Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge’s prospects for the GOP vice-presidential slot may have peaked this past week. The week before, Dole had been impressed by Ridge. “He’s an awfully good man,” Dole told an associate after they spent time together at the All-Star Game in Philadelphia. Dole’s staff also liked Ridge: a youthful Vietnam vet, Catholic, from a pivotal state, and pro-choice but against federal funding of abortions and in favor of the ban on partial- birth abortions.
But by the middle of last week the Dole campaign had learned that Ridge’s congressional record was not just moderately conservative, it was pretty liberal. Ridge’s American Conservative Union vote rating for his twelve years in the House was 51 out of a possible 100 — about 30 points below the average House Republican. He opposed President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, the B-2 bomber, and the MX missile and was one of only 16 House Republicans to vote in March 1986 against aid to the Nicaraguan contras.
The VP, Dole’s advisers now believe — and they think Dole believes — has to be conservative. So look for a Bill Bennett boomlet over the next ten days or so, since he did very well in his two days on the Dole plane last week, impressing not just Dole’s staff but Dole himself.
Bennett, incidentally, is pushing hard for Dole to move quickly on a ” Hollywood II” speech. He’s also arguing the campaign should focus on the drug issue. Bennett makes the case that drug use has gone up under Clinton and that this is probably not unrelated to the Clinton White House’s cavalier attitude towards drugs — a model for how Dole can relate the “character” issue to an important publicpolicy matter.
Meanwhile, the Dole campaign plans to hire Billy Dale (the indicted and exonerated former Travel Office director) to coordinate arrangements for the press charter. Not a bad way to remind reporters every day of Travelgate and associated scandals and of Clinton’s problematic character.
