CAMPAIGN ’96 : An Anxious Alexander Seeks Victory

HOUSTON —  Under a hot midday sun, Lamar Alexander stood at the end of a gritty loading dock at the sprawling Port Authority here, his back to the murky Houston Channel.

Facing a semicircle of TV cameras and little else, the former Tennessee governor delivered a dire warning about rival Patrick J. Buchanan’s protectionist trade policies, saying they would shut down this massive facility, costing 53,000 jobs. As he spoke, a towering orange-colored crane loomed behind him. And the unintended image cuts to the heart of the challenge confronting Alexander’s uphill campaign for the GOP presidential nomination:

It needs a lift--and quickly.

He may have left Iowa and New Hampshire with a bounce, with two strong third-place finishes, but just days later he is scrambling feverishly to be seen and heard as an avalanche of presidential primaries approaches.

Alexander’s cash-strapped, “rising, shining America” campaign spent the last few days on a jet-setting quest for money and free publicity in key media markets. His goal is to keep his bid afloat long enough to demonstrate that he, not Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, is the sole credible candidate left who can derail Buchanan and beat President Clinton in November.

Having not competed in Delaware’s Saturday primary and essentially conceded Tuesday’s primaries in the Dakotas and Arizona, Alexander’s biggest test will come this Saturday in South Carolina. If he emerges intact from that first battle on his native Southern soil, Alexander then must also do well in Georgia three days later, and in Texas and Florida on March 12.

The candidate knows all too well that time is running short.

“I’ve got to win sometime in the next few weeks,” he readily concedes.

Honing his message to satisfy TV’s demand for snappy sound bites, Alexander at his news conferences--in as many as three big cities a day--has pared his theme down to the bone: Dole is a lifelong Washington insider “who has no ideas,” and Buchanan a Washington journalist whose ideas are “wrong” and “terrifying.”

Since leaving a fog-bound New Hampshire on Wednesday morning, the self-described “Republican governor from the New South with a conservative vision” has had little direct contact with real voters or potential backers.

As one bewildered supporter, Fred Bagnall, remarked at the dock here Friday: “There’s nobody here!” A retired oil worker, Bagnall and his wife, Carol, learned of the event only after calling around, an example of the organizational problems that can plague a campaign as the primary pace quickens.

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And despite Alexander’s respectable showings in Iowa and New Hampshire, news coverage tends to focus on the winners.

“It’s harder now to get the message out,” rued one Alexander aide.

While belittling Dole for not doing better so far despite a slew of endorsements from GOP elders, Alexander himself has been quietly courting some big names, including Texas Gov. George W. Bush, but to little avail.

“People are desperate to find someone who can stop Buchanan,” said Rob Mosbacher Jr., Alexander’s Texas chairman and son of the former Commerce secretary under President Bush. “Are they rushing to our side? Not yet.”

The Alexander camp has redoubled its efforts to raise a targeted $2.5 million or more to carry the campaign through the Super Tuesday round of primaries on March 12.

Late Friday, Alexander told reporters that over the past week, more than $100,000 a day has arrived at his Nashville headquarters. Sustaining that pace would allow the campaign “to fully fund what we need to do in the most important states between now and March 12,” Alexander said.

On Saturday, the campaign announced a $1-million, six-state TV and radio ad campaign in states with primaries in the coming days. The campaign said Alexander’s ads already are airing in South Carolina, Colorado, Georgia and Arizona. Ads are to begin in Maine and Vermont on Monday and in Boston on Wednesday.

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A particularly disappointing moment for Alexander last week was Thursday night’s candidate debate at Arizona State University near Phoenix. Earlier in the day, he had gotten good mileage lambasting Dole for not showing up for the “contest of ideas” while relishing the opportunity to take on Buchanan. But Alexander clearly was thrown off balance by raucous Buchanan supporters who repeatedly jeered him as he recited his resume time and again.

Discussing the debate the next morning with his traveling press entourage, he said: “You should try standing up there!”

A highlight of Alexander’s week came as a total surprise. As he made his way to a news conference at a Dallas hotel Friday afternoon, the corridors were swarming with hundreds of high school cheerleaders, in town for a convention. Campaign aides quickly corralled scores of them, who willingly formed a gantlet, waving “LAMAR!” placards and chanting as Alexander approached: “Lamar, Lamar, Lamar ‘96!”

Footage of a beaming candidate shaking hands and signing autographs led the local TV news that night.

And Saturday afternoon in Colorado Springs, Colo., he drew several hundred listeners at a campaign stop, several of whom gave him good reviews.

As Alexander himself has noted: “It’ll be a roller coaster ride for the next few weeks.”