Don’t Count Out Run By Liddy Dole

So Bob Dole - the commercial spokesman, the walk-on actor, now the banker holding Newt Gingrich’s $300,000 note - is talking up Elizabeth Dole as a presidential candidate.

Fine. But does his wife, the head of the American Red Cross, play in California?

Let’s rewind the tape to 10 months ago, when Liddy Dole took her road show around the state on behalf of her husband.

The scene is Silicon Valley as she addresses technology leaders at Amdahl Corp. in Sunnyvale.

Radiant and smiling, she enters the room and stops to chat at each table to introduce herself personally to 120 guests - and this isn’t even a fund-raising event.

In an audience mostly male, she quietly buttonholes two women, speaking with them at length. Later, they say she wants details about folks in the audience - so she can tailor her remarks just to them. And tailor she does.

Like a target shooter on a roll, she steps to the mike and delivers a point-by-point discussion about why the Republican Party - oh, yeah, and Bob Dole - would be better for Silicon Valley. Encryption, frivolous lawsuits, trade agreements, government intervention - bam, bam, bam, bam.

She cracks them up with lawyer jokes. She enthralls them with her knowledge of the industry. Her Southern charm doesn’t hurt, either. In about one hour over tuna sandwiches, she delivers the goods - the kind of point-by-point ammunition that her husband never seemed to manage.

The reviews?

“I’m a Democrat and a great Hillary fan … but if she (Dole) were running for the job, I’d vote for her,” says Carla Feliciano, an account executive with Steve Michelson Productions.

And that was just the first of eight stops Dole made that day from San Francisco and Sunnyvale to Modesto, working the state top to bottom, making friends, putting some money in the bank for her own future in politics.

As that one day in June proved, Liddy Dole seemed as comfortable addressing the high-tech pooh-bahs here as the folks who drive the tractors. As soon as she left Sunnyvale, she hit San Francisco’s Chinatown, and then she headed a world away - to the farmlands of the San Joaquin Valley.

There, in 110-degree heat that would have wilted a steel magnolia, Dole never seemed to perspire. John Herrington, then-chair of the state GOP who toured with her, marvelled how growers and farmers turned up, standing room only, to shake her hand.

Californians seemed to greet her with two minds. A lot of people who saw Liddy Dole front-and-center at the San Diego GOP Convention said she had all the warmth of a Barbie doll.

For others, the mantra was: “How come she’s not running?”

Any talk about her future here is colored by a discussion about the “gender gap” - the one that gave President Clinton a 22-point edge in California.

A lot of Republican women who crossed over to vote for Clinton might love to come home for a woman presidential candidate. Many of their Democratic sisters might even think about it.

So does this mean Al Gore, Mr. Excitement, has anything to worry about in California?

Already, Democratic insiders say Gore’s staff is brainstorming like crazy, forging the strategy to grab those 54 crucial electoral votes. And he’s working it well: doing monthly lunches with technology leaders, talking education, making trips, racking up the frequent flyer miles.

A top state party official says he’s heard the frenzy in phone calls from Washington and joked, “I told them, ‘Would you relax?”’

Relax? If the revved-up Liddy Dole campaign machine is coming over the horizon to California, Al Gore better fasten his seat belt. Her engine doesn’t quit. xxxx