After months of training, stage-setting, state primaries, caucuses and the nominating conventions, Bill Clinton and Bob Dole have their tactics in place and their basic messages set. Now they face the final jockeying and the final dash to Election Day.
The basic numbers are simple: 270, $62 million and nine. Each candidate needs to carry states giving him 270 electoral votes to win; each has $62 million in federal election funds to spend and nine weeks before Nov. 5 to spend it.The strategies will unfold in the next few weeks as candidates' target the states they must win, states they can win and states they're writing off. They will allocate financial resources and candidates' time accordingly.
California, with the most - 54 - electoral votes at stake, illustrates the tradeoffs. "California drives everything," said James Carville, who directed Clinton's successful 1992 campaign. "A decision to spend $1 million there affects every decision down the line."
Dole trails in California by at least 15 points in polls and has been urged by some aides to divert his resources to more competitive states. "If he spends $15 million to become competitive in California, and Clinton-Gore say, `We can win it with $7 million,' they have $8 million to spend in key states like Michigan, Kentucky, Georgia, Missouri, New Jersey, Louisiana - states where that's a lot of money," Carville said.
Here is a region-by-region roundup of the presidential campaign:
THE WEST: The race for the West is really two races - the Far West and the rest - and whichever candidate wins the three states of California, Oregon and Washington, wins the region.
If the election were held today, that candidate would be Clinton.
California, with its 54 electoral votes, is the big prize, with the region's other 73 votes split among 13 states. Clinton has visited the state repeatedly since winning there in 1992, and strategists say he must carry it to win re-election. The economy, the environment and immigration are key issues there.
Dole, too, is working the state hard, spending the week of the Democratic convention in California. Dole state strategist Ken Khachigian remains optimistic that the party will put the tens of millions of dollars into the state that will be necessary to remain competitive there.
If the number of Dole trips to California starts to dwindle over the next nine weeks, it will mean that Dole has essentially given up on the state - as George Bush did in 1992.
Clinton has a double-digit lead in the polls in California, and even the Republican convention in San Diego didn't budge that, according to California Democratic Party Chairman Art Torres.
A more telling barometer of how the election may come out in the West is Colorado, with eight electoral votes. Clinton beat Bush and Ross Perot there in 1992, but it was close: Clinton got 40 percent, Bush, 36 percent and Perot, 23 percent. Since then, the population has expanded, particularly in the suburbs surrounding Denver - the home of the all-important swing voters.
The latest poll shows Clinton ahead in Colorado by five percentage points, within the margin of error.
Oregon, with seven electoral votes, and Washington, 11, are solidly in Clinton's column in current polls, and there's little indication that will change. But there are solid Dole states in the West, as well. Wyoming, with three electoral votes, is Dole country, as are Utah, five; Idaho, four; and Alaska, three.
THE MIDWEST: Both presidential candidates understand the stakes in the Midwest.
Republican pollster Ed Goeas estimates that 20 percent of the nation's voters are undecided, and Clinton campaign aides say that 70 percent of those swing voters live within a 750-mile radius of Chi-ca-go.
Candidate campaign schedules emphasize the point. Clinton sandwiched his Chicago convention with a four-day train trip through Ohio, Michigan and Indiana and a two-day bus trip through four states including Missouri and Illinois. Monday, he formally opened his campaign with a trip to Wisconsin, a state he carried in 1992.
Dole is expected in Wisconsin before week's end. The state has a popular Republican governor, Tommy Thompson, and Dole has already visited the state five times this year. Dole has high hopes for the Midwest. He has broad support in the Plains states and Indiana, and he will focus his advertising and campaign effort in the critical states of Ohio, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin and Missouri.
Clinton is counting on the economy and union support and his full-court-press campaigning. In South Dakota, Democratic Sen. Tom Daschle sees potential for the president. Three factors resonate with voters in his state, he said. Farmers are having their best year in 25 years, except for livestock. Second, the government shutdown is blamed on Republicans. "And people believe he has grown in the job," Daschle said.
The economy throughout the region remains healthy, and Clinton never hesitates to mention the number of new jobs created in the past four years. Although the North American Free Trade Agreement remains a sore point in union centers in the region, his education proposals and anti-crime efforts draw support.
THE SOUTH: Florida and Texas were on White House aide George Stephanopoulos' mind as he thanked New York's Democratic convention delegates last week for helping build Clinton's 22-point lead over Dole in statewide polls and begged them to keep up the good work.
"A big lead like that in New York allows us to focus time and resources in places like Texas and Florida, where we'd like to be stronger," said Stephanopoulos, Clinton's senior political adviser.
For Clinton and Dole, the South could be a gold mine or a land mine. The region has 160 electoral votes, more than half the 270 needed to win the presidency. But the road through the South could be a bumpy one for both Clinton and Dole.
The former Kansas senator's Southern strategy calls for him to carry at least nine of the 13 states. But though the region has become more Republican during the past 20 years, polls show Dole leading in only five states - Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and narrowly in Virginia.
Clinton leads in Arkansas, Tennessee, West Virginia and narrowly in Georgia. States that are up for grabs are important ones: Texas, with 32 electoral votes; Florida, 25; North Carolina, 14; and Kentucky, eight.
John Buckley, Dole's communications director, said the campaign's economic agenda - high-ligh-ted by a 15 percent across-the-board tax cut - coupled with the broad appeal of running mate Jack Kemp and the GOP's focus on family values, should give Dole the edge in the South.
"I expect the South to be very solid," said Ed Rollins, a Republican political strategist who managed Ronald Reagan's 1984 presi-den-tial campaign. "I think Texas and Florida will come in."
Buckley said Dole will spend a lot of time in battleground states such as Florida, Louisiana, Kentucky and North Carolina.
Clinton campaign officials believe they will do well in the South by sticking to the script of the Democratic convention: list the president's accomplishments and paint Dole, the former Senate majority leader, as an ally of House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., and an extremist, Republican-controlled Congress.
THE NORTHEAST: Dole's campaign takes heart from New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman's surprise election three years ago. Far behind in the polls, Whitman proposed a 30 percent state tax cut, her campaign ignited, and she stormed to victory. Dole hopes she can repeat that magic for him in 1996.
Clinton's campaign takes heart from 1992, when he won every state from Maine to Maryland, and from today, when he leads the polls in every state in the Northeast.
Still, while most of the Northeast is in the Clinton column at the moment, New Jersey and Pennsylvania are two battleground states where both presidential candidates will devote considerable time and energy in the next nine weeks.
"Dole's base is the South, the West and the Plains states. Clinton's strength is the Northeast and Northwest," said Charles Black, senior adviser to the Dole campaign. "The real campaign will be in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, right across to the Great Lakes states and California."
States in the Northeast fall into three broad categories - traditionally Democratic Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island and Maryland; traditionally Republican states that Perot put into play in '92: New Hampshire, Vermont and New Jersey (none had been carried by a Democratic presidential candidate since 1964); and swing states Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Delaware and Maine.
The region has been buffeted by harsh economic winds and is sensitive to Dole's tax-cutting, prudent government message. "This race is about the pocketbook," Black said. "We can now show some real differences between our plans and the Clinton plan. The purpose is to limit the size of government and put money in people's pockets." Republicans say the average New Jersey taxpayer would save $1,727 with Dole's tax cut, while in Pennsylvania it would be $1,677.
There's a long-shot possibility that Perot could influence some states in the region. Clinton won Connecticut, New Hampshire and New Jersey by less than 6 percent in 1992. Though Perot is expected to draw far less support than in 1992, his votes come from swing groups with strong anti-incumbent sentiments.
Distributed by the Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service