Dole Says Gop Race Becoming ‘Mud-Wrestling Championship’ Frontrunner Admits Numbers Slipping But Expects Forbes Rally Will Fizzle Out

Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, hit with negative ads from his rivals and questions about his ability to compete with President Clinton, complained Thursday that the GOP race seemed at times like “running for the mud-wrestling championship.”

Dole also conceded that his campaign’s own polling showed his numbers slipping against millionaire publisher Steve Forbes. But he predicted Forbes’ rally would fizzle.

Dole said a negative advertising campaign by his rivals, and particularly by Forbes, seemed to be cutting into his lead - as shown by recent polls.

In fact, polls have shown Forbes closing the gap with Dole in many states, including Iowa, with its GOP caucuses on Feb. 12.

An Iowa Project poll of 300 likely caucus goers released Thursday found Dole supported by 26 percent and Forbes by 18 percent. All other candidates were in single digits in the Jan. 22 survey, which had a 6 percentage point margin of error.

Dole said he was not too concerned. “Our own tracking polls show we’re going down a bit - we’re hanging in there at about 31 or 32 percent. I think you’re going to see a decline in the Forbes (numbers),” he said.

He blamed Forbes’ surge in the polls on his negative ads. “It gives him an advantage, I think, in the short term. I think in the long term, at least I hope in the long term, it backfires,” Dole told reporters.

“I think people in Iowa … know me pretty favorably here. I don’t think they’re going to believe all this stuff. But some do.”

Later, Dole told a chamber of commerce group in Sioux City that the voters in the early caucus and primary states would have more influence than usual in deciding the party nominee.

“I think it’s going to end by the end of March,” he said.

Of Clinton, Dole said “he’s lost his credibility.”

Dole said the “fallout” from the State of the Union adress was “predictable. The liberals didn’t like it.”

Asked if Forbes’ rise in the polls had hurt him, Dole said “obviously he’s had an impact. My unfavorables have gone up and my favorables are going down.”

But Dole insisted that Forbes’ popularity would dissipate. Dole reiterated his demand that both Forbes and Texas Sen. Phil Gramm make public their past income tax records. He said Gramm has only released a return for 1994. Forbes has declined to release any of his tax records.

“When Forbes has a fund-raiser, he takes his wife to dinner and writes a check,” Dole cracked before an audience of several hundred Iowans at a town hall meeting in a civic center.