Cloud of Controversy Over Gore May Never Be Storm, Analysts Say

The stories keep coming in a steady drizzle: Campaign chief Tony Coelho is again facing an investigation. Office e-mails are missing. Staff members ask for secret Internal Revenue Service information.

The clouds over Al Gore just won’t quite dissipate. And his presumed Republican opponent in the presidential election, George W. Bush, is doing his best to link Gore to the scandals of President Clinton’s administration.

Will concerns about his ethics and credibility engulf Gore’s campaign? As of now, analysts doubt it; most current polls have shown him even or ahead of Bush.

But some of the analysts caution that Gore could be hurt if events conspire to keep the questions about him alive.

So far, no single issue or controversy has developed such staying power that it threatens to undermine his candidacy. A poll conducted this week for CBS News found Bush running slightly ahead of Gore when voters were asked which one could be trusted to keep his word as president, but most surveys have not located a buried stream of discontent about the vice president’s credibility.

“At this point, there may be some smoke, but you don’t have any flames,” says Tim Hibbitts, an independent pollster in Portland, Ore. Besides, he says, “people are tremendously cynical about politicians and money.”

Still, the cumulative effect of seemingly small events can add up, says Ray Strother, a Democratic consultant who was neutral in the primary campaign.

“You take any one of those things and people will say, ‘Ah, more politics.’ But if you keep up the drip, drip, drip, it starts to erode any candidacy. You can’t sustain constant problems.”

The Bush campaign has sought to highlight two recent developments: the missing e-mails, which might shed light on alleged fund-raising abuses by the 1996 Clinton-Gore reelection campaign, and a congressional report that two Gore White House aides improperly sought secret IRS information for a labor union.

Another possible problem for Gore is the State Department investigation of allegations that Coelho misused government funds when he was head of the U.S. mission to the World Exposition in Portugal in 1998.

In an interview Tuesday with Associated Press, Gore scoffed at the Bush effort to capitalize on these matters: “I hope they spend a lot of time and a lot of energy on this.”

The Gore camp is banking on voters wanting politicians to focus on issues that affect daily life, rather than trading personal attacks.

“I think people have been fed such a diet of this for so long . . . that there’s a tendency to say, ‘Please stop talking about it. Talk about things that matter to my life. Talk about Social Security. Talk about health care,’ ” says one senior Gore advisor.

At the same time, Gore is doing his best to stay ahead of the curve. This is where the campaign finance plan he unveiled Monday comes in.

The sweeping proposal would overhaul the way campaigns for federal office are financed by creating, through tax-deductible contributions, a $7.1-billion fund known as the democracy endowment. The interest it would generate after seven years, Gore figures, would be sufficient to pay a candidate’s general election campaign costs.

The fund, he argues, would eliminate a candidate’s need to solicit private contributions and remove the risk that contributors could buy influence with their checks.

The plan also might lessen the political fallout from Gore’s use of White House telephones to raise money during the 1996 campaign and his attendance at a Buddhist temple in Hacienda Heights, Calif., to solicit campaign contributions that year--both of which he has recently characterized as mistakes.

Analysts note that Gore has embarked on a process known in politics as “inoculation.” By admitting missteps and proposing a dramatic fix of the campaign finance system, he is seeking to protect himself against future Republican attacks.

“Gore is doing this early and immunizing himself against the anticipated charges that will be raised in the fall campaign,” says Bill Carrick, a Los Angeles-based Democratic strategist. “It’s quite deliberate and pretty smart.”

Mickey Kantor approves. He played a key role in helping bail out Clinton’s first presidential campaign eight years ago, when stories involving the candidate’s womanizing and draft status threatened to overtake it.

The way to overcome damaging stories, says Kantor, the former Commerce secretary and a longtime Los Angeles lawyer now based in Washington, is to “continue to stay on the attack. You speak to your strengths, not your weaknesses.”

Gore’s campaign finance reform plan does precisely that, Kantor says. “He’s not whining and not carping. He’s just moving ahead. I can’t imagine a better way to deal with [the issue].”

Bill Bradley sought to use the credibility issue against Gore in their recent Democratic primary battle. “Why should we believe that you will tell the truth as president, if you don’t tell the truth as a candidate?” Bradley asked during a debate in New Hampshire. But the former New Jersey senator’s attacks made little headway.

From the Republicans, the vice president expects more of the same. “The whole Republican campaign will be an assault” on Gore’s integrity, one of his closest advisors says.

Another Gore aide, spokesman Chris Lehane, points to the Republican efforts in the 1996 presidential campaign and the party’s congressional campaign in 1998 as failed attempts to run “scandal and investigative campaigns.”

“In both instances, voters rejected the Republican approach, saying they wanted candidates and issues relevant to their lives,” he says.

Even some Republicans wonder about Bush’s potential success in pursuing the credibility issue. Says one Republican veteran of presidential battles who would like nothing better than to find a crack in Gore’s armor: “There are some nicks, but nothing substantial yet.”

Times staff writer Elizabeth Shogren contributed to this story.