Campaign Notebook

Sunday’s developments:

Presidential race

Lamar Alexander, in an interview on ABC’s “This Week with David Brinkley,” said he feels he is gaining ground after actively courting Iowans for two years. “By the time we get out of New Hampshire, there will be two candidates who really have a chance to be nominated and elected. And one will be Senator Dole and the other will be me,’ Alexander asserted.

Pat Buchanan hailed his second place finish in a California GOP straw poll. “This proves the message we’ve been giving to Iowa voters,” he told a Des Moines news conference. “That Pat Buchanan’s the only consistent conservative who now has a chance to win the Republican nomination. And I think that’s the message of these returns in California,” he said after finishing behind Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole but ahead of publisher Steve Forbes.

Bob Dole said he was content with polls showing him with a lead in the high 20s in Iowa, far behind the 37 percent he finished with in 1988 when there were fewer candidates in the race. Dole said he was puzzled by Forbes’ complaints of a “smear” campaign and suggested that he was the real victim of a bruising campaign. “I don’t know of any dispute with Steve Forbes,” Dole said, pointing to a massive advertising blitz Forbes has launched.

Steve Forbes demanded an apology from Dole, for what he said were anonymous phone calls misrepresenting his position on abortion and gay rights. “I think what they should do is pledge, apologize first of all, and pledge not to engage in that kind of deceitful practice any more,” Forbes told a news conference in West Des Moines.

Phil Gramm, trailing in the single digits but insisting he not be counted out of the race in Iowa, ridiculed Forbes for complaining about anonymous phone calls against him: “He can dish it out but he can’t take it,” Gramm said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” Gramm also said that Buchanan may have the support of some social conservatives “but his economic policies are nutty.”

NEWS OF NOTE

New polls find Bob Dole on a tentative rebound and Forbes skidding in Iowa as the 1996 Republican presidential race is about to begin in earnest. An Iowa Poll published this weekend in The Des Moines Register also found Dole leading with 28 percent and Forbes slipping to 16 percent. In another Iowa survey, conducted by the Mason-Dixon Political-Media Research poll, Dole led with 28 percent while Buchanan, 16 percent, and Alexander,(12 percent) edged into a statistical tie for second with Forbes (15 percent).

Forbes slippage was apparent in two new polls in New Hampshire, the battleground after Iowa. Dole led Forbes 31 percent to 23 percent in a University of New Hampshire poll of 435 likely primary voters Wednesday through Saturday for the Boston Herald and WCVB-TV. In a similar poll two weeks earlier, Forbes had 29 percent and Dole 24 percent. A KRC Communications Research survey of 400 likely voters Thursday and Friday for The Boston Globe and WBZ-TV found Forbes sliding 6 points from little more than a week earlier, to 26 percent. That’s a dead heat with Dole, who was up 3 points to 25 percent.

Dole won a straw poll of California Republican Party leaders and activists Sunday and Buchanan finished second. Dole garnered 36 percent of the ballots in the unscientific poll. Buchanan was second with 25 percent and Forbes took third with 18 percent.

UPCOMING ON TV

Steve Forbes appears live at 6 a.m. PST on C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal.”

TODAY’S STOPS

Alexander: in Iowa, Cedar Rapids, Des Moines, Sioux City, and Omaha, Neb.

Buchanan: in Des Moines, Iowa.

Dole: in Des Moines, Iowa.

Forbes: in Des Moines, Iowa.

Gramm: in Iowa, Ames, Cedar Rapids, Davenport, West Des Moines.

Lugar: in Iowa.