The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • 122

1 2 Part VI Sunday, October 18, 1987 i Dofl Anfldea QAmes DON'T MISS THE IlEXT't GONZO: Visit With NewHunter S. Thompson o'iONIS BEACH record ekpo good way to learn it," he says. He likes to think of himself as the Jimmy the Greek of the 1988 campaign. "I'm a handicapper. That's how I see my business as a gambler rather than as a wisdom-giver," Thompson says as he orders another tumbler of Chivas.

"But if you want to know who's going to be President next year, I'm probably the best person to ask." It may not be entirely an idle boast. In an Examiner column on the 1986 mid-term elections, Thompson correctly picked 15 of 17 Senate races. And though he sat out the 1980 and 1984 presidential campaigns because he claims no one paid him to write about them, he is savoring every second of the 1988 contest now that he again has a national outlet for his writing. Indeed, he delights in talking for Please see WRITER, Page 13 OCT. 25 Cat.

State Long Beach Student Union Center Bellflower at State Univ. Dr. 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. HARD TO records of every category Imports CD's posters buttons t-shirts Election '88 Forecast: Gonzo-Style Hunter S.

Thompson is predicting that Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts will join the field of Democratic presidential candidates "as late as possible" and snap up the 1988 nomination. On the Republican side, he believes Vice President George Bush will fade in favor of Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole, who will be nominated "unless Richard Nixon gets into it." "Just for sport, I would say Teddy Kennedy will be the next President," he says. Until that happens, Thompson a self-confessed partisan while covering political campaigns confides, "I think I've adopted Paul Simon.

Did you see the article in the New Republic? They said he's got lips like Mick Jagger and eyes like a baboon. But he seems like the only one of the candidates who's going to be around." Here are his capsule views of the race: Jesse Jackson: "Jesse's going to win about half of Super Tuesday. He's the most effective politician I've seen in a long time. I would rest easy if Jesse were running the store. But Jesse will probably end up as vice president with Teddy." Michael Dukakis: "He's gone, right?" Joe Biden: "If I'd been Biden, I wouldn't have pulled out.

I'd have told them, 'What's so terrible about stealing from Bobby Writers are defined by their tastes in thievery." George Bush: "He's a politician like I'm a dope fiend a pretty serious one." Bob Dole: "A brighter version of Gerald Ford. He's a contrived professional politician." Alexander Haig: "My kind of man. You see that wicked weird look in his eye when you talk to him. I saw it when I was full of mescaline and interviewed him on the front lawn of Nixon's Western White House at San Clemente." Robertson: "He has no more chance than Jesse Jackson. But Robertson will make money on the campaign selling his tapes.

He'll be rejected but he'll find it quite profitable." NIKKI FINKE (21 3) 438-6334 TJ 3Bring a friend EH Last week to save 35-40 on our two-step carpet cleaning Continued from Page 1 idea if you pay attention to it." One reason the change seems so marked is that until recently Thompson hasn't written much of anything for anybody. In fact, for the last decade Thompson has been something of a recluse on his 100-acre farm here, content to leave the Gonzo image intact rather than go to the trouble of replacing it publicly. Actually, he and his friends say, it's not so much that Thompson disappeared; he simply seemed content to let the world spin by for a few years. "People think his brain has been fried. But it just isn't true.

He's sharp as a tack," says his longtime friend, Aspen entrepreneur Dan Dibble. "He's been very aware and very involved," and simply hasn't bothered anyone lately. Thompson himself is rather shy about discussing the change. "I'm just living a different side of life," he explains. And what about his life before? "None of it seems crazy to me, really.

Well," he mumbles with no explanation, "maybe getting married to that fat boy down in Bimini." (In actuality, Thompson, who is divorced, is known for his succession of much-younger girlfriends.) But the new Thompson is more "organized," more "sensitive," more "open to serious intellectual exchange," according to his friends. That may be a reflection of changing times rather than just a transformation of Thompson himself. "I'm not going to call it maturity," Dibble says, "because was a success at 30, so he wasn't a kid. But times were crazier back then and Hunter meets all challenges with whatever it takes. And if times are easier like they are now, then he's easier as well." For confirmation that Gonzo is gone, just glance at the stack of political columns he has been writing for the San Francisco Examiner since 1985.

(Newly purchased by the North American Syndicate, the column also has been appearing in about two dozen newspapers since August.) For one thing, Thompson is devoting nearly all his 1,000 words a week to a discussion of the 1988 presidential candidates and issues instead of comically inflated accounts of his misadventures with dope, Dobermans and deranged dwarfs. The new Thompson has boasting rights to the first interview with Gary Hart after the Donna Rice scandal boiled over. Phoning up his old friend, then in seclusion, Thompson asked Hart to assess the odds of the remaining crop of Democratic candidates. Hart's answer: They were all about 12 to 1. Two rooms and hall.

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All tore areas except Carlsbad, Mission Valley, Crossmont and Palm Desert. has praised Thompson's 1973 book, "Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72," as the most insightful study of that year's presidential election. Thompson got so hooked on the rush of covering national politics in 1972 "like a jack rabbit gets addicted to road-running" that he began betting on the outcome of each primary, a practice he continues to this day. "I just found it was a THE WORLD'S It JTi Hart later claimed that the conversation had been off the record. Not so, says Thompson, who contends he "did him a great favor.

That was about as smart a thing as he's been quoted as saying after all his whining and bitching about this sex thing." (Thompson says he also happened to have been on the phone with Hart's campaign manager, Bill Dixon, when Dixon's beeper went off with the news that the Miami Herald was about to break the Rice story. Claims Thompson: "I was so far ahead of the story that I couldn't confirm it." A day before the Herald hit the streets, Thompson says, he learned that Hart had met Rice at the home of his neighbor, ex-Eagles rock singer Don Henley. "Two hours later, I had a picture of her, which I'd gotten from Henley's Thompson is rightfully proud that even back in the Gonzo days, mainstream journalists recognized that beneath all that LSD-induced gibberish lay an often-astute political analyst. Even the late Stewart Alsop went of his way to quote Thompson in his well-read, albeit conservative column in Newsweek. And Garry Wills, among others, BIGGEST TOY STORE! IF Fisher-Price portrait studio BATH CENTER Fisher-Price SESAME STREET BOOSTER SEAT Snap-lock safety belt, 087 more.

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