Elizabeth Dole rips federal bureaucracy

Larry Henry

Thursday, March 21, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.

"She's a better speaker than her husband," said Phylis Lopez.

Lopez, a fifth-grade teacher from Topeka, Kan., had been watching Elizabeth Dole stump for husband Bob Dole, the Kansas Senate majority leader expected officially to clinch the Republican presidential nomination Tuesday in California, Washington and Nevada primaries.

Lopez was vacationing in Las Vegas Wednesday with her husband, Chad, when she learned that Elizabeth Dole, before moving on to Reno and California, would stop off at Opportunity Village, a social services agency that teaches work skills to the disabled.

Wired with a clip-on microphone, Dole moved into a crowd of about 200 people and used a persuasive demeanor and personal anecdotes to reinforce anti-government themes popular among Western conservatives.

A 59-year-old North Carolina native and graduate of Duke and Harvard universities, Dole said the worst thing her generation faced in grade school was an occasional spitball.

But now that crime, teen pregnancy and suicide are plaguing many students, she said Americans should push to abolish the U.S. Department of Education, a bureaucracy she blames for keeping parents from being involved in what children learn.

"Return the power to the states," she said.

She said Bob Dole carries a copy of the 10th Amendment to remind him of the importance of property rights, a hot-button issue among Nevada conservatives seeking control of federal land.

Dole's anti-government stance sometimes struck a contradictory note. During the speech, she said Dole wants to abolish the Department of Energy. But when talking to reporters afterward, she said he will not take a position on the DOE's proposal to dump high-level nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain northwest of Las Vegas until the agency he supposedly wants to dismantle has completed its site studies.

Several times she blasted Washington "bureaucrats" but then inadvertently noted that Bob Dole, who has come under fire for being a career politician, has been elected by Senate Republicans as their leader six times, more than any other in history.

She also has a history of service in federal government. Under President Ronald Reagan, she became the first woman secretary of transportation, and she worked in the Bush administration as secretary of labor.

Dole said her husband, beneficiary of about $400,000 in campaign contributions from Nevada, opposes federal taxation of casinos. He also will consider naming a woman vice presidential running mate, she said.

Among those mentioned have been Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, and New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman.

Elizabeth Dole is on leave from a $200,000-a-year job as president of the American Red Cross. She said she would return to the job "when Bob is elected president," in part because the office is only "three minutes from the back door of the White House."

Following her speech, she toured Opportunity Village and promised to consider using the facility to manufacture campaign buttons.

Opportunity Village produced 250,000 buttons for the Reagan campaign and 100,000 for Bush, who visited the site in 1992.

Dole noted that her husband, who lost use of his right arm after being wounded in World War II, was "sensitive" to the problems of people facing challenges.

"Opportunity Village helps people fulfill themselves and make a contribution to the community," she said.