Bush, Gore Make Push in Arkansas, Tennessee

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. —  It was not what the candidates said Monday but where they said it that spoke much about the state of the presidential race.

Texas Gov. George W. Bush swooped into Arkansas, President Clinton’s home turf, and declared, “I’m going to win this state.”

Vice President Al Gore, meantime, was in Tennessee--his own home state--where he climbed atop a chair at his Nashville headquarters and rallied supporters by exhorting, “Let’s win this thing.”

The closely fought contest is about to enter a critical phase, when the two candidates will select their vice presidential running mates, formally accept their party nominations and use their respective conventions as a springboard into the fall campaign.

Three new public opinion polls showed Gore closing the gap with Bush. But the presumptive GOP nominee is still running strong in a number of states that Democrats would like to take for granted, among them Tennessee.

Looking ahead to the Republican convention in Philadelphia, which starts July 31, Bush announced plans Monday to make his way there via several states that voted Democratic in the last two presidential races but now appear highly competitive--including Arkansas.

“There’s an excitement in the air,” said the state’s Republican governor, Mike Huckabee, introducing Bush at a state party luncheon. “Of course he’s going to carry this state, and in a big way.”

Bush’s preconvention tour, starting next week, will take him back to Arkansas, then continue with stops in Missouri, Kentucky, Ohio and West Virginia before bringing him to Philadelphia.

Fielding questions Monday in Little Rock, Bush told reporters that he is nearing a choice on his running mate, which will be the main order of business when the governor returns to Austin today for the remainder of this week.

“The days of saying the list is shrinking and growing are over,” he said. “I’m getting down to making a decision.”

Bush traveled to Arkansas to promote an initiative designed to make out-of-wedlock fathers accountable for their children by establishing “paternity registries.” Twenty-one states, including Texas and Arkansas, have established such registries, which fathers must sign to maintain legal rights as a designated parent.

“This is a way to encourage responsibility on behalf of the dads on one hand” while expediting adoptions if fathers refuse to accept parental responsibility, Bush told a group of social workers and parents at a Little Rock family center. “If a father does not show up and sign up for responsibility, it automatically terminates the father’s rights.”

Gore, meantime, was raising money in Memphis and addressing more than 100 campaign workers and volunteers at his expanded headquarters in suburban Nashville.

“I want you to allow yourselves to believe without reservation that we can do the right thing,” Gore told the cheering faithful. “If you give of your hearts and allow yourselves to believe . . . the people you contact every day will feel that.”

At his headquarters, a largely unfinished low-slung office building with the felicitous address of Mainstream Drive, Gore held a brief news conference to renew his attacks on Bush.

He denounced the Texas governor for allowing his state’s budget surplus to fall almost to zero, branding Bush a big spender. “Every day he’s coming up with another new spending proposal,” Gore said. “The same thing he’s done to the surplus in Texas would be done--and more--to the surplus we’ve built up in our nation.”

Gore also charged that Bush’s proposal to allow individuals to invest some of their Social Security taxes would cause the national retirement fund to “run dry.” He pointed to a Washington Post article by one of Bush’s economic advisors, Martin Feldstein, as proof of his charge. Feldstein wrote: “The increase in baby boomer retirees will cause the trust fund to run out of money under any plan,” but argued that the Bush plan “eventually would bring the trust fund back to a healthy positive balance.”

On another issue, Gore said he supports a federal law that prohibits executing a pregnant woman who is convicted of a crime under the federal death penalty law. “I do support that statute . . . because the principle of a woman’s right to choose governs in that case,” he said. “It should be her right to choose” whether to bear her child or not. Bush has also said he supports the statute.

Aides to the vice president said Gore is counting on next month’s Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles, followed by a telegenic riverboat trip down the Mississippi, to provide his campaign the bounce it needs heading into the fall campaign.

“We’re already seeing some improvement in the polls,” spokesman Chris Lehane said. “The convention is the real transition point, where the vice president emerges as his own candidate. . . . We anticipate having a very, very close election.”

The three independent polls released Monday show Bush leading Gore nationally by margins of 2 to 4 percentage points.

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Times staff writers Mark Z. Barabak and Megan Garvey contributed to this story. McManus reported from Nashville and Harris from Little Rock.