Clinton Finds Florida Is Warmer These Days : Campaign: Democrats usually could expect a chilly reception in GOP territory. But the climate has changed.

By CATHLEEN DECKER

Oct. 6, 1992 12 AM PT

TIMES POLITICAL WRITER

OCALA, Fla. — Bill Clinton’s bus trips have grown from novelty adventures into a rolling series of tightly programmed campaign rallies, but there was one thing that stood out about the journey on which the Democratic presidential nominee set off on Monday:

It was in Florida, one of the cornerstones of Republican strength in the South and a place where Democrats have come only to waste their time in recent presidential contests.

That Clinton came here at all--and came here roughly tied in state polls four weeks before the election--said everything about the changed dynamics of this year’s race.

And Clinton and his buscapade mate, vice presidential nominee Al Gore, made sure that Floridians were aware of it.

“Make no mistake about it,” the presidential front-runner told supporters crowded into a shorefront colonnade in Daytona Beach. “The Republicans have believed for years that they owned Florida in the general election. And you can turn out the lights on trickle-down economics and open a new day for the United States of America.”

Throughout the day Monday, as he traveled from Daytona Beach to Orlando to Leesburg to Ocala and finally to Gainesville, Clinton had two parallel goals in mind: to maintain a sense of momentum leading into next week’s series of debates and to broaden his appeal beyond Democratic loyalists in places like Florida.

In Florida, Clinton was aiming chiefly at voters who cast their lot with President Bush in 1988, when the Republican nominee won 61% of the vote here and Democratic nominee Michael S. Dukakis gave up long before autumn.

“I’m coming back here today to ask the people of Florida without regard to their party to support Bill Clinton and Al Gore,” Clinton told hundreds of supporters in Leesburg during one of his more pointed references.

Earlier, before several thousand supporters and more than a hundred Republican protesters in Daytona Beach, Clinton had taken another turn at the theme.

“One of the reasons our opponents have started to get so incredibly negative and personal is that a lot of Republicans are helping our campaign,” Clinton said.

“I do not seek a victory of party, I seek a victory for the American people, for all the American people.”

Clinton began the day on the high road, leaving the Bush-bashing chores to Gore, who denigrated the President for failing to properly protect the Florida Keys from offshore oil drilling and for vetoing the bill to regulate the price of basic cable television service. Gore later returned to Washington to join in the Senate override vote.

“George Bush pledged when he was running four years ago to protect the coast of Florida from offshore drilling,” Gore said, “and he broke that promise to Florida just like he broke his promise when he said, ‘Read my lips.”

Gore aides said later that the Tennessee senator was referring to Bush’s recent refusal to go along with Democratic efforts to include an eight-year drilling moratorium in an energy bill. The Florida coastline is protected by a series of one-year federal moratoriums.

Yet if Gore took the cutting edge early in the day, Clinton swept swiftly in with his own heated rhetoric as Monday progressed.

“This is the most cynical, manipulative bunch I’ve ever seen,” Clinton snapped in a reference to Bush and his supporters. “All they know how to do is sow fear and discord and division. What I want for this country is hope and progress and a sense of community.”

Later, in Orlando, Clinton adopted an almost sorrowful tone in responding to Bush’s relentless criticisms, some of which were delivered on a presidential campaign trip to Florida on Sunday. Clinton referred to the President in tones usually reserved for an elder who is no longer up to the task.

“It would be pretty sad to be President of the United States for four years and the best you can do in a campaign for reelection is to say things about your opponent.”

The Democratic nominee has pared his appeal down to a minimum of specifics. At every stop, he ticks off proposals for a college loan program, job training, spending for education and a national health care system. But more often than not, he aims for the guts of Americans worried that the nation’s spirit is flagging in this time of economic difficulty.

“Folks, I was raised, and most of you were raised, in an America that was a ‘we can’ country,” he said in Orlando, “And I’m tired of being told ‘we can’t.’ ”

He and Gore spoke Monday to students at Bethune-Cookman College in Daytona Beach, to beach residents several miles away and to senior citizens picnicking in an Orlando park.

Later, Clinton and Gore appeared on a 90-minute version of “Larry King Live” on CNN, where Clinton repeated that he believes a special prosecutor should be appointed to investigate the Administration’s relationship with Iraq before the Persian Gulf War. “All I want to know is what happened,” said Clinton, whose running mate, Gore, has repeatedly charged that the President had a “misguided” policy toward Iraq.

The King show originated from the Southeastern Livestock Pavilion in Ocala, on a simple blue stage with two buses arrayed behind them. During the interview Clinton said that if he becomes President, “we are going to keep taking bus trips and going out to see ordinary people.”

Today on the Trail . . .

Gov. Bill Clinton campaigns in Gainesville, Fla., and Nashville, Tenn.

President Bush in Washington, D.C.

Ross Perot has no public events scheduled.

Vice President Dan Quayle campaigns at the Sportsman’s Lodge in Encino, the St. Francis Medical Center in Lynwood, Northrop, El Segundo and Fresno, Calif.

TELEVISION

James B. Stockdale is a guest on ABC’s “World News Tonight With Peter Jennings” at 6:30 p.m. PDT.

President Bush is a guest on ABC’s “Good Morning America” at 7:30 a.m. PDT.