St. Louis Post-Dispatch from St. Louis, Missouri • Page 14

tmTt StLOUSPOST-DERgrCH -va comSentaby' 4 fi I PA I MY NJA OBITUARIES 4 JtdSjd3ij Li i GENERAL NEWS 4 J- I Etaa. SECTION WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 1992 Democratic Party Rises Again In Missouri WILLIAM F. (t WOO A REFLECTION 2sax By Bill Smith Of the Post-Dispatch Staff IISSOURI'S DEMOCRATIC PAR TY, left dazed and bloodied after I crushing defeats in the 1988 gener Hiding the broad coattails of Bill Clinton and Mel Carnahan, Democrats swept to solid victories in races for most key statewide races. stance and the belief among Missourians that Democrats could help heal the state's crippled economy. "People feel they haven't been taken care of," said Sally Aman, a spokeswoman for the Clinton campaign in Missouri.

"St. Louis has lost 40,000 jobs," she said. "That's something you can't ignore." Jean Berg, a veteran of nine political campaigns, former congressional candidate and director of the Missouri Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights, said Tuesday that Democrats "really do offer an alternative vision for society." She said she was proud that Democratic candidates had come out so strongly for abortion rights. "This is a new Democratic coalition," he said. "It's a time for new people." Gene Caruso, a Gephardt volunteer, said he believed that Tuesday's strong Democratic showing actually began with George R.

"Buzz" Westfall's victory in the St. Louis County executive's race in 1990. Gephardt said that if the Democrats do the kind of job they are capable of, they could hold key offices "for a very long time." al election, made a dramatic political comeback on Tuesday. "This is quite a historic night for the Democratic Party in Missouri," U.S. Rep.

Richard A. Gephardt said at his victory rally Tuesday at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Union Station. "This was a huge victory. "People want change, and they're fed up with an economy that's not working." A euphoric Bob Holden, who defeated Republican Gary Melton for the post of state treasurer, said he believes the party can build on its victory and maintain its new domination over state politics. All of those elected Tuesday, he said, are "good, solid individuals who can maintain public support." Their performance will be judged over the next few years, he said.

He said the new Democratic team must put forward a "coordinated and coherent program to move the state forward." In Jefferson City, former state Republican chairman Hillard Selck of Boonville blamed his party's problems on divisiveness that began before the Missouri primary in August. "Maybe we suffered from too much prosperity," Selck said during a rally for Missouri Attorney General William L. Webster at the Capitol Plaza Hotel. He said the wounds that first began to open during the Republican primary fight between Webster and Roy Blunt "will have to heal. We have nothing left to fight over." Retiring Gov.

John Ashcroft, speaking from the Bond campaign rally at the St. Louis Marriott West Hotel in Town and Country, said he feels the Republicans are not ready to abandon the principles that had been successful for the part in the past. "We're not going to change them because of one election," he said. "We've won with them before and we will win with them again." Riding the broad coattails of Bill Clinton and Mel Carnahan, Democrats swept to sol-Id victories in races for most key statewide races. Most were offices that had been held tightly by the GOP since Ronald Reagan's presidency and before.

Mel Carnahan's election marked the first time Missouri has elected a Democratic governor since Joseph P. Teasdale was elected in 1976. Jay Nixon's win was the first for a Democrat in 28 years in the attorney general's contest. Holden's victory in the treasurer's race was the first for a Democrat in that position since 1980 when Carnahan was elected to the office. Democrats credited their success to strong candidates, a strong abortion rights 'Transforming Election' Opens New Era By Bill Lambrecht Post-Dispatch Washington Bureau WASHINGTON Some Compare It To Reagan's Defeat Of Carter In '80 MERICA'S greatest event" its presidential election has ushered in a new generation of leadership and a new politics that is changing than persuading people that he had a sense of their plight and the vision to help them.

As recently as last week, the president had one final opening to appeal to voters who were hesitating. But he squandered it, choosing to argue that new bits of positive economic news pointed to economic recovery. "Voters spent a whole year telling George Bush that the economy was in serious trouble, and then he glommed onto one good economic statistic as proof positive that the economy wasn't in such bad shape as swiftly as the global economy. In a scenario that Democrats could only have dreamed of until recently, Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton shattered the Electoral Presidential Vote Summary As of 12:45 a.m.

