Bush Preaches Education Reform
On day two of his Pacific Coast campaign swing, GOP presidential candidate George W. Bush stuck to his education reform script in electorally elusive California.
At a public school in Redwood, Calif. on the edge of Silicon Valley, Bush said on Tuesday that U.S. students trail those in most other industrialized nations in science and math - and that the Clinton administration has done little to erase the growing "achievement gap" between minority students and white students.
Those are themes that Bush pounded the day before in Beaverton, Oregon, when he blamed Clinton and Gore for an "education recession" - the same catchphrase in the governor's latest TV ad.
And those are messages that the Texas governor will hammer again on Wednesday at a stop at a school in south central Los Angeles. But despite the emphasis on schools during this trip and on so many others in the past, Bush appears to be making little headway among voters in the Golden State, the largest prize with its 54 electoral votes.
An independent poll by the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) conducted just after Labor Day showed Democrat Al Gore had increased his lead over Bush in the state to a nine-point margin - 48 percent to 39 percent - jumping six points since a similar survey in July.
"Californians have been telling us that education is the issue they most want the candidates to talk about," said Mark Baldassare, director of the PPIC survey. But in the September poll, 55 percent of Golden State voters thought the vice president would do a better job at improving the public education system, compared with 36 percent who said the Texas governor would.
| Cheney Criticizes Gore's Oil Ties GOP running mate Dick Cheney is attacking Vice President Al Gore over his financial ties to an oil company. Cheney said Gore has a conflict of interest because he advocated keeping a moratorium on royalties U.S. companies would have to pay to drill for natural gas in the Gulf of Mexico - a measure that would benefit Occidental Petroleum Corp. A Gore family trust has holdings in Occidental stock. Cheney said Gore should excuse himself from energy policy decisions or have the family trust divest the stock. Cheney has been accused by Democrats of a conflict of interest for advocating domestic oil exploration that could benefit a company he ran and in which he owns stock. The Gore campaign said Cheney was just trying to divert attention from his own ties to big oil and asserted that Gore has no control over the trust's investments. The dustup came as Cheney visited plant floors, schools and business groups across the battleground states of Ohio and Michigan to advertise Bush's tax plan and education proposals.  (AP) |
Bush's plan would require states to establish their own standards for testing for each year from the third through the eighth grade. If a state fails to improve, he would allow vouchers for low-income families to use for private-school tuition - a proposal Gore opposes.
A November ballot proposition in California that would give parents $4,000 per student to spend on private schools is currently failing among voters by 53-percent to 37-percent, according to a PPIC survey. Though Bush has failed to take a stand on the initiative, Baldassare believes the issue probably hurts in him among California voters.
"He hasn't made any progress yet in conveying to voters he has the best answers," said Baldassare. "Most people (here) don't think that vouchers are the answer."
Still, Bush campaign officials believe that putting an emphasis on the governor's record in Texas will sway Californians.
"Education has been his number one issue, as a governor and a presidential candidate," said Gerald Parsky, chair of Bