Dole, Clinton Crisscross U.S. In Final Dash For Votes

On the final day of their final campaigns, President Clinton and GOP nominee Bob Dole presented their closing arguments to the American people as they crisscrossed the country in a wearying finale to a 16-month electoral race.

Polls showed Clinton continuing to hold the seemingly insurmountable lead over his Republican challenger that he has maintained all year, but dozens of Senate and House races remained too close to call, and the partisan makeup of the new House, in particular, hung in the balance.

Confident of victory and now eyeing history, Clinton has set his sights on winning at least 50 percent of the popular vote, hoping to shake the label of “minority president” that has rankled since he won the White House with only 43 percent of the vote in 1992’s three-way contest.

Like a gambler betting on a lopsided game, Clinton now is looking not at the result, but at the point spread.

“It’s up to you to decide,” Clinton told a large, cheering throng at Cleveland State University, his eyes puffy with exhaustion and his voice weakened with the emotion of the final days. “You must seize the day.”

Dole, for his part, worked to solidify support among traditional Republican voters with a continuing assault on the ethics of the president and his “arrogant” White House inner circle.

His throat raw from 70 hours of almost nonstop campaigning but still full of righteous fury, Dole told voters in Alamogordo, N.M., “My voice may change but I still keep my word.”

Ross Perot, whose vote total may complicate matters for Clinton and Dole, unleashed what he termed a “saturation bombing” of the airwaves with the broadcast of $2 million in 30-minute campaign advertisements on the major networks.

Polls in recent days have shown Perot’s support inching up as he rides a late surge of voter anger generated in part by revelations of Democratic fund-raising irregularities,

“We cannot allow this behavior to continue for one more minute. We should - we must - demand the highest ethical standards in the White House,” he said during a speech in San Antonio.

Clinton was confident enough of carrying California to cancel a planned rally in Los Angeles Monday night to campaign elsewhere.

Upsets appeared to be brewing in a number of closely watched Senate races, including in Iowa, where two-term Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin appeared to be slipping against Republican Rep. Jim Ross Lightfoot. Clinton and Dole scrambled their schedules to make last-minute appearances in Iowa to stump for their parties’ Senate candidates.

In North Carolina, polls indicated that conservative Republican Sen. Jesse Helms was losing ground against former Charlotte mayor Harvey Gantt, a black whom Helms beat six years ago.

In Louisiana, odds were growing that the state would elect its first Republican senator of the century, as GOP nominee Woody Jenkins appeared to be pulling ahead of Democrat Mary Landrieu.

In the contest for House supremacy, House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., declared that Republicans would win back-to-back House majorities for the first time in 66 years. “We’re going to keep control of the House,” Gingrich declared in Smryna, Ga.

Democrats privately conceded the Republicans appeared to be ahead in the race for the House, but noted that more than 40 Republican members of Congress were still in danger of losing - far more than the 18 the Democrats would need to regain control should late-deciding voters break their way.

In the presidential contest, Clinton issued a plea for tolerance and unity in anticipation of victory in a race that has stirred relatively little interest.

Consigning the attack to his surrogates and his TV advertisements, Clinton sound a note of conciliation as Dole supporters heckled him in Cleveland.

“Don’t boo them,” he exhorted the partisan Democratic crowd. “Make ‘em feel welcome. We’re not like they are. We’re not running anybody off.”

Dole slogged through the sleep-deprivation final phase of his last national campaign - starting after midnight in Sacramento and then into Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, Tennessee, Iowa and Missouri before a scheduled landing Tuesday to vote in his hometown of Russell, Kan.

At stop after stop, Dole continued to pound on the morality of the incumbent, hoping to chip away at a Clinton lead that has persisted in double-digits for months.

“I’ve seen a lot of presidents come and go, but I must say I’ve never seen a more arrogant group than … occupies the White House right now,” Dole said in Alamogordo. “They don’t believe that the rules apply to them.”

Dole’s running mate, Jack Kemp, struck a more positive note as he puddle-jumped through California.

Standing atop a metal chair amid cheering Republicans in a Santa Maria airport hangar, Kemp harkened back to the days of Abraham Lincoln. The GOP, he said, will offer emancipation, not from slavery but from a welfare system that ensnarls those who use it and a tax code that hinders entrepreneurship.

Vice President Al Gore spent most of the day hopscotching across his native Tennessee hoping to hold the state for the Democrats.