Staying The Course Tipper Gore Visits Spokane, Seeking Votes For Her Husband

The United States could enter a “golden age” - with plenty of jobs, better schools and a clean environment - if voters agree this fall to let Al Gore follow Bill Clinton into the White House, Tipper Gore told Democrats in Spokane on Monday.

“The progress we made in the last eight years … that’s not an accident,” the vice president’s wife told some 500 people at a $30-per-plate breakfast at Cavanaugh’s Ridpath Hotel. “We need to keep it on the right track. That’s what this election is all about.”

Gore’s visit was all about Washington state’s presidential primary next Tuesday and its precinct caucuses on March 7. Voters will get two chances in eight days to support a candidate for president - at a time when both parties’ nominations hang in the balance.

Gore’s speech and a meeting later with about 30 women at a Working Women’s Roundtable were long on enthusiasm for her husband’s programs but sometimes short on specifics.

Al Gore supports expanding education to provide preschool for all children, and he favors smaller classroom sizes, Tipper Gore said. He also wants all children to have health care coverage and wants stronger Social Security and Medicare programs.

The vice president also is committed to the environment and believes the nation can have a strong economy and preserve its air and water, too, she said. No details, though, on how he might do that in regard to one of this region’s most difficult environmental problems, the declining salmon populations.

Asked what her husband would do about affirmative action in a state such as Washington, where voters have approved an initiative banning state government programs from offering such preferences, Gore replied: “Al is strongly for affirmative action. We still need that.”

He would expand college grant programs and support a new tax-free savings program for college expenses, she said. But those would be available for all students, not targeted at minorities.

At both Spokane events, Gore said her husband is “very strongly for choice” - that is, he supports abortion rights.

“He’s a strong proponent of Roe vs. Wade - always has been,” Gore told the women’s group.

That may have been a response to former New Jersey Sen. Bill Bradley, Gore’s Democratic presidential opponent who has pointed out that Gore did not always support funding for abortion programs when he was in Congress in the 1970s and early 1980s. Bradley has demanded that Gore explain to women how he changed his mind.

But women’s groups are comfortable with the fact that Gore fully supports abortion rights now despite his past votes, said Jan Polek, a Spokane Democratic activist who attended both the breakfast and the roundtable meeting. After all, Gore has the backing of the National Abortion Rights Action League and its president, Kate Michelman, Polek said.

Even though Washington’s primary has nothing to do with nominating a Democratic candidate for president, Tipper Gore urged people to vote next Tuesday and follow that up by attending a caucus the following week.

The Democratic National Committee won’t allow state Democrats to use the primary to select convention delegates because it occurs before the national party’s self-imposed deadline. But the Washington primary has taken on some public relations importance because it is one of the few Democratic contests between the New Hampshire primary and crucial primaries in California, New York and other states on March 7.

Washington’s delegates will be chosen in a process that starts with the caucuses that day.

This sidebar appeared with the story: Coming soon

Washington’s primary and caucuses will be focusing more campaign attention on Spokane this week.

On Wednesday, Arizona Sen. John McCain will hold a town hall meeting at the Gonzaga University COG. The meeting starts at 9 a.m., and the doors open at 7:30 a.m. for the free, first-come, first-served event.

On Friday, Laura Bush, wife of Texas Gov. George Bush, will speak to a Republican luncheon at the downtown Doubletree Hotel at noon. For information on tickets for the $20 fund raiser, call 328-0328.