Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.wpost From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: 'The Worst Campaign Ever' NEW BREMEN, Ohio - The fact that 12 days before the election Dan Quayle was addressing an eleventh-hour fund-raiser here at the palatial home of industrialist James Dicke is one more warning signal for the Republican presidential campaign. By its own tracking, the Bush-Quayle ticket is running 8 points behind Clinton-Gore in Ohio - a state no Republican has ever lost without also losing the presidency. Instead of campaigning to the masses, Vice President Quayle temporarily was out of sight rais- ing over $70,000 from a roomful of well-heeled supporters in New Bremen. That's because building the GOP war chest has been neglected by President Bush's high command despite years of pleading by party leaders here to get moving. "This is the worst campaign I have ever seen," a veteran Ohio Republican politician told us. Whatever meager chance the president might have to overcome the negative economic and polit- ical climate has been made still more slender by the incompetency of the Bush operation. Nowhere is this clearer than in the last- minute struggle for funds. Ohio Republican Chairman Robert Bennett is an old pro regarded in the Bush camp as one of the party's best state leaders. Nevertheless, his repeated appeals to Washington over the past two years to start the campaign - including fund raising - went unheeded. The result was a frantic attempt to schedule Bush for a late fund-raiser. After two such dates were canceled, the president was finally penciled in for the last weekend of the campaign. But that was vetoed by Chief of Staff James A. Baker III, who correctly argued that crucial final hours were too important for raising money. Instead, Quayle interrupted his bus tour through small-town Ohio for the New Bremen event. The tour uplifted Republican spirits. The vice president, supremely self-confident after his debate with Al Gore, drew enthusiastic responses from big crowds when he assailed Bill Clinton. But this year's most important Republican candidate in Ohio, Lt. Gov. Mike Dewine, avoided Quayle as if he were Typhoid Mary. The 45-year-old former congressman has the chance of a lifetime to defeat 71-year-old Democratic Sen. John Glenn, the Marine hero- astronaut who may have reached the end of the road in his 18-year Senate career. Dewine has been brutally hammering Glenn as a member of the "Keating Five" (though he got off with a light rap on the knuck- les from the Senate Ethics Committee) and for the $3 million un- paid debt of his 1984 presidential campaign. The conservative Republican, campaigning as a candidate of "change" and running 4 points ahead of the presidential ticket, does not want to be en- cumbered by the Bush-Quayle burden. Dewine was scheduled to introduce Quayle during the vice president's bus tour at a fund-raiser for the Senate candidate in Findlay. But Dewine was at the other end of the state in Youngs- town, answering questions from a few students at the predominant- ly black Mt. Calvary Pentecostal Church school in a hastily ar- ranged event. The next day Quayle visited Xenia, Dewine's home base where he began his political career as the 29-year-old Greene County prosecuting attorney. The lieutenant governor arrived fashionably late, just as the vice president was finishing. Dewine concedes that in going after Glenn, he does not mention Bush much. "I have always run an independent campaign," he told us. In contrast, Glenn grabs Bill Clinton's coattails and is fulsomely intent on attaching Dewine to Bush's. Accusing Dewine of automatically casting "Bush-Reagan votes in Congress," Glenn tells audiences "he's become a rubber stamp for Bush-Reagan policies." In this "worst campaign ever," Ohio GOP leaders have been prom- ised one more Bush visit here even if no more fund raising is possible. Recently canceled presidential stops in Dayton and Portsmouth have been promised for rescheduling to boost the tick- et in this essential state. But will that help? The good news last week for Republicans was that their nightly tracking showed Clinton dropping, but the bad news showed Bush also falling. The gainer was Ross Perot, reach- ing 17 percent in the state and still going up. On one night, Perot was taking three votes away from Bush for every two from Clinton. "The people think Perot stands for something," a worried Repub- lican told us, "and that Bush doesn't." That may be the epitaph for a failed campaign. 1992, Creators Syndicate Inc.=02:07 10-26C9999----- Copyright 1992, The Washington Post. This story is from the Washington Post's Capitol Edition On-Line and is not to be ar- chived or redistributed. For more information, send-email to American Cybercasting Cor- poration (usa@AmeriCast.COM)