Campaign Trail

Hands off the ‘dream’

SAN FRANCISCO

The estate of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. demanded Tuesday that the California Republican Party cease and desist using the slain civil rights leader’s “I Have a Dream” speech in a planned multimillion-dollar TV blitz supporting Prop. 209.

“We did not know (of the planned ad),” said Phillip Jones, general manager of the King estate and head of Intellectual Properties Management, the Atlanta firm that controls the use of King’s image and works.

Although Jones said he thought the GOP probably did not realize that King’s speeches were not in the public domain, he said the estate was asking the party to pull the ad, due to go on TV stations in California today.

Republican officials were not available to comment on the request from the King estate to pull the commercial, which was expected to cost more than $2 million. The national GOP will reportedly contribute $1 million, as Republicans make an all-out effort to revive Bob Dole’s sagging presidential campaign in California.

Although the GOP and the producer of the 30-second ad, Russo, Marsh and Raper of Sacramento, were not making scripts of it available, the ad says Prop. 209 would eliminate quotas and racial preferences in hiring, awarding of contracts and college admissions.

In the ad, a white woman says, “We should be judged on merit, not by gender or the color of our skin. Prop. 209 ends quotas and special treatment. But Bill Clinton opposed Prop. 209, just like he opposed Prop. 187 (the 1994 initiative to deny public benefits to illegal immigrants).”

The commercial then cuts to footage of King’s historic “I have a dream” speech, Aug. 28, 1963, at the Lincoln Memorial.

In that speech, King said he dreamed of a society where people “will not be judged by the color of their skin but the content of their character.”

The ad cuts back to the narrator, who says, “Martin Luther King was right. Bill Clinton is wrong to oppose Prop. 209. Let’s get rid of all preferences.”

Clinton’s California campaign chief Bill Carrick said, “The audacity of these people to use Dr. King to attack civil rights … is outrageous.

Big Al bowls em over

BLACK EAGLE, Mont.

Vice President Al Gore claimed victory in Montana on Tuesday, at least in the competition for political pinfalls.

After delivering a speech at the Black Eagle Community Center, Gore stopped at the facility’s bowling alley to try out the lanes.

Shedding his suit jacket, Gore threw two balls, both strikes. Then he threw both his arms up in a sign of victory.

Kemp: Heal, don’t cut

LOS ANGELES

Yes, there’s something more important to Jack Kemp than cutting taxes by 15 percent. He says he’d give that up for racial, ethnic and religious reconciliation.

Speaking to a largely minority audience Tuesday at Fairfax High School, his alma mater, Kemp said he and Dole believe uniting the country is the “single, most important” goal for America as it heads into the 21st century.

“I would sacrifice the tax cut, I would sacrifice all of the political policy ideas if we could help heal the wounds and bring people together,” the vice presidential nominee said.

“America must never be allowed to end up as a zero-sum game where only some can survive and others cannot,” he told the somewhat restless teenage audience. “We cannot go forward and leave anyone behind,”

Instead of focusing on the tax cut, his primary topic throughout the campaign, Kemp tried to inspire the largely minority student body with a message about dreams and reaching one’s goals.

Low turnout expected

WASHINGTON

Next month’s presidential election might attract the lowest percentage of voters to the polls in decades, but it’s unclear who would benefit from low turnout.

Experts said even enthusiastic get-out-the-vote efforts planned by both parties and their partisans on Election Day are unlikely to push the turnout above the unusually high 55 percent of the voting-age population recorded in the 1992 election.

Experts said voter turnout Nov. 5 could challenge the 64-year low of 50.1 percent in 1988, even with the 9 million new voters added to the rolls by the 1995 “motor voter” law, which required states to open registration offices in driver’s license and public assistance offices.