Presidential Race Turns Ugly With Uncertainty

Attack ads and negative phone calls turned the presidential race into a brawl Friday, as the two major candidates accused each other of underhanded tactics in an increasingly mean-spirited fight down the final stretch.

Aides to George W. Bush denounced a phone-calling campaign that attacks the Texas governor’s record on nursing home care and suggests his policies contributed to a man’s death. Other calls have criticized Bush’s stand on Social Security, suggesting seniors could lose their benefits.

Aides to Gore, meantime, tried linking Bush to an incendiary TV spot accusing the Clinton administration of trading nuclear technology for campaign cash from “Red China.” The Bush campaign joined the Gore camp in denouncing the spot, created by a political consultant outside the campaign, and urged that it be yanked off the air.

And in a bit of mischief-making, a Republican group announced plans Friday to run ads promoting Green Party candidate Ralph Nader’s candidacy--a bid to draw liberal support away from Gore. The ads, which include footage of Nader criticizing Gore at a speech this week at the National Press Club, are to start airing Monday in Nader strongholds in Oregon, Wisconsin and Washington state.

The jostling came as the two major-party candidates barreled through a handful of tossup states: Bush in Michigan and Gore in West Virginia and Pennsylvania. Each pressed their broad themes, Bush attacking Gore’s character, Gore attacking Bush’s economic policies.

Friday’s sharply negative tone reflected the mix of anxiety, uncertainty and sheer unpredictability that overhangs the closest presidential campaign just about anyone involved, from the candidates to their top strategists, has experienced. Most national polls show the race dead even, and more important, surveys suggest the two are tied in the electoral college contest.

The most heated confrontations Friday took place off the campaign trail, as the candidates and their allies intensified efforts to drive voter turnout and influence those who remain undecided.

As Bush stumped across Michigan, aides denounced as “despicable” a taped phone call charging that the Republican broke promises to improve nursing home care in Texas.

In the call, sponsored by the Michigan Democratic Party, a Dallas woman recounts how her husband died nearly four years ago from an illness that nursing home attendants failed to notice.

“When George W. Bush ran for governor, he promised to improve the quality of life for nursing home residents,” says Ann Friday. “But Gov. Bush broke that promise when he signed legislation that weakened nursing home standards. Since then, nursing home complaints in Texas have doubled.”

Karen Hughes, a spokeswoman for the Bush campaign, called the telephone calls proof that Gore “will sink to the absolute depths . . . to win election.”

Hughes said Bush has strengthened nursing home regulations, increased penalties for wrongdoing and made it easier for the state to put bad operators out of business.

But Democrats counter that a bill Bush signed in 1995 weakened nursing home standards, in part by preventing Texas agencies from passing standards that are stronger than federal regulations.

Kym Spell, a Gore spokeswoman, discounted Hughes’ criticism, saying the phone calls “are made by a woman who has a very sad story she wants to share. It’s a true story, unlike the right wing Republican groups that are coming out at the last minute to help save George Bush’s campaign.”

Friday sued her husband’s nursing home for negligence after his 1995 death and received a $1.25-million settlement.

Still, Michigan Gov. John Engler, a Republican, called the phone calls “a stealth campaign designed to be below the radar and designed to appeal to fears or prejudices.”

“These are not advocacy calls,” he said. “These are designed to put a bad taste in someone’s mouth.”

But the Michigan Republican Party has run five “push calls,” as they are known, of its own, two still in use. In one of them, Texas lawmaker Rob Junell, a Democrat, touts Bush’s record on education, crime and the economy and accuses Gore of breaking promises to cut taxes and offer affordable health care to all Americans.

The taped calls echo similarly controversial efforts in Michigan during the rancorous GOP primary. After Bush spoke at South Carolina’s Bob Jones University, rival Sen. John McCain of Arizona paid for calls that suggested Bush was anti-Catholic, because the university founder had branded Catholicism a cult.

Pat Robertson, founder of the Christian Coalition, made taped calls to Michigan homes in response, charging that a McCain advisor was “a vicious bigot.” McCain won the primary.

On the stump Friday, Bush continued his character assault on Gore, accusing the vice president of changing his positions on important principles to curry political favor--something he promises to never do.

“A responsible leader is someone who makes decisions based upon principle, not based upon polls or focus groups,” Bush told a cheering crowd at Kalamazoo’s Christian High School. “A role of a leader is to set a clear agenda, one that doesn’t shift over the course of a campaign.”

Gore, in turn, continued hammering away at his charge that Bush’s election would threaten the nation’s prosperity by frittering the budget surplus away on an upper-class tax cut.

“It is the wrong choice, at the wrong time, taking America in the wrong direction,” he told hundreds of supporters at the Carnegie Library in Munhall, Pa., outside Pittsburgh.

In contrast, he said, “If we do things right, I believe our economy can add at least 10 million new high-tech, high-wage jobs over the next decade.”

In a rare assault on Bush’s running mate, Gore also took after Dick Cheney. Campaigning in the coal-mining state of West Virginia, Gore said the former Wyoming congressman voted 18 times against bills to help miners with black lung.

“I’ve looked into the eyes of those who’ve been broken down by it, abused by it, who’ve had their health taken from them by it,” Gore said in a speech from the steps of the gold-domed statehouse. “And I’m telling you, I will never rest until we have justice for those who have been denied justice and benefits for those who are eligible for those benefits.”

Appearing with Gore was Cecil Roberts, president of the United Mine Workers union, who said coal operators favor Bush and coal miners Gore. “We didn’t get rid of Newt Gingrich to put Newt Gingrich’s policies in the White House,” Roberts hollered to the crowd.

In a local television interview, Gore was equally blunt: “I’m with the coal miners; the other guy’s with the CEOs and the operators.”

Cheney was also in West Virginia on Friday. At a rally at a steel mill in Weirton, the vice presidential hopeful vowed that he and Bush would “respond swiftly and firmly” to any violations of trade laws by foreign countries. With billowing clouds of steam rising behind him and an American flag flapping from a crane, Cheney said Gore “represents a threat to the people . . . who are involved in the steel industry and the coal industry and so many other basic industries in our nation.”

Democratic running mate Joseph I. Lieberman, meanwhile, was in the mist-shrouded Pacific Northwest, continuing efforts to counter the threat posed to Gore by the Green Party’s Ralph Nader.

During an appearance at New Edge Networks, an Internet company in Vancouver, Wash., an employee told Lieberman her 18-year-old daughter was torn between Gore and Nader.

“I understand the appeal of the candidacy, but I appeal to people to think about the affect of the vote,” Lieberman said. “Obviously, Ralph Nader is not going to be elected president. So think about if you wake up Wednesday morning, Nov. 8, and George Bush is our president-elect, because you voted for Nader.”

Lieberman also criticized the “Red China” ad, calling it “outrageously wrong” and an “expression of panic either by the Bush campaign or by supporters of Bush and Cheney. . . .”

The ad, which urges viewers to “please vote Republican,” was created by an organization called Aretino Industries of McAllen, Texas. Carey Cramer, a political consultant whose firm shares the same address as Aretino, was quoted saying his organization is prepared to spend $500,000 to air the ad.

The TV spot appeared in several cities--including Lansing, Mich., Orlando, Fla., and Cleveland--before the sponsor agreed late Friday to pull it.

The commercial, which shows a little girl picking petals off a daisy and ends with a nuclear mushroom cloud, claims the Clinton administration sold out the nation’s secret nuclear technology to “Communist Red China in exchange for campaign contributions.” The images recall a spot broadcast once in the 1964 presidential campaign, when Lyndon B. Johnson sought to paint Sen. Barry Goldwater of Arizona as a risky choice. The ad was so controversial that it was never aired again.

Hughes, of the Bush campaign, said that the governor “condemns those types of anonymous attack ads” and that his chief strategist, Karl Rove, had contacted Cramer to demand the ad’s removal.

Both Bush and Gore plan to visit California. Bush will be in Burbank and the Central Valley on Monday and San Jose on Tuesday. Gore will be in West Los Angeles on Tuesday. With the vice president holding a solid lead in must-win California, aides described the stop as an effort to allay nervousness among some Democrats over stepped-up GOP advertising in the state. Gore still has no plan to invest in paid media in California, campaign officials said.

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Times staff writers Megan Garvey, Matea Gold, Jeff Leeds and Massie Ritsch contributed to this story.

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IMPASSE INTENSIFIES

President Clinton, GOP leaders trade barbs as Congress’ final negotiations drag on. A15