Polls Find Bush Shaking a Bit on Top Rung

Texas Gov. George W. Bush is getting a serious taste of Campaign 2000 reality: a series of recent polls showing for the first time that the tremendous popularity of the presumptive Republican candidate for president is slipping significantly nationwide and in the crucial early primary state of New Hampshire.

Arizona Sen. John McCain has gained 23 percentage points on Bush in the Granite State since August, and the Texan has just lost his double-digit lead in national surveys over the dueling Democrats--Vice President Al Gore and former New Jersey Sen. Bill Bradley.

While insisting that the timing was coincidental, Bush on Monday unveiled his first television advertising in Iowa and New Hampshire and launched Spanish-language radio and print ads in largely English-speaking Iowa. The Bush campaign said the advertisements have been planned since spring and were moved up only about a week to reflect earlier primary dates.

“Our goal has been to communicate to voters as those elections get closer,” said Mark McKinnon, campaign media advisor. “We’re only 10 weeks out on the first election in Iowa. We wanted to start communicating with voters in Iowa.”

Rivals said that the five ads are proof of Bush’s mortality and show that it is no longer safe to stay above the fray as Bush has done, avoiding debates and group events with his Republican challengers.

“He’s going to have a problem ducking more debates,” said one opposing strategist. “His whole reason for avoiding them up to now is claiming that voters aren’t paying attention. But it’s hard to make that case once you’ve started putting ads up on the air.”

Analysts suggest at least some of Bush’s slippage is as natural a phenomenon as the laws of gravity. “Front-runners are never as strong as they look,” said Bill Kristol, a GOP pundit and conservative tactician. “Most races do tighten eventually.”

It’s a time-tested maxim, said Jaime Regalado, executive director of the Pat Brown Institute of Public Affairs at Cal State Los Angeles, that “the front-runner will eventually be reeled back a bit, sometimes more than a bit . . . [Bush] was enjoying a free ride before the press started looking more critically at his past and his gubernatorial reign.”

Bush’s staff said the Texas governor--who has stuck close to home, compared with his competitors, and has run a prairie version of the traditional Rose Garden strategy used by incumbents to appear above the fray--is grateful for the broad-based support he is receiving to date.

While sidestepping the dropping poll numbers, the campaign said that Bush will continue to stump on his messages of improved education, tax cuts and a beefed-up military.

The most recent New Hampshire poll shows that Bush--who has enjoyed a lead of as much as 50 points over his nearest Republican competitor--is now only 12 percentage points ahead of McCain in New Hampshire.

Dick Bennett, a nonpartisan Manchester-based pollster, called Bush’s support in his state “a mile wide and an inch deep,” and said voters there are annoyed that the Texan hasn’t ventured east very often.

“They want to talk to him,” Bennett said. “They want to get to know him, see how he responds. I don’t know how well he’ll wear. We haven’t seen enough of him. [But] I don’t know who’s going to challenge him. McCain’s come up but his unfavorable levels are inching up too.”

When matched with Gore alone, Bush’s lead dropped from 16 percentage points to nine, according to a national poll released Monday by CNN/USA Today/Gallup. If Reform Party candidate Pat Buchanan--until Monday a Republican--is thrown into the mix, Gore gets even closer, narrowing the gap to six points.

A new Newsweek poll shows that Bush has lost his double-digit lead nationally over both Gore and Bradley, who are themselves locked in a tightening race.

“One of Bush’s facts of life is that a lot of his support was based on the name, affinity for his father, the notion that he was the inevitable nominee,” said Stuart Rothenberg, who edits a nonpartisan Washington-based political newsletter. “Now maybe voters are focusing more and saying, ‘Gee, do I know this guy?’ ”

One Democratic pollster, unaffiliated with either camp, said his surveys show Bush slipping in California as well, with the front-runner’s lead over Gore and Bradley dwindling to low single digits and Bush’s negative ratings climbing at a double-digit pace.

“All people have seen or heard about George W. Bush in the past couple months is about money--he has a lot of it--and political positioning,” said the pollster, who is surveying California for assorted interest groups. “As they learn more about his issue positions, whether it’s guns or abortion, they’re discovering that he’s not the moderate he pretends to be.”

Whit Ayres, a GOP pollster based in Atlanta, said that Bush’s slippage might be more appropriately viewed “as a gain for Sen. McCain,” and that the Bush drop was bound to happen. “No one thought he’d retain a 50-point lead against his nearest competitor.”

“I think John McCain is a very credible candidate for president and he’s getting a very serious look in the places he’s spent time--South Carolina and New Hampshire,” Ayres said.

McCain has also benefited greatly from the fact that former Red Cross President Elizabeth Hanford Dole dropped out of the race for the White House last week,Ayres said.

Not only is some of Dole’s support going to McCain and millionaire publisher Steve Forbes, but fewer candidates make a more clear-cut choice for voters. “The winnowing of the field, which happened a little earlier than people expected, will make it easier for someone to emerge as the credible alternative to Bush,” said Kristol.

For all that, “anybody else in the field would die for [Bush’s] poll results right now,” Ayres said.

Bush is still far ahead of McCain in both polls and money, with about $37 million in cash on hand, compared with McCain’s $2 million--a statistic that allows the overwhelming front-runner to remain just that.

Still, Todd Harris, a spokesman for McCain, said that not only is Bush now in a race in New Hampshire, but “it’s a two-man race.”

The English-language television ads are compelling, Harris said, but “the message would be even more compelling . . . if Bush were to show up in New Hampshire and deliver it personally.”

Bush will not divulge how much he is spending on the advertising effort, but his campaign called it a “mid-size” buy in which the average person in both states will likely see the ads three to five times a week.

The ad campaign does not mention Bush’s competitors by name in either English or Spanish and sticks closely to the concept of the Texan’s efforts as “a fresh start after a season of cynicism,” according to a campaign statement.

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Latest Polls

Two recent polls show GOP front-runner George W. Bush losing ground to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in the kickoff primary state of New Hampshire and, nationally, to Democrats Al Gore and Bill Bradley.

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Princeton Survey Research Associates surveyed 755 adults nationwide Oct. 21-22. The poll’s margin of error is plus or minus 4 percentage points.

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* BUCHANAN BOLTS

Longtime Republican Pat Buchanan left the party to seek Reform Party nomination. A16