But he seems determined to make a Populist asset out of his rough-and-ready manner and his background as a schoolteacher, defining himself as “not a country club Republican” but rather “a country music Republican.”

Smith said his teaching background--not only in New Hampshire but in Torrance, where he taught high school in the late 1960s while attending Cal State Long Beach--shaped his views on education policy. “I learned firsthand that it’s not the bureaucrats and the Washington elitists . . . that teach our schools,” he said. “It is the local school boards, teachers, administrators and parents.”

Key to his candidacy is whether his unassailable record of battling for a range of conservative causes will attract a significant cadre of activist support. “I’m not a leap-year conservative, jumping out every four years,” he said.

In his announcement, Smith pledged to spotlight conservative goals should he gain the presidency. He said that not only would he nominate to the Supreme Court only jurists who oppose abortion rights, but that he would propose legislation to define life as beginning with conception.

To strengthen national security, he said, he would increase funding for the Pentagon, raise military pay and deploy a national missile defense system.

Smith’s roots in New Hampshire, traditional site of the nation’s first presidential primary, are a potential advantage. But so far, his candidacy has stirred little support in his home state (a recent statewide poll found only 2% backing him for the presidential nomination).

Five other Republicans--former Tennessee Gov. Lamar Alexander, conservative leader Gary Bauer, Rep. John R. Kasich of Ohio, Sen. John McCain of Arizona and former Vice President Dan Quayle--have established campaign exploratory committees and are expected to offer their formal announcement speeches in the weeks and months to come.

Publishing magnate Steve Forbes is expected to follow suit; Texas Gov. George W. Bush, former Red Cross President Elizabeth Hanford Dole and former California Gov. Pete Wilson also may seek the nomination.

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Profile: Sen. Bob Smith

* Born: March 30, 1941

* Residence: Tuftonboro, N.H.

* Education: Lafayette College

* Career highlights: Navy, teacher, three terms in U.S. House

* Family: Married, three children

* Quote: “In the 1860s, Lincoln ended the moral outrage of slavery because he knew it was wrong. Abortion is the moral outrage of the 20th century, and I will end it because it too is wrong.”