Big Gop Surprise Predicted Ignore Polls, Keep On Working, Jeff Kemp Tells Republicans

Don’t pay attention to the polls, the news media or the naysayers, former quarterback and campaign stand-in Jeff Kemp told Spokane-area Republicans Wednesday.

Trust in a message of lower taxes, less government and honest leaders, Kemp urged. And work like heck for the next seven days.

“On Nov. 5, there’s going to be a wonderful surprise,” Kemp, the son of Republican vice presidential nominee Jack Kemp, predicted.

“That’s the day that the only poll that counts is taken. The American people do not want to have the media tell us who our president is going to be.”

A crowd estimated at about 1,000 cheered Kemp and a long procession of state and local candidates, who painted a picture of a GOP sweep from the White House to the statehouse.

Kemp said in an interview after his speech that he believed Dole could win in Washington state despite the fact that the campaign has spent almost no money on television advertising and that neither his father nor Bob Dole made campaign stops in the state in recent weeks.

The Dole campaign made a strategic decision to shift resources to California, the nation’s largest Electoral College prize.

“I certainly would have preferred money for television,” Kemp said. “But there are people working all over the state. The grass-roots efforts will make the difference.”

The challenge is to get the public to “wake up to the fact that Clinton is offering more programs” and those will cost more money, he said.

Meanwhile, Dole is promising a tax cut that he contends will stimulate the economy.

Polls commissioned by The Spokesman-Review have consistently shown that Washington state voters put a higher priority on balancing the budget than a tax cut, and that a majority doubt that the two can be done together.

Kemp believes the campaign can change voters’ minds on that point in this last week, and insists the race is not over.

“The ideas alone are worthy of a last effort,” said the former Seahawks quarterback. “You do not necessarily judge things by the stat sheet in the middle of the game.”

Other speakers echoed Kemp’s theme of ignoring the polls - except, of course, when they show Republican candidates closing the gap, as many surveys do. Gubernatorial candidate Ellen Craswell told the crowd that Eastern Washington is vital to her success and could help her cancel out the votes from Seattle, where her Democratic opponent Gary Locke is expected to win. “Big-city liberals on the West Side are never going to support the likes of me,” she said.

U.S. Rep. George Nethercutt, who has the luxury of being ahead in the polls, blasted television commercials sponsored by national labor unions that criticized his votes on Medicare and other budget matters.

“We’re going to tell them don’t come back and do that kind of negative campaigning ever again,” he said.

Although the Dole campaign has shunned character attacks on the campaign trail, a skit veered sharply off onto a different path.

A man wearing a Bill Clinton mask and a woman in a Hillary Rodham Clinton mask were introduced to the crowd at Cavanaugh’s Inn at the Park as guests who had wandered into the wrong rally.

The “Clinton” character, who stumbled on stage with his tie loosened, his shirt tail out and his pants unbuckled, bemoaned the fact that “Hillary don’t let me stay in hotels anymore.”

“Do I need to tell you why?” demanded the masked “Hillary” character.

“I did get in trouble once. I won’t tell you with who, but her initials are Paula Jones,” he said to cheers and jeers.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 color photos