Dole Begins Long Reach for California Brass Ring

Hoping to defy the odds, presidential contender Bob Dole will kick off a major bid to win California by launching a statewide tour Tuesday, just before the Republican Party showers the state with about $3.5 million in television ads over the next several weeks.

The new California effort is the first sign that Dole, the presumed Republican presidential nominee, will seriously engage in a costly and high-stakes battle for the nation’s biggest electoral prize. And it is sure to surprise some political observers who figured that California is so expensive to contest and that President Clinton’s lead in state polls is so daunting that Dole would only be wasting his time.

GOP strategists, however, have recently come to two conclusions:

* That California is not out of reach for Dole, given recent statewide elections in which Republican candidates have overcome large early deficits in the polls to either run close races or go on to victory.

* That there are benefits for the GOP’s national battle plan if Clinton can be forced to defend his most valuable territory, the one state that most observers consider a must-win for his reelection.

“The central point of this trip is to come in here and stake a claim,” said California GOP strategist Ken Khachigian, who will be named to a formal role in the Dole campaign this week, sources said. “The sort of rumble here for the last month or so has been, ‘Gee, do you think [Dole] will write off California like President Bush did?’ I think that has to be put to bed.”

Khachigian added: “A Republican cannot win the presidency without contesting California--that’s the rule. If you give it up, . . . you’re allowing Clinton to go win other states.”

The upcoming television commercials are part of a nationwide GOP blitz that is scheduled to last about seven weeks, sources said. It is financed by the Republican National Committee and, as a result, federal laws restrict what it can say about Dole’s candidacy.

Dole’s campaign is unable to pay for its own commercials, having spent nearly all of the $37.1 million that federal campaign-financing rules allow prior to the candidate’s nomination, which won’t occur until the Republican National Convention in San Diego in August.

The cash crunch, caused by the contentious GOP primary campaign earlier this year, is so severe that Dole officials were still uncertain about their California schedule late last week because they did not know how the events would be financed.

Clinton, who did not face primary opposition, still has about $20 million in his campaign account to spend this summer. Additionally, Democrats have tapped the party’s national committee to finance a series of television ads that have been shown in selected areas of California and elsewhere since late last year.

Democratic officials, however, said the extent of their advertising so far in California falls short of the level that the Republican sources say their party will achieve in the next two months here.

The sources said Republicans will spend nearly $500,000 a week, just short of the saturation level that candidates usually reach in the state during crucial campaign periods.

GOP officials said the ads will principally target Clinton for attacks instead of promoting Dole as a presidential candidate. The GOP has already broadcast a few such ads nationally that raise questions about Clinton’s record on balancing the budget, welfare reform and other issues.

With Clinton holding about a 20-percentage-point lead in California polls, Khachigian said: “I think it’s probably more important for us right now to define Clinton than to define Dole. We’ll have time to define Dole.”

The Republican assessment about California’s strategic value was heavily influenced by the GOP’s past experiences in the state--both successes and failures.

Party officials believe, for example, that then-President Bush paid a high price in 1992 by signaling early in the summer that he would not contest Clinton’s lead in California. The decision allowed Democrats to count the state’s 54 electoral votes as a sure thing early in the campaign and shift their attention to more combative sites.

Also, the GOP officials take heart from a recent series of statewide races that have marked dramatic upswings by Republicans.

Khachigian noted that Gov. Pete Wilson and GOP Senate candidates Mike Huffington and Bruce Herschensohn began their races more than 20 percentage points behind their Democratic opponents. Wilson, in 1994, ultimately scored a handy win over Democrat Kathleen Brown; Huffington, in 1994, and Herschensohn, in 1992, both came within 2 points of victory.

“I think, certainly, post-convention we are going to want to see some movement” in the statewide polls, Khachigian said. “But I would not be panicked about California until mid-October. I was looking at these numbers the other day and, in the Herschensohn campaign, we started on Labor Day 22 points behind [Democrat Barbara] Boxer.”

Dole’s California tour, which begins Tuesday in Ontario, is his first since he campaigned here just before the March 26 primary. He is also scheduled to appear in Los Angeles, San Diego and Sacramento.

In March, Dole’s visit amounted to a friendly California introduction, as Wilson took his onetime presidential rival on a statewide tour in which the Kansas senator did little to detail his agenda.

Now Dole comes west on a more delicate, and vital, mission. In the land where Clinton has steadfastly cultivated his reelection hopes, Dole seeks to paint the incumbent as a failure. And more importantly, he hopes to show why he would do better in the White House.

“He has to tell his story, and he has to tell Mr. Clinton’s story,” Wilson said recently. “And he has to do both fairly, in context. If he does that, there is a vivid contrast, one that will benefit him. I think what’s going to happen is that, as he is out here increasingly and as people see the contrast, the votes are going to change.”

So far, Dole’s attempt to distinguish himself from Clinton has been difficult. On issue after issue, Clinton seems to be co-opting the GOP agenda, from a gas-tax repeal and welfare reform to a seven-year balanced-budget plan and limits on same-sex marriages.

Yet, as Dole himself notes, with evident frustration, “profound and fundamental differences” remain--over such issues as missile defense systems, abortion restrictions, product-liability reform and gun control.

In addition, Dole contends that Clinton’s performance has not lived up to its billing on several major issues. In California, for example, Dole plans to hop into a recent San Diego controversy about whether there is adequate prosecution of illegal-immigrant drug smugglers.

But California also presents Dole with a mixed bag--one that illustrates some of the strategic uncertainty that remains in the Republican campaign. The senator’s aides are debating how Dole should appeal to swing voters in the political center without alienating GOP conservatives.

Dole, for example, is expected to steer clear of California’s debate over affirmative action, which voters will decide in an initiative on the November ballot.

The senator has endorsed the measure, and he has written similar congressional legislation to end affirmative action programs. But his staff is divided about whether it is politically wise for him to highlight such a controversial and emotional issue in his campaign.

“That’s a work in progress,” said Marty Wilson, director of Dole’s California campaign. “There’s a lot of chatter going on about how enthusiastic Dole is going to be about the initiative on the fall ballot. The fact is that no decision has been made.”

That is not the only delicate issue for Dole in California.

While he was searching for conservative Republican votes in the primary, Dole came out against the federal ban on assault weapons. Now, preparing for a general election, that position leaves him at odds with California’s top Republican leaders, including Wilson.

Tandem appearances by Dole and Wilson this week will also conjure up a simmering battle within the GOP about abortion. Last month, over Dole’s objections, Wilson said he will go to the party convention and join other Republican governors who are trying to remove antiabortion language from the GOP platform.

As Dole tries to distinguish his campaign, such unresolved issues demonstrate how much more definition is necessary before voters will know whether he wants to lead the GOP on a predominantly moderate or conservative route.

But rather than dwell on those questions for now, the Dole campaign is striving to shift the debate to Clinton. The campaign “is going to be a referendum on Bill Clinton,” said Nelson Warfield, Dole’s chief campaign spokesman.