Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, April 22, 1991 TAG: 9104220188
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ROB EURE and DWAYNE YANCEY STAFF WRITERS
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Long
Dukakis himself, then the governor of Massachusetts, was campaigning out of state four to five days a week.
Rep. Richard Gephardt was looking to rent an apartment in Des Moines, Iowa, because he spent so much time there.
By those standards, Gov. Douglas Wilder's presidential explorations in 1991 would seem surprisingly tentative.
Wilder has not set foot in either state this year. Nor has he lined up any supporters there. The most he's done is send a two-man scouting party to Iowa to check out "the lay of the land" and a lone field worker to New Hampshire to chat with old friends.
So far, it seems the absence of a Wilder campaign apparatus may not matter. In contrast to four years ago, the Democratic presidential field is nearly empty SECOND OF TWO PARTS this spring - and Wilder has a knack for grabbing headlines.
But the time for serious contenders to put together a formal campaign organization is fast approaching, political analysts say.
Some veterans of past presidential campaigns wonder whether Wilder, with his reputation for operating with a tightly held knot of advisers and his legendary disdain for organization, can pull off a national campaign that requires a far-flung network of political operatives and financiers.
The same questions were asked when he ran for lieutenant governor in 1985 and governor in 1989; both times he defied the experts' insistence that he run a high-budget campaign stocked with big-name consultants. His station-wagon tour across the state in 1985 and his "kiddie korps" staff of 1989 are now political lore in Virginia.
But running for president is far different from running for governor.
"We know he can hit the curve ball in Triple A, but can he hit the fast ball in the majors?" says Bill Galston, an adviser to former Vice President Walter Mondale in 1984 and Tennessee Sen. Albert Gore in 1988.
Talk to political figures around the country and they're as likely to ask questions about Wilder's staff as they are about Wilder himself.
"I understand the appeal of the candidacy. I don't understand the team," says Ann Lewis, who worked for Jesse Jackson in 1988.
Wilder's only real strategist is state party chairman Paul Goldman, who now raises the same eyebrows in the national party establishment that he once raised in Virginia.
A scraggly haired New Jersey lawyer who lives off a trust fund he inherited, Goldman worked for a number of liberal Democrats in Virginia during the 1970s and '80s, but was generally regarded as a fringe character on the political scene until he managed Wilder's breakthrough campaign for lieutenant governor in 1985.
The first impression Goldman makes does not always endear him to party power-brokers: A strict vegetarian, he's often seen at political gatherings chewing on a banana or dipping into a plastic bag of cereal he carries in his suit pocket. Fancying himself an Old West cowboy taking verbal aim at Wilder's rivals, he's enraged politicians as diverse as Charles Robb and Mario Cuomo with his caustic comments.
With Wilder's two statewide victories behind him, Goldman is widely recognized as having a gift for strategy and image-making. However, he has shown no interest in the day-to-day details of running a campaign.
Bob Squier, a veteran Democratic consultant in Washington, says Goldman - because of his intensity and his long-range thinking - reminds him of Hamilton Jordan, who orchestrated the campaign of another long-shot Southern governor, Jimmy Carter, in 1976.
Others aren't so sure.
"The real question on the operational side is: `This has been a couple. Can it become a team?'" Lewis asks. "Doug Wilder and Paul Goldman have been a very effective political [duo]. But they handled it one challenge at a time. In national politics, you get into lots of states at one time. You need more than two people talking to each other. It's not clear if that can change, if Wilder can open it up. And if and when it expands, who else is there?"
Will Wilder try to recruit other elected officials around the country into his inner circle? "Watching his relationship with Robb doesn't inspire a lot of optimism about his ability to deal with peers," Lewis says.
There's also a question about whether, after the experience of Dukakis in 1988, anyone can run for president and govern a state at the same time.
Dukakis has since said he believes taking on both jobs at once was a mistake. Chris Edley Jr., a Harvard Law School professor and Dukakis' 1988 policy director, says Wilder would have a tougher time.
"Wilder's power in Virginia is far more contested than was Dukakis'," Edley says. "Massachusetts is essentially a one-party state. As difficult as it was for Dukakis to juggle competing demands, I believe there are few state governors that would have it so easy."
Galston says Wilder's organizational skills will not only be measured by activists in the early states, it will also serve as one of several benchmarks by which the national press corps judges Wilder's candidacy.
"The first test is the test of organization. Running for president is not a solo operation," Galston says. "The second test is the ability to deliver a message and how the audience responds. The third is the test of money. You can't run for president without money. He has about six months. If he's not clicking in these three areas by October or November, he's not going anywhere."
Galston says Wilder needs $2.5 million to $3 million by this fall to maintain contender status.
That figure is low by 1988 campaign standards, and Wilder's three-week-old exploratory committee has just started raising money. The committee filed its first federal financial disclosure form April 15, based on its first two days in operation. The committee raised $2,000 and spent $39 on a post office box, treasurer Mark Warner said.
Galston says, however, this year's campaign may require less cash for contenders because the big-dollar candidates, such as New York's Cuomo, New Jersey Sen. Bill Bradley and Texas Sen. Lloyd Bentsen, may not run.
And, he says "it's not clear that Doug Wilder's fund-raising capacity is substantially smaller than Al Gore's," who many consider a favorite among conservative Democratic activists.
Even with adequate financing, Edley says Wilder must prove his organizational skills to do well in the early primary and caucus tests.
"Iowa and New Hampshire demand retail campaigning," Edley says. "It's highly labor-intensive. In Iowa in particular, the activists are professional presidential-campaign screeners. They expect and demand to see the candidate."
Especially in caucus states, Edley says organization is the most important factor, "and you can't do that on a shoestring."
In Iowa, for example, federal law limits a presidential candidate to spending $750,000 on the caucus contest, and Edley found that was not enough four years ago.
"What you do is rent cars in Kansas and drive them into Iowa so that they don't count against your spending there."
Besides field workers, Wilder also will need the kind of experts on staff who can fill him in on national and international topics that, as governor, he does not handle. "Once the novelty wears off, the people will begin to raise questions about the kind of issues Wilder has not paid attention to, of microeconomic policy and foreign policy," says Robert Smith of San Francisco State University.
Galston says some Democrats already question whether Wilder's message is "more sizzle than steak" - fearing that Wilder lacks the detailed kind of analysis Democratic activists expect from a candidate.
Wilder's message of fiscal conservatism "by itself, doesn't have enough legs to carry him very far," Galston says. "He will have to come forward with a more substantive program, especially in social areas." For that, he'll need a battery of economists and other domestic policy advisers.
However, the same veterans of previous presidential campaigns who are critical of Wilder's lack of organization also say Wilder has a number of intangible advantages he would bring to a presidential campaign.
Wilder may not have a specific program yet, but he does possess a keen understanding of the importance of themes and images, Lewis says - attributes that are at least as important as the nuts and bolts of campaigning.
"One of Doug Wilder's assets is he has one of the clearest images-slash-messages of any candidate right now," she says. "When talking about running for president, you're talking about images and values. Less important is how he feels about a Mexican free-trade agreement, but that will come."
She's also impressed by the tough mental focus Wilder demonstrated during his bids for lieutenant governor and governor and how kept a clear head in the chaos of a campaign.
"He has the discipline to do it," Lewis says. "You can get re-elected to the U.S. Senate and not have to have that kind of discipline. His third asset is, I think this is going to be a relatively low-budget campaign. Wilder has experience in running a low-budget, almost guerrilla campaign."
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by CNB