ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, July 10, 1996 TAG: 9607100063
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: DENVER
SOURCE: The Washington Post
Former Colorado governor Richard D. Lamm, promising a ``no B.S. agenda'' of fiscal discipline and generational equity, Tuesday announced that he will seek the presidential nomination of the Reform Party founded by Ross Perot.
Lamm, a lifelong Democrat who earned a reputation as a blunt-spoken iconoclast during his three terms as governor between 1975 and 1987, said he was seeking the Reform Party nomination because of the moral bankruptcy of mainstream political parties that ``listen to money, not to people.''
Appearing before a relatively small crowd of family members and supporters at the University of Denver, where he heads a public policy center, Lamm, 60, said he seeks to ``create a whole new political coalition'' dedicated to revitalizing American political institutions.
``America needs a decade of reform and renewal,'' said Lamm. ``It doesn't need just a new president. It needs a whole decade of reform and renewal: 10 years to balance the budget and stop borrowing from our children; 10 years to reduce or eliminate the trade deficit; 10 years to fix our institutions and make them work again; 10 years to promote responsibility, instead of indulgence, as a national virtue; 10 years to put American politics and American government back in the hands of the people.''
In a presidential year in which the Democrats and Republicans settled their internal nomination fights unusually early, Lamm's entry adds an unpredictable element just as President Clinton and former Senator Bob Dole prepare to accept their parties' nominations at conventions in Chicago and San Diego next month.
Lamm conceded Tuesday that he has not a clue about the intentions of Perot, who four years ago captured 19 percent of the national vote running as an independent. Lamm said he had spoken to Perot on Monday and ``he has still given me no indication'' of whether he would seek the Reform Party nomination to be decided in a two-stage convention in August in Long Beach, Calif., and Valley Forge, Pa.
A spokeswoman for Perot said the Texas billionaire would have no comment on Lamm's announcement until his appearance on Larry King Live tonight.
But Lamm said he would not be deterred even if Perot runs for the nomination. ``This party has to declare its independence from Ross Perot. I'll run against Ross Perot in his own party. They can defeat me, but I'm not going to withdraw.''
Organizers of the Reform Party said that while Lamm is not well known, his message has the potential to resonate among Perot followers.
``What I've heard the most is people don't know a lot about him,'' said Pat Muth of the Florida Reform Party, a longtime Perot supporter. ``But they're listening to what he has to say. What he's saying, people like.''
``He's a very credible candidate and he's given a lot of credibility to the Reform Party,'' said Joan Vinson of Maryland.
But Vinson said Perot maintains a strong following within the organization he created. ``My sense is that Perot does have strong allegiance from an awful lot of people,'' she said. ``They feel that he carried the water for a lot of the reforms we're talking about now, whether it's the balanced budget or term limits or campaign finance reform or NAFTA.''
Just how Lamm would raise the resources to mount a national campaign remains unclear. Based on Perot's 1992 performance, the Federal Election Commission said in June that he would be eligible for $30 million in federal matching campaign funds, but did not answer the question of whether another nominee of the Reform Party would receive taxpayer support.
Also unclear is what impact Lamm's candidacy would have on Clinton, his longtime friend and former political ally. Lamm's wife, Dottie, a committed Democrat, admitted her own ``angst'' about her husband's interest in the race in a recent column in the Denver Post. ``Will a third party effort, however worthy, simply serve to elect Bob Dole president?'' she wrote. ``If so, can I live with being even peripherally responsible for the right wing takeover of America that could engender?''
Tuesday, Dottie Lamm answered those questions, almost. She said she supports her husband's long-shot quest, but still worries it may ultimately elect Dole. ``I think he is the right person with the right message at the right time,'' she said of her husband. But, she conceded ``it was not an easy decision'' and that she is still only ``99 percent there.''
Over the course of three decades in public life, Lamm has demonstrated a penchant for attacking conventional political wisdom, traits he believes will serve him well in an unconventional, grass-roots campaign aimed at votershe says are prepared to listen to painful truths.
A native of Madison, Wis., Lamm came to Colorado after completing law school and quickly immersed himself in local politics, becoming part of a young Democratic vanguard that included senators Gary Hart and Tim Wirth. As a young state legislator, he sponsored the legislation that made Colorado the first state to legalize abortions. He was a strong advocate of environmental protection and laws against child abuse. And in 1970, he led what seemed like a hopeless crusade against Denver's bid for the 1976 Olympics, an effort that prevailed and set his personal political table for a gubernatorial run in 1974.
He won, and increased his winning margins in each of his next two re-election bids, despite an increasing penchant for delivering such grim warnings of government insolvency, overpopulation, third-rate schools and an invading army of illegal aliens that he became known as ``Governor Gloom.''
``In his third term as governor he became either stir crazy or terminally bored and began a new career as the Rocky Mountain Cassandra,'' said Dan Buck, an aide to Rep. Patricia Schroeder, D-Colo. ``Every issue he brings up is the coming peril. ... It's either a ticking time bomb or a cancer, so when Dick Lamm gets up to talk you don't know whether to call the bomb squad or the ambulance.''
A longtime critic of government entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare, which transfer huge sums from the young to the often-affluent old, Lamm caused a stir in the 1980s when he said, ``We've got a duty to die and get out of the way with all our machines and artificial hearts and everything else like that and let the other society, our kids, build a reasonable life.''
Similarly blunt statements about spending huge sums on the developmentally disabled, and about the supposedly dire threat posed by illegal immigration, have also earned him enemies in traditionally Democratic constituencies.
Already in this campaign Lamm has called for the partial privatization of Social Security, and he is being compared with another salesman of bad news, former senator Paul E. Tsongas, who faltered against Clinton in 1992. In Tuesday's Denver Post, former Clinton pollster Stan Greenberg dismissed Lamm as ``Tsongas with euthanasia.''
One thing that is certain is that Lamm - who endorsed a gasoline tax increase as he announced his candidacy - won't pull many punches.
``I begin this campaign with only one promise,'' he said, ``and that's to present the truth and, in some cases, the hard truth, and to trust you to make the right choices. What America needs, in short, is a no-B.S. agenda.''
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LENGTH: Long : 129 lines KEYWORDS: POLITICS PRESIDENTby CNB