So Does O’Neill : Dukakis Believes He Can Carry the County

Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis, the front-runner in the Democratic race for the presidential nomination, flew into Orange County on Thursday night to tour a laser research institute near UC Irvine and address a rally on campus.

Running late on his campaign swing through California, Dukakis nonetheless took a leisurely tour of the Beckman Laser Institute, answered questions from the institute staff during an informal gathering, then was greeted by a crowd of several hundred at the campus’s University Club that was friendly and festive despite being kept waiting for nearly two hours.

Prominent Orange County Democrat Richard J. O’Neill introduced Dukakis to the crowd and said, “I think for the first time since Harry Truman, we can carry Orange County for you.” The audience cheered, and Dukakis heartily agreed.

Dukakis, ending a day that included campaign stops in San Francisco, Palo Alto and Visalia, was delayed on the runway in Fresno, flew to the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station and finally arrived at the Beckman Institute at 9 p.m.

Guided by three of the institute’s doctors, Dukakis was shown the latest techniques of genetic engineering using lasers. A laser aimed through a microscope to cut genes from cells was demonstrated, and Dukakis was given a laser to use as a pen in autographing a honeydew melon.

After both he and his wife, Kitty, wrote their names, Dukakis remarked, “This may be the first melon that ever was a collector’s item.”

Dukakis, seeming relaxed and eager for the tour, spent 40 minutes in the institute guided by Dr. Michael Berns, institute director and professor of surgery at UCI; Dr. Edward Quilligan, dean of the UCI Medical School, and Dr. G. Robert Mason, chairman of the university’s department of surgery.

The presidential candidate spent part of the time conversing with researchers and others in the institute’s library about how the federal government can foster such private research. Even when aides wanted to hurry him off to the rally, Dukakis insisted on answering more questions.

Berns asked Dukakis what he would do as President to aid such research, but Dukakis turned the question back, asking for suggestions.

Someone suggested tax credits for contributors to such institutions. But Dukakis balked, saying the government is beleaguered with a $170-billion deficit. “We’ve got all that red ink out there. We’re going to have to be very tough about tax credits,” he warned.

From there, Dukakis went to the University Club, where some of the crowd had been waiting since 6:30 p.m. for a rally that originally had been scheduled for 7:30 p.m. The Massachusetts governor arrived at 9:40 p.m. and apologized for his tardiness.

The audience, however, greeted him with affection. In a reference to First Lady Nancy Reagan, he joked about having a First Lady who would stand beside him, “speaking her own mind,” instead of one standing behind him and telling him what to do.

Kitty Dukakis joked that she didn’t know “the difference between a telescope and a periscope and a horoscope,” although she said she looked up her horoscope and it said the Dukakises “are both going to be changing jobs.”

Dukakis remarked that the last time he had seen UCI was in the 1970s, when there were few buildings and only a handful of picketing students at a time when other campuses across the nation were experiencing violent demonstrations over the U.S. military invasion of Cambodia.

Talk eventually turned to the primary election, and Dukakis said: “Let me say a word about Orange County, about California and about the Western states. “We’re not going to concede one single state in America--or one single county, for that matter. . . . No one is going to tell me we can’t take Orange County. I believe we can in November.”

He remarked on one sensitive issue in Orange County--drilling and pumping for oil offshore--and promised he would “be very tough on offshore drilling.”

Dukakis took a swipe at the Reagan Administration’s anti-drug policies, which he typified as being more talk than substance.

“You don’t have to be from Miami to want a President to wage a real war, and not a phony war, on drugs,” he told the audience. Referring to the Administration’s willingness to negotiate with, and drop drug charges against, Panama’s Gen. Manuel A. Noriega, Dukakis said Reagan “can’t say no to Noriega.”

Dukakis and his wife left the rally at 10:30 p.m., bound for the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles, where he was scheduled to stay the night.