Page 8a Friday, August 9, 1996 The Sun Campaign 9 6 Kemp among GOP's top-three prospects for No. 2 spot on ticket, Dole aides say Dole accelerates efforts to win vital female vote I Gender.from Page 1a A. f) Other leading contenders said to be Mack, Engler Li to-be Republican nominee at Dole's Watergate condo. No details of the session were available, but campaign aides say Kemp, 61, is now among the top three of six prospective ticket mates Dole is weighing as he approaches a self-imposed Saturday deadline for making the announcement. Others in the top tier are Florida Sen.
Connie Mack and Michigan Gov. John Engler, according to Republican Party sources. Still said to be in play but less likely to get the nod are Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Don Nickles of Oklahoma, and former South Carolina Gov. Carroll A.
Campbell Jr. Once the star of the Buffalo Bills and San Diego Chargers, Kemp stands out as potentially the boldest choice. A former congressman from Buffalo who made his own bid for the GOP presidential nomination against Dole and George Bush in 1988, Kemp is well known in the party as a passionate advocate for economic programs to help people help themselves. He was a primary author of the 1981 "supply-side" tax cuts embraced by President Ronald Reagan. And he used a stint as housing secretary under President George Bush, to promote home ownership instead of housing projects.
Kemp is popular with both GOP conservatives who sup- By Karen Hosler SDN NATIONAL STAFF WASHINGTON Jack F. Kemp, the colorful quarterback-turned-politician and tax-cut guru, has scrambled at the last-minute into the lineup of Bob Dole's prospective running mates, grabbing a spot among the top three contenders. Attention focused on the onetime congressman and housing secretary after he met privately Wednesday night with the soon- GOP chairman tries to rally party's factions around Dole sible for Dole's gender gap. Women voters, they say, generally favor a more activist role for government including safety net programs such as welfare and Medicare and believe Republicans in Congress have sought to dismantle such programs. "A lot of what the Republican Congress did was good, but in the minds of women, it was too harsh," says Pat Harrison, co-chairwoman of a women's task force for the Dole campaign.
Other Republicans, such as pollster Kellyanne Fitzpatrick, say women are not yet engaged in the presidential race and thus side with Clinton because he's a known quantity. "Women are late-in-the-game deciders," says Fitzpatrick. "They're extremely busy people balancing the demands of work and family." In fact, her polling has shown as much as a 40 percent undecided vote among women, she says. Similarly, Dole adviser DiVall says the gender gap should tighten after the two conventions as voters see Dole "as someone other than Bob Dole, U.S. senator." Reverse gender gap She said the Democrats have a gender gap as well, one that could be menacing if Dole manages to lure significant numbers of women to his corner.
Her surveys show Clinton trailing among white males by 11 points. "If the Dole camp can close the gap with women and hold onto its lead with men, he would be difficult to beat," she says. In fact, much of Clinton's base of women voters did not vote in 1994, giving Republicans a crack in the door and giving Democrats reason to focus their voter turnout efforts on women. "Turnout is very important," says Stephenie Foster, director of women's outreach for the Clinton campaign. "We're being very focused on targeting women all the states." Republicans, for their part, are enlisting female officeholders at all levels to try to energize other Republican women.
The RNC faxes "talking points" to a network of 6,000 women every other week soon to be every week. And pole's task force on women is working to engage women on the issues they care most about economics, education, crime. Not abortion. But Pat Harrison, who co-chairs the task force, believes narrowing the gender gap can be done only by the candidate himself. In the next days and weeks, she said, Dole will need to elaborate on his economic plan in a compelling way and project more compassion, emotion and accessibility.
"This is the person," Harrison said, "who has to emerge at the convention." ASSOCIATED PRESS Contender: Jack F. Kemp, shown in a Jan. 21 photo, met with Bob Dole Wednesday to discuss the No. 2 spot on the GOP ticket. port his fiscal views and Republican moderates who admire his ability to reach out to groups such as the urban poor.
"When you're 20 points behind, you need a said Thomas A. Scully, a former Bush administration official. "Kemp is a Kemp is a "dynamic campaigner, has a built-in national base" and, as an early advocate of the type of pro-growth economic plan Dole unveiled this week, is "the best salesman around that there is" for those proposals, said a Dole campaign aide who spoke on condition of anonymity. Even so, some Dole backers are skeptical of Kemp because they don't believe either man would be comfortable with the relationship. Dole puts a high premium on loyalty and was furious with Kemp for endorsing rival Steve Forbes in this year's primary campaign.
Kemp is an independent operator who pushed his own agenda within the Bush Cabinet, at times upstaging the president. Of the other two top contenders, only Mack offers Dole a real comfort factor. The 55-year-old two-term senator is easygoing and low key. He would be seen as a solid and safe choice who could reinforce Dole's drive for Florida's critical 25 electoral votes. Engler, 47, a popular and outspoken governor who served for many years In the Michigan legislature, is also his own man.
He, too, is a vigorous advocate of tax cuts, having put them into effect in his own state. And Michigan is a battleground that may hold the key to victory in a close election. All six still in contention have been asked by the Dole campaign for their schedules for the next few days. Kemp has also been asked to supply the personal and political background information sought earlier from the others. As a political veteran who has gone through numerous FBI checks, Kemp's history is believed by Dole aides to be well known.
When he began his search, Dole said he hoped to find a running mate with whom he would be personally compatible. He is especially close to McCain and Nickles; but neither of them is expected to bring much in terms of electoral votes nor do they possess a national base, which Kemp is believed to have. Buchanan continues to withhold endorsem*nt By Susan Baer SUN NATIONAL STAFF SAN DIEGO After days of bitter intramural squabbling over the Republican platform, GOP Chairman Haley Barbour yesterday sought to focus his fractured party on the formidable battle ahead to defeat President Clinton. In a speech intended to set the tone for the party's national convention four days away, Barbour said he expected that the presidential campaign would be waged over issues important to Americans, such as lower taxes, crime and education. With his party's presumptive nominee, Bob Dole, trailing badly in the polls, Barbour peppered his remarks with caustic asides portraying Clinton as an opportunist who will say anything to win reelection.
By contrast, Barbour cast Dole as a leader of plain-spoken sincerity and integrity. The American people, he said, "will see through women in every presidential campaign since 1980, when a voting disparity between men and women first revealed itself. Such gender gaps have always narrowed by election time, never amounting to more than a 9-point gulf. George Bush trailed Democrat Michael S. Dukakis by 18 points among women in the summer of 1988 and went on to win the women's vote by 4 points.
"It can be closed," said DiVall of the gap. More attention to women Dole's attempts to woo female voters have grown increasingly conspicuous as the convention nears. In his economic speech Monday, he said his tax-cutting plan was conceived for "the mother who works" and repeatedly referred to "women and men," and "mothers, fathers and children." Last month, in a campaign swing through Pennsylvania with New York Rep. Susan Molinari, Dole highlighted small business owners who are women and vowed to hold a "women-only" White House conference on business. The convention will feature a "ladies night" next Tuesday with Molinari as the keynote speaker and featuring other prominent women such as New Jersey Gov.
Christine Todd Whitman, the convention co-chairwoman, and Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison. But some Republican women, such as Tanya Melich, author of "The Republican War Against Women," call such attempts to appeal to women "window dressing." Melich, an abortion-rights supporter and lifelong Republican, said such moves as Dole's capitulation to social and religious conservatives on the abortion issue this week could so turn off moderate women that Clinton could end up with a landslide victory. In fighting for more tolerant language on abortion, she and other Republican supporters of abortion rights such as Maine Sen. Olympia J.
Snowe were quick to cite Dole's gender gap. Although polls show abortion near the bottom of women's list of concerns, Melich believes her party's official position calling for a constitutional ban on all abortions is "symbolic of the attitude of the Republican national leadership that women don't have the moral authority to make their own childbirth decisions." For her, it is a deal-breaker. "I cannot and I will not support the Republican nominee because of what they have done out here in the last two days," she said this week. Although abortion is clearly an influential factor those who voted for Bush in 1988 but not 1992 were largely women who supported abortion rights strategists of both parties say there are other, more salient issues respon IT ways to better. waistlines.
make Nearly opportunities fat out only save comfortably. The "handy" trying to around everybody inside Tune Tynan take you effective energy be personal your will thank 4 years of college and $23,000 I get an education from an 8-year-old. Buchanan would withhold any endorsem*nt of Dole until near the end of the convention, after he sees whom Dole selects as a running mate and the sorts of themes that emerge at the convention. "We will not accept anything less than a pro-life running mate," she said. For his part, Barbour played down the damage that might be caused by Buchanan's failure to bring his conservative loyalists on board the Dole campaign as it enters its critical convention week.
A TimeCNN poll released yesterday shows Dole trailing Clinton by 22 percentage points. At a news conference after his speech, the party chairman said the Dole campaign's shortage of money for the general election accounted for the Republican's inability to erode Clinton's lead. But Barbour said that, with an infusion of cash in federal matching funds available once Dole's nomination becomes official next week, the candidate will be able to get his message out. In his tone-setting pre-conven-tion speech, Barbour asserted that Clinton had "jammed through" the largest tax increase in the country's history, one that "clobbered" small business. He called the administration's efforts to curb drug abuse "abysmal." In response to Barbour's speech, Joe Lockhart, spokesman for the Clinton campaign, said that such rhetoric had gotten the Dole campaign nowhere.
Samantha Maly Age 8 Sr. Mathews Elementary HP DeskJet" on Paper. INTE'R ACTIVE (Disney) Clinton and they will also see Bob Dole. Because Bob Dole's words match his record. His record and his rhetoric are just alike." Barbour's efforts to unify the party's factions are being complicated by the candidate's Republican rival, Patrick J.
Buchanan, who has yet to endorse Dole. That was made clear yesterday, when a triumphant Angela "Bay" Buchanan, the candidate's sister and campaign manager, declared that the Republicans were now the party of Patrick Buchanan. She pointed out that many of Buchanan's positions especially his rigid opposition to abortion have been adopted as tenets of the party's platform. "As you go from point to point throughout this document, Pat Buchanan's positions, ideas, ideals have really captured the heart and soul" of the Republican Party, she said. "Today, we have a Buchanan party." She said the Buchanan camp, which had threatened to disrupt the convention if their anti-abortion position was not adequately reflected, would be "much more gracious" to the Republican leadership in the future.
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