Central Time 1 HiLSmy vt 1 iF Maine 3 Neb. nm-4 "i i i Republicans hold on Sunbelt states and helped his party resuscitate itself in Missouri and across the country. President George Bush, who failed to hear the plaintive cries of the American people, sacrificed not only his presidency but the Republicans' 12-year run in the White House. And Ross Perot, the mercurial billionaire, turned on forgotten voters and taught politicians how to play a new political game. He may have set the stage for more third-party efforts.

The changes add up to a watershed election in which Americans defiantly shook the system. "It was a transforming election," said Larry J. Sa-bato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia. He compared 1992 to 1980, when Ronald Reagan unseated Jimmy Carter. "We have deja vu all over again, with a failed leader at the top and a challenger that people have great doubts about nonetheless winning in a landslide," Sabato said.

Todd Domke, a Republican political consultant in Boston, said, "The real force in this election was the reality of the after all," observed Geoffrey Garin, a pollster in Washington for Democratic candidates. Perot will be recalled for political triumphs. He tapped into disenchantment last spring and became the first independent candidate to lead the presidential race in polls. Perot, who spent more than $60 million in his effort, may have set the stage for a third party movement or a return to politics in 1996. At the very least, he is expected to thrust himself into coming debates, especially when it comes to the deficit.

Orson Swindle, Perot's national spokesman, said Tuesday night: "I think we've got the groundwork for a strong third party." Sabato, the political scientist, said that Perot's respectable showing could be a harbinger of things to come for third-party candidacies. "We'll just have to see if this' really ends up opening the door," Sabato said. Perot seemed to tease his supporters when he spoke to them in Dallas on Tuesday night. "Is this the end, or is it just the beginning?" he asked. In Tuesday's election, the N.H.

4 Mass. 12 R.I. 4 Conn. 8 N.J. 15 QDel.

3 Md. 10 D.C. 3 f'T' f-3I George Bush 7 Jk 1 1 Bi" Ross Perot The Consent Of The Governed ON ELECTION MORNING, a chill light rain fell out of a mother-of-pearl sky, gray overhead, pink along the eastern edge. At the Bristol Primary School in Webster Groves, the voting line snaked out of the gymnasium. This was the 22nd Precinct, Jefferson Township.

Fifty people were there when the doors opened. At 6:20, 1 was voter 101. A half-hour later, we were up to 152. All over America, something very similar was or would soon be taking place. A record vote had been forecast.

Liberated at last from attack commercials, the people were saying their piece. In the country's 187,000 precincts, voting units ranging in size hereabouts from just two citizens to more than 1,000, something deep was finally getting worked on in the basic building blocks of the democracy. What was being worked on, of course, would be done in the name of George Bush or Bill Clinton or Ross Perot. Worked on, not settled; for behind these men were divergent forces that could not be reconciled in a day: new trends and old assumptions, hard worries and luminous hopes, a changing people in search of constant values. Behind these men was an America with one foot on the throttle and the other on the brake.

That is the country Bill Clinton inherits. This year has been described variously as the Year of the Woman, the Year of Anti-Incumbency or Term Limits, the Year of the Suburb, the Year of the People. However defiantly anyone may say the last of these, there still is something poignant about it, suggesting that after every special interest has been identified and accommodated America at last recognizes that there is truth, after all, in those old words about the Consent of the Governed. The notion that this is the year of anything mainly reflects our fascination with political packaging or marketing, but in fact our years run together, connected and propelled by deep currents. This year did not begin with the New Hampshire primary or the Clarence Thomas hearings or the House banking scandal.

Among the candidates, I can sense three quite different currents running simultaneously within America's broad banks. The tide that carried Bill Clinton to the presidency, for example, was not set in motion this year or even last but back in 1988, by a man the Conventional wisdom has cast as the most fectual of candidates, Michael Dukakis. The architecture of the electoral victory Clinton 'fashioned owed a debt to the much ridiculed DykaJyswJsowed how it could be done and where. Yes, Dukakis was buried under a landslide, but add the 10 states he carried to the 12 he narrowly missed (five in the West) and you have a bare electoral majority. And what this means to me is that ticking along, almost lost beneath tumult of the big Reagan-Bush victories, was a developing apprehension that the economy was in trouble, that social problems needed prudent solutions and not divisive talk, that new government programs were acceptable, provided that their benefits and costs were fairly distributed.

Clinton built deftly upon this design. The tide upon which George Bush floated is. older still. It became visible as long ago as the first election of Richard Nixon in 1968 and comprised two distinct currents. One was the traditional middle class focus on personal and economic security.

The other reflected an old order's apprehension at the rude assertiveness of emerging political constituencies that had been voiceless and powerless. Law and order. Busing. These were the hot buttons that 20 years of Republican presidential campaigning successfully used to augment the party's claim to fiscal responsibility. In 1988, Bush found that the magic still worked with Willie Horton.

But symbolism is effective politics only when it relates to people's lives. Crime, Willie Horton's predicate, is everybody's business. Political revenge for the avoidance of military service in an unpopular war was not every American's top priority. Given the difficult state of the economy, perhaps Bush had no choice but to campaign on issues historically peripheral to the electorate. So he worked the draft issue and he worked the trust issue and he tried and gave up on family values.

Throughout the campaign the polls were discouraging, but somewhere in this pack of concerns that he futilely sifted through, over and over again, there might be the cards that would give him the same inside straight to the electoral college that Dukakis had vainly tried to draw to. As for Ross Perot, he was borne onward principally by the frustration and disillusionment that have taken many years to reach flood stage. His candidacy hearkened to the day when America's economic superiority was self-evident, not refuted by every passing Toyota or Volkswagen, every Sony television set, every new set of trade figures. The reigning image of American exports had become the McDonald's Golden Arch, logo of the new, low-paying service economy. Of all the candidates, he alone concentrated on the personal sacrifice that lies ahead; and because he talked about this in a direct, homely manner, Perot seemed to to embody the national restlessness with politics as usual.

Yet for all his talk of roll-up-your-sleeves can-do, there was something dangerously seductive to his message. Fixing the American economy is not exactly as painless and uncomplicated as taking your car in for a valve job; and pretending that it is only sets the stage for greater disillusionment and cynicism to come. In St. Louis, the day began wet and stayed wet and gray, and by mid-afternoon the lights 1 had come on all over town. Despite the conditions, the voting stayed heavy.

To cast a ballot i you needed to endure some discomfort. But in 'the precincts, in the basic building blocks of the democracy, there was work to be done, heavy-nlifting work that would not be finished at the iend of the day or within the next four years that will be presided over by Bill Clinton. Results not in 1 LJ Numbers In states Indicate electoral votes. Winner of a state's popular vote gets all of that state's electoral votes. AP NEWS ANALYSIS changes in the world and the craving for a new generation of ideas." The economy opened the door.

But Bill Clinton had to walk through it. His campaign will be recalled for surmounting tortuous hurdles early this year because of revelations that he had avoided the draft and had experienced marital problems. After winning his party's nomination over a field of lesser lights, he won converts with a message more centrist than any Democratic nominee in recent times. "He presented himself not just as alternative to the Reagan-Bush trickle-down economics but as an alternative to the type of Democrats that had been repudiated by the electorate," said William Galston, a University of Maryland professor. baby boom generation finally elected one of its own as president.

And a new generation of voters under 30 years old came to the polls in greater numbers than at any time in the recent past, according to projections. "Young people are showing a stunning new maturity, a far cry from their recent amnesia, ambivalence and apathy," said Owen Bird, program director of Green Vote, a young people's environmental organization. It added up to many generations combining to force wrenching changes. "The turmoil is not just a reflection of a political system that got mad, but of a country that is really working through some very important changes," said Garin, the Democratic pollster. In the end, Clinton seized the moment with a message of investing the peace dividend to produce jobs.

By speaking about welfare reform and personal responsibility, Clinton reinforced the sense that he would be disciplined in his approach to handling the economy. His payoff: Winning Georgia, Kentucky, Tennessee, New Hampshire, Vermont and states where Democrats had held little hope. A political campaign must provide answers, but George Bush's never really did. He watched impassivelyas the economy limped through late 1991 and nearly all of 1992. Then he miscalculated by hammering at Clinton rather I til I ii urn i i I Xe tv fit M.

sr. 3 Wi.B J.B. ForbesPost-Dispatch Line Of Duty Children playing Tuesday morning at the Kellison Elementary School gymnasium, in the Fenton area, while their parents waited to vote..