Friday, July 23, 1999
Bush spreads message, collects $1M
Candidate works on adding issues
BY HOWARD WILKINSON
The Cincinnati Enquirer
George W. Bush talks with Rev. Carolyn Ford-Griffith, pastor of Hope Temple Church.
(Steven M. Herppich photo)
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Republican presidential contender George W. Bush preached his message of “compassionate conservatism” Thursday from a storefront church in one of Cincinnati's poorest neighborhoods to a posh fund-raiser at a downtown hotel.
The Texas governor's campaign, which already had $30 million in the bank three weeks ago, more than all the other GOP presidential con tenders combined, raked in another $1 million by the time he left town.
About 400 Cincinnati supporters who had paid $1,000 each to sip drinks and eat finger food in the Omni Netherland Hotel's Hall of Mirrors got a chance to see the Republican whom the polls say is the front-runner not only for the GOP nomination but for the White House next year. Hundreds of others paid, but didn't show.
What they heard was a 53-year-old son of a former president pledging to go to the White House and “continue our prosperity, leaving no one American behind.”
“Prosperity does not just happen,” Mr. Bush told the crowd. “People in the current administration act like they invented prosperity. They no more invented prosperity than they invented the Internet.”
It was a reference to a comment by Vice President Al Gore, the front-runner for the Democratic nomination, in which he implied he had a hand in inventing the Internet.
Mr. Bush got his loudest and longest applause from the crowd when he took a thinly veiled shot at President Clinton, who comes to Cincinnati today for a Democratic party fund-raising event.
“When I put my hand on the Bible to become your president, I will swear to uphold the dignity and honor of the office I have been elected to, so help me God,” Mr. Bush said to raucous cheers.
Mr. Bush's Cincinnati visit came at a time when the GOP front-runner is trying to add more issue-oriented substance to his campaign, which has, so far, been dominated by fund-raising and collecting endorsements.
At the fund-raiser, Mr. Bush said that, as president, he will “rebuild the military power of the United States of America.”
“This is still a world of madmen, missiles and terror,” Mr. Bush said. “America must not retreat within our own borders. We must be strong.”
Earlier in the day, in a campaign stop in Indianapolis, Mr. Bush outlined his plan to enlist religious organizations and charities to help deliver government services.
The candidate said that, in his first year in the White House, he would commit $8 billion to tax credits and grants to encourage people to give to charities and to more faith-based organizations to participate in government programs aimed at fighting poverty, crime and drug use.
In Cincinnati, Mr. Bush continued the theme he began earlier in the day in Indianapolis when he spent about half an hour talking with volunteers in an anti-drug organization organized by U.S. Rep. Rob Portman, R-Terrace Park.
About 50 volunteers and neighborhood children, along with a large press contingent, pressed into the tiny chapel of Hope Temple Church Ministries on Montgomery Road in Evanston.
After the session with coalition volunteers, Mr. Bush acknowledged that it was unusual for a Republican presidential candidate to be campaigning in a poor and largely African-American neighborhood like Evanston.
“My vision of America includes ev erybody,” Mr. Bush told reporters on the street outside Hope Temple Church.
The Rev. Carolyn Ford Griffith, who founded the ministry in a once-dilapidated building eight years ago, told Mr. Bush that by coming to Evanston, he was in “what was once one of the worst drug areas in the city. Four years ago, you couldn't walk the street outside here and be safe. The street was crowded with drug dealers and prostitutes.”
Mr. Bush said that the work of the the coalition in educating parents and children to prevent drug abuse “is exactly what we need more of. Government should be welcoming the help of faith-based organizations.”
“I praise your program because reform in society should start from the bottom up, not the top down,” Mr. Bush said.
Involving faith-based organizations in government programs is something that Mr. Gore has suggested in recent months. Mr. Bush, speaking to reporters outside the church, said the Gore proposals have not gone far enough.
“With them, it's almost like an afterthought,” Mr. Bush said. “I am serious about this. I care about this. I know the transforming power of faith.”
The Bush fund-raiser in Cincinnati was organized by two Cincinnati businessmen who have been friends and business partners of the Texas governor for nearly 20 years — William O. DeWitt Jr. and Mercer Reynolds. The two were Mr. Bush's partners in an oil exploration business in the mid-1980s and later invested in Mr. Bush's successful bid to buy the Texas Rangers baseball team.
“When he asked us to help, we agreed to put this together without hesitation,” Mr. DeWitt said. “We know this man and he is going to be a great president.”
Mr. Reynolds said the $1 million take made Thursday night's reception the single largest fund-raiser for a primary election ever in Ohio.
Ohio Republican Party chairman Bob Bennett, who has been around Ohio politics for 30 years, said he has “no reason to argue with that. It's the biggest I have ever seen.”
The fund-raising event drew a crowd that was part business and part political. Among the paying guests were Marge Schott, the soon-to-be-former general partner in the Reds, and Hamilton County commissioner Bob Bedinghaus and county prosecutor Mike Allen.
After Mr. Bush's five-hour campaign visit to Cincinnati, he went on to Des Moines, Iowa, for a campaign stop in that early caucus state. He is scheduled to attend another campaign fund-raiser later today in Louisville.
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