‘We Call It Coalition Building’ : Kemp Courts Abortion Foes, Fundamentalists

DES MOINES — When an opponent does it, call it special-interest politics. When you find yourself doing it, style it coalition building.

Usually, this is the word game that surrounds Democratic candidates for office.

But here in Iowa, Jack Kemp, the New York congressman, has mapped out an elaborate plan in the Republican presidential campaign to reach--and convert--an array of select, chiefly conservative groups that have short fuses on hot issues.

“This is what is going to make us competitive,” said Scott Reed, the congressman’s Iowa campaign director. “ . . . We call it coalition building.”

Fundamentalist Families

Among the Kemp targets are fundamentalist Christian families who assert the right to educate their children at home. Some have gone to jail rather than enroll their sons and daughters in public schools. And Kemp is alone among the major Republican presidential candidates to back their cause.

There are gun owners and sportsmen, identified from lists of Iowans with hunting licenses. They are seen as the kind of don’t-tread-on-me conservative voter who can be moved by brochures sent in the mails that declare: “Jack Kemp has been a champion of firearms rights. . . . He has never voted for any form of gun control.”

The so-called “notch babies,” those Americans born between 1917 and 1921, are another group courted by Kemp. These people receive less in Social Security than workers born before them, because of changes in the Social Security law made by Congress.

Notch-Baby Activists

No major Republican candidate, not even Kemp, has assented to demands of notch babies for substantial benefit increases. This is despite the vocal attendance of notch-baby activists at nearly all public campaign meetings anywhere in Iowa. Candidates demur because of the multimillion-dollar cost to the federal budget.

But Kemp has doggedly pursued the group, and answered some of their other concerns. For one, he pledged to take the Social Security Trust Fund and place it in control of an independent, presidentially appointed board of directors, apart from the regular federal budget process. He also has called for a reduction in payroll taxes.

‘A Good Report Card’

As a result, Kemp was recently endorsed by a major notch-baby group, the Midwest Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare. Just this week, both the group and Kemp were scrambling to prepare and mail announcements of the endorsement to the organization’s 35,550 members in Iowa.

“He was first when we asked for a meeting. . . . He gets a good report card,” said Dwight Moore, the Council Bluffs steering committee chairman for the group.

Anti-Abortion Voters

On a larger scale, Kemp has reached out to the very active anti-abortion voters of Iowa, its senior citizens in general and its conservative-minded college students.

Once or twice a week, in volumes unmatched by anyone else in the GOP race here, Kemp’s campaign sends out mailers to one or the other select groups. Reed estimates there will be 14 separate waves of Kemp mail, a total of about 1 million pieces, before the Feb. 8 caucuses.

But the effort is more elaborate than just dropping off bags of mail at the post office.

Kemp backers with special entree to one group or another are airlifted into Iowa for rounds of appearances timed to coincide with arrival of the special mailers. Rep. Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.), for instance, is due in Iowa soon to speak to anti-abortion groups, and former South Dakota Gov. Joseph J. Foss, popular among outdoorsmen, has made the rounds of gun clubs on Kemp’s behalf, according to Reed.

Sometimes, campaign television advertising is keyed to the same theme of the week.

Tying Dollar to Gold

All of this supplements Kemp’s broader campaign motif of reducing interest rates, lowering taxes, tying the dollar to gold and seeking ways to expand the economy.

But sometimes the candidate seems, perhaps unwittingly, to distance himself from the tactics his own campaign is using. At a recent speech to 200 supporters in Ames, he described himself as a consensus builder and declared: “You must reach people on those things they agree upon. . . . You can’t win elections with coalitions; you cannot govern.”

Spokesman John Buckley said there is no contradiction.

“You don’t build consensus by promising individual things to single groups. But at the same time, there is a fact of life in an organizational state like Iowa that you have to reach your voters,” Buckley said. “I don’t see any conflict between reaching your voters and being critical of those who pander to special interests.”