President Maintains Lead; Other Races Close

On the final day of their final campaigns, President Clinton and Republican challenger Bob Dole presented their closing arguments to the American people Monday as they streaked across the country in a wearying finale to a 16-month electoral drama.

Polls showed Clinton continuing to hold the seemingly insurmountable lead over his Republican challenger that he has maintained all year, but dozens of Senate and House races remained too close to call, and the partisan makeup of the new House, in particular, hung in the balance.

California, with at least six congressional seats too close to call, will be a major factor in determining that balance. The state’s voters will also resolve expensively contested statewide ballot initiatives, including controversial measures to end state affirmative action programs, to change rules for managed care health systems and to limit campaign spending.

The most attention and controversy have revolved around Proposition 209, the anti-affirmative action measure backed by Gov. Pete Wilson and the state Republican Party.

The many close House races include one in Orange County, where Democrats believe that after years of trying, they may be in position to unseat the controversial Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove).

In Los Angeles County, both parties are battling over two seats left open by retirement--one covering the Glendale and Pasadena areas, the other the western San Fernando Valley and parts of Ventura County. Democrats also hope to unseat Republican Rep. Steve Horn in a Long Beach-area district.

Polls statewide are open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Confident of victory and now eyeing history, Clinton has set his sights on winning at least 50% of the popular vote, hoping to shake the label of “minority president” that has rankled him since he won the White House with only 43% of the vote in 1992’s three-way contest.

Like a gambler betting on a lopsided game, Clinton now is looking not at the result, but at the point spread.

“It’s up to you to decide,” Clinton told a large, cheering throng at Cleveland State University, his eyes puffy with exhaustion and his voice weakened with the emotion of the final days. “You must seize the day.”

Dole, for his part, worked to solidify support among traditional Republican voters with a continuing assault on the ethics of the president and his “arrogant” White House inner circle.

His throat raw from 70 hours of nonstop campaigning but still full of righteous fury, Dole told voters in Alamogordo, N.M., “My voice may change but I still keep my word.”

Ross Perot, whose vote total may complicate matters for both Clinton and Dole, unleashed what he termed a “saturation bombing” of the airwaves with the broadcast of $2 million in 30-minute campaign advertisements on the major networks. Polls in recent days have shown Perot’s support inching upward as he rides a late surge of voter anger generated in part by revelations of Democratic fund-raising irregularities.

“We cannot allow this behavior to continue for one more minute. We should--we must--demand the highest ethical standards in the White House,” he said during a speech in San Antonio.

Clinton was confident enough of carrying California to cancel a planned rally Monday night in Los Angeles to campaign elsewhere, but statewide, many other races are tight, with not only Congress at stake, but also the state Assembly, where Republicans now enjoy a one-seat majority.

Two area House races are among the closest in the nation: in the Santa Barbara area between Republican Rep. Andrea Seastrand and Democrat Walter Capps, and in San Bernardino between Democratic Rep. George E. Brown Jr. and California Circuit Court Judge Linda Wilde.

Californians also will face 15 statewide ballot measures, including three bond issues totaling more than $2 billion for water facilities, jails and for veterans’ home loans.

A dozen other measures were put on the ballot by initiative petition dealing with health care, taxes, campaign finance, legal reform, auto insurance, the state minimum wage and the medical use of marijuana.

Locally, in Los Angeles County, the major battles were for district attorney, between the incumbent, Gil Garcetti, and John Lynch, the deputy in charge of the Norwalk office, and the seat on the county Board of Supervisors being vacated by Deane Dana.

Elsewhere, upsets appeared to be brewing in a number of closely watched Senate races, including in Iowa, where two-term Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin appeared to be slipping against Republican Rep. Jim Ross Lightfoot. Both Clinton and Dole scrambled their schedules to make last-minute appearances in Iowa to stump for their parties’ Senate candidates.

In North Carolina, polls indicated that the abrasively conservative Senate veteran Republican Jesse Helms was losing ground against former Charlotte Mayor Harvey Gantt, an African American whom Helms beat six years ago.

In Louisiana, odds were growing that the state would elect its first Republican senator of the century, as GOP nominee Woody Jenkins appeared to be pulling ahead of Democrat Mary Landrieu.

In the contest for House supremacy, House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., declared that Republicans would win back-to-back House majorities for the first time in 66 years. “We’re going to keep control of the House,” Gingrich declared in Smyrna, Ga.

Democrats privately conceded the Republicans appeared to be ahead in the race for the House, but noted that more than 40 Republican members of Congress were still in danger of losing--far more than the 18 the Democrats would need to regain control should late-deciding voters break their way.

In the presidential contest, Clinton issued a plea for tolerance and unity in anticipation of victory in a race that has stirred relatively little public interest.

Consigning the attack to his surrogates and his television advertisements, Clinton sounded a note of conciliation as Dole supporters heckled him in Cleveland.

“Don’t boo them,” he exhorted the partisan Democratic crowd. “Make ‘em feel welcome. We’re not like they are. We’re not running anybody off.”

Dole slogged through the sleep-deprivation final phase of his fourth and last national campaign--starting after midnight in Sacramento and then bouncing into Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, Tennessee, Iowa and Missouri before a scheduled landing today to vote in his hometown of Russell, Kan.

At stop after stop, Dole continued to pound on the morality of the incumbent, hoping to chip away at a Clinton lead that has persisted in double digits for months.

“I’ve seen a lot of presidents come and go, but I must say I’ve never seen a more arrogant group than . . . occupies the White House right now,” Dole said in Alamogordo. “They don’t believe that the rules apply to them. They believe they can do anything and get away with anything.

“I will not compromise ethics or violate the public trust,” Dole said, keeping his remarks to a few minutes at each stop because of a failing voice. “If you want a full-time president who won’t be going to hearings or trials or anything else, Bob Dole is your choice.”

Dole’s running mate struck a more positive note as he puddle-jumped through California.

Standing atop a metal chair amid cheering Republicans in a Santa Maria airport hangar, Jack Kemp harked back to the days of Abraham Lincoln. The GOP, he said, will offer emancipation, not from slavery but from a welfare system that ensnarls those who use it and a tax code that hinders entrepreneurship.

In an interview aboard his campaign plane, Kemp grew reflective about his final push for the votes of Californians.

“This state does represent a microcosm of what the country is going to look like in the not-too-distant future,” Kemp said. “It’s not going to be Anglo-Saxon, white, suburban, bourgeois. . . . This whole immigrant, entrepreneurial spirit is what we hope to restore to the whole country.”

Vice President Al Gore spent most of the day hopscotching across his native Tennessee hoping to hold the state for the Democrats.

Perot, who prefers campaigning by television to pressing the flesh, appeared at St. Mary’s University in San Antonio to flail Clinton for his campaign finances.

“Do you want them selling your White House for political contributions?” Perot asked, referring to millions of dollars in campaign contributions from foreign donors.

Perot urged the crowd to consider Clinton’s ethics before pulling the voting booth lever, exaggerating the extent of the legal problems now facing the president, who is under scrutiny in a number of matters but not under criminal investigation.

“Would you allow a person with pending criminal charges to baby-sit your children? It’s a joke,” he told about 500 people gathered outside the library at the largest and oldest Catholic university in Texas. “Isn’t it incredible that we have someone like that who may be reelected as your president?”

Times staff writers Marc Lacey in Santa Maria, Maria L. La Ganga in Houston, Jonathan Peterson in Cleveland and Elizabeth Shogren in Knoxville contributed to this story.

* STALEMATE ENVISIONED: Bold agendas seen unlikely no matter who wins Congress. A12

* ABSENTEE BALLOT FLOOD: A flood of absentee ballots could delay some results. B1

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Closing Out Their Campaigns

“Your vote will decide what kind of future we build . . . I have done all I can do. It’s in your corner now and you must seize the day.”

--President Clinton in Cleveland

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“If you’re concerned about America, you better be concerned about what happens tomorrow in the election all across America.”

--Bob Dole in Houston

Poll hours in California: 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.

TIPSHEET GUIDES VIEWERS THROUGH TONIGHT’S RETURNS / Page A5