The Republicans Drawing the Battle Lines

By Laurence I. Barrett/New Orleans

While the G.O.P. legions were massed in New Orleans, Michael Dukakis was waging a guerrilla campaign deep in Republican territory. He popped up in Alabama, Florida and Texas, contrasting what he later called his attachment to Main Street with Republican roistering on Bourbon Street. The incursion was central to his strategy. For weeks Dukakis has been traveling to states as small as North Dakota and as large as California that have gone Republican in recent presidential elections. He even told Floridians, in defiance of all conventional wisdom, "I believe we're going to win here."

Dukakis' itinerary and his choice of a Texan as running mate show that his strategists have no respect for what is known as the "electoral lock." That concept, based on voting patterns of the previous generation, posits that Republican candidates start with a huge advantage in reaching the magic number of 270 electoral votes. In the past five elections, 23 states, with a total of 202 electoral votes, have gone solidly Republican. Except in Jimmy Carter's narrow victory in 1976, the South and the West were the most loyal Republican regions.

This seemingly implacable trend forced Democrats into small-bore strategies as they sought to concentrate on the minimum of states necessary to yield 270. But this year promises to be different. After Labor Day, Dukakis and Bush should be about evenly matched in electoral votes they can probably count on. A careful look at the map shows Bush and Dukakis each starting with relatively reliable bases almost identical in size -- 115 electoral votes for Bush, 112 for Dukakis.

Like all other U.S. elections, this one will boil down to individual skirmishes in a handful of key states. Seven of the largest, with a total of 184 votes, form the no-man's-land in which the contest will be decided. Says Republican Consultant Stuart Spencer: "It's going to be a hell of a fight, with no prisoners taken. In the end, they'll be in the same states." What makes the current map such a crazy quilt is that the major battlegrounds stretch from New Jersey and Pennsylvania in the East through Ohio, Michigan and Illinois in the Midwest, to Texas and California. Several smaller border states, such as Kentucky and Tennessee, are also within reach of either Bush or Dukakis. Rarely since World War II has so much terrain in all regions been up for grabs.

The erratic pattern of economic recovery has created Democratic opportunities in several states that otherwise would be counted as Republican, such as Iowa, Oregon and Colorado. Unlike Reagan and Richard Nixon, Bush has no firm ties with the West. "What scares me," says a Republican planner, "is the realization that the West is a G.O.P. stronghold but not at all a Bush stronghold." Dukakis has also benefited from the five-month hiatus in Bush's visibility after the Republican nomination was effectively settled on Super Tuesday.

Dukakis reinforced his strategy when he chose Lloyd Bentsen as his running mate, challenging Bush in Texas and hoping to appeal to Democrats who had supported Reagan. Bush's selection of Dan Quayle, while packaged as a brave generational leap, was in fact an act of consolidation. Quayle adds nothing to Bush's strength in terms of geography or ideology. The Democrats want to keep the G.O.P. off-balance by aiming their geographic blitz at some 30 states with about 400 electoral votes. Says Charlie Baker, Dukakis' national field director: "By keeping that many states and electoral votes on the table, we essentially are turning the tables on the Republicans." That strategy also forces Bush to spend time and money protecting large states like Texas and Florida that should otherwise fall easily into the Republican column.

While Bush's top advisers will not admit it, they are being forced into a relatively defensive electoral-map strategy. Because they cannot be certain of taking nearly all the South and the West, they must hone in on specific states to assure themselves of at least 270. Campaign Manager Lee Atwater predicts that Dukakis will bleed himself to exhaustion besieging Texas, then retreat because of Texan resistance to a Greek liberal from Massachusetts.

Atwater shares the common view that Democrats who defected to Reagan in 1980 & and 1984 are the "single most important swing group in this campaign." As both camps decide exactly which states to target for maximum attention, they have no doubt that they must court the white Southerners and ethnic blue- collar families in other regions who helped Reagan win his landslides. Many of these are older voters who, according to polls by the Times Mirror Co., are patriotic, conservative on social questions, and concerned about the economy.

To woo these so-called Reagan Democrats, Dukakis promises "good jobs at good wages." He says he will somehow provide day care, medical care for the elderly, and housing for the poor. Stylistically, Dukakis has been following Reagan's example, using patriotic symbols and man-of-the-people gestures. At a rally in Modesto, Calif., Dukakis and Bentsen appeared before waving flags, with the Pledge of Allegiance as prologue and God Bless America as background music. Dukakis is attempting the difficult trick of coming across as the urban sophisticate to moderates and as an earthy ethnic to working-class voters.

Republicans are trying desperately to pry those images apart. While giving nods to some of the same social needs Dukakis addresses, Bush and his aides want to depict Dukakis as a reckless leftist soft on every bad guy, from convicted murderer to drug pusher to the Ayatullah. The criticism directed at Dukakis' weakness in defense policy is a tocsin meant to alarm the Reagan Democrats. But, as Republican Pollster Richard Wirthlin points out, it is difficult to use these arguments on more sophisticated moderates. By choosing Quayle and by orchestrating the convention as a symphony of criticism of his opponent's "Dukak-eyed" views, as Bob Dole put it, Bush seems to be sacrificing the moderates in favor of the more conservative Reagan Democrats.

By no coincidence, these voters hold the balance in critical toss-up states like Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania, where Dukakis will campaign this week. Bush visited Illinois and Ohio soon after his nomination, contesting the large expanse of no-man's-land where the next President will be chosen.