Gore Stays on Trail; Bush’s Day Low-Key

With time unforgivingly short before election day, Al Gore careened through Michigan on Sunday, issuing stark warnings about the stakes attendant to election day.

He excoriated George W. Bush’s economic plans on a day when the Republican nominee spent most of his time in Austin, Texas, out of the public eye. And Gore distanced himself from President Clinton, even as Clinton and other Democrats spread out to fan support for him.

Privately, the vice president sought to allay worries among this state’s significant Arab American population that his support for Israel would deafen him to their views on the Mideast and matters at home. Publicly, he swayed in the embrace of African American churchgoers and rewarded them with a speech laden with biblical cadences and political bluntness.

“You have a chance,” Gore told the congregation at Hartford Memorial Baptist Church. Election day “is the one day every four years when the wealthy and powerful and special interests tremble at the thought that you will penetrate the smoke screen and see for yourselves exactly what is at stake.”

While Gore was revving up his populist rhetoric, Bush spent the day in a largely low-key fashion, campaigning only via a satellite transmission to Latino supporters in Anaheim Hills.

“You’re looking at one candidate who has never lost sight of the importance of California,” Bush said. He vowed that he would win the state’s 54 electoral votes, adding that “while my opponent has been busy counting the votes of California, we’ve been working hard to earn them.”

The crowd of a few hundred supporters applauded wildly when Bush appeared on a large screen above a “Viva Bush” poster in the home’s banquet room. A six-piece mariachi band stood by.

Bush could not have found much solace, however, in a new San Francisco Examiner poll that gave Gore a 10-point lead in California. Last week, a Los Angeles Times poll gave Gore a 7-point lead in the state.

Both men are due to campaign in California this week for the first time since September, with Bush appearing Monday in Burbank and Fresno and Tuesday in the Silicon Valley. Gore will hold a Halloween evening rally in Westwood.

As the presidential campaign opened its last full week, it continued to be the tightest such contest in at least two decades, and perhaps since the 1960 contest between another vice president, Richard Nixon, and Sen. John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts. National polls released over the weekend showed the race as either a dead heat or Bush with a minor lead. Some polls in crucial states, however, suggested an edge for Gore in the all-important effort to collect 270 electoral votes.

With the polls stubbornly close and the time to change them evaporating, the candidates and their parties were strongly working their get-out-the-vote efforts. Their campaign teams belted out their points of view on the Sunday talk shows and prepared to send a last blizzard of mail to the doorsteps of American voters, particularly those in crucial areas.

Clinton Talks of ‘Clear, Stark Choice’

For the Democrats, the campaigner-in-chief, President Clinton, was an integral part of the mix. Echoing Gore’s Michigan efforts to spur African American voters to the polls, Clinton told congregants at the Alfred Street Baptist Church in Alexandria, Va., on Sunday to make sure that “nobody takes a pass on Nov. 7.”

“When I hear people say this is not really a very significant election, it makes me want to go head first into an empty swimming pool,” Clinton told church members. “We really do have a big, clear, unambiguous, stark choice here. We don’t have to get mad, but we need to be smart.”

If Clinton’s effort was singular--to get out the vote among core Democrats who still overwhelmingly back him--Gore’s remained manifold. He was pleading not only for the loyal Democrats but for the swing voters who gave life to the term “Reagan Democrats” 20 years ago, and to those who this year have cast aside both major parties to side with Green Party nominee Ralph Nader.

In Michigan on Sunday, Gore borrowed from the presidential campaign of 1988, when the last vice president to seek a promotion was running. That year, the second-in-command and ultimate winner was George Bush, father of the current Republican nominee.

“There will be change,” he told members of the Greater Grace Temple, then swiped from Bush’s convention acceptance speech: “If you are changing horses in the middle of the stream, at least get on the one going in the right direction.”

Earlier, at the Hartford Memorial church, he drew an unspoken contrast with Clinton’s scandalous personal behavior. Gore said that nine times in his public life, beginning with his entry into the Army during the Vietnam War, he had taken an oath to defend the Constitution.

“I have never violated that,” he said.

There too he scored Bush’s tax cut proposal as a return to trickle-down economics, “that disproved, discredited, failed theory.”

“We have tried that way before,” Gore said. “It doesn’t work that way.”

Even more critical of Bush was Gore’s running mate, Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut.

Lieberman Focuses on Bush’s Readiness

“I don’t think George Bush is ready to be president of the United States,” said Lieberman, comparing Bush’s six years as Texas governor against Gore’s 25 years in Congress, the Senate and the vice presidency. The remark, made on ABC’s “This Week” program, was repeated by Lieberman at a campaign appearance later in the day in Saginaw, Mich.

Bush’s campaign strategist, Karl Rove, refuted Lieberman’s contention on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” arguing that Bush is the sole candidate with executive experience.

“He has demonstrated through his stewardship and leadership of the second largest state in the country that he has the executive leadership, the vision, the ability to work across party lines [and] the principles that do not change based on the latest focus group or poll,” Rove said.

Making some news of his own, Lieberman on Sunday acknowledged for the first time in the presidential race that he is personally opposed to abortion “for my wife and daughters,” although he backs abortion rights as public policy. He has received sterling recommendations from the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League, which said he voted its way in 72 of 74 votes in the Senate.

Bush’s running mate, Dick Cheney, was in Washington Sunday with no public events scheduled.

Bush aides on Sunday described the parameters of their own get-out-the-vote operation, which like the Democrats’ will star a White House veteran. In Bush’s case, that is his father, the former president. Former First Lady Barbara Bush, who recently quarterbacked a women-for-Bush tour, will also campaign for their son, as will Bob and Elizabeth Dole, football coach Joe Paterno and actress Bo Derek.

In the remaining days of the campaign, spokesman Ari Fleischer said, the GOP will “launch the largest-ever Republican grass-roots activities in the history of Republican presidential campaigns.” Included will be 62 million telephone calls, 110 million pieces of mail, 1.2 million yard signs and 1.5 million bumper stickers, Fleischer said. Additional surrogates will make 20 bus tours with 290 stops.

As for the GOP candidate, his day was conducted largely behind the scenes. He attended church services in Austin and publicly interrupted his day thereafter only by the video transmission to his Latino supporters at the home in Anaheim Hills.

During that address, Bush reiterated his proposals for tax cuts and education reform, for strengthening the military and limiting the reach of government. And he repeated his pledge to split the Immigration and Naturalization Service into two agencies--one to enforce laws and the other to process immigration applications.

He also tossed in a little Spanish (“Les estoy pidiendo su voto, y les estoy puenda su ayuda” . . . “I’m asking for your vote, and I’m asking for your help.”). Illustrating how broad his effort has been in California, he dispensed a ticker tape of figures.

“Catch this fact: We have 310 county and local headquarters. We’ve signed up 25,000 volunteers and they’ve delivered 2 million pieces of literature door-to-door. They’ve made a million and a half phone calls, and handed out 200,000 yard signs and a quarter-million bumper stickers. I can’t tell you how grateful I am.”

The crowd stood to chant “Viva Bush!” as the governor finished his speech and disappeared from the screen.

“He has my support, that’s for sure,” said Joshua Yepez, 24, who drove in from Moreno Valley.

But much of the message was simply that he--and not Gore--cares about California. Bush and his campaign aides made much of his plans to campaign in California this week, insisting that he can win the state. Bush spokesman Fleischer claimed that Gore’s longtime lead in California “is diminishing and is at risk of vanishing.”

But the Bush team has yet to provide numbers to back up that assertion, and the release of the Examiner poll showing a solid Gore lead only underscored the steep trajectory of their effort here. The lead suggests that Gore has made up ground since dipping several weeks ago.

Moreover, Bush’s attempts to lay claim to the state were seen by some veterans here as an effort to divert Gore from more contested areas, such as the cluster of upper Midwestern swing states and Florida that will likely determine the winner. A new Florida poll showed Gore with a lead, within the margin of error, in a state which Bush needs to win to command the presidency.

Both Bush and Gore were drawn to California by an invitation to appear as headliners on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno”--Bush on Monday and Gore on Tuesday. Each scheduled rallies around the appearance, with Bush due to hit three California cities and Gore dropping into Westwood for a single appearance.

Times staff writer Dana Calvo contributed to this article, which was written by Times political writer Cathleen Decker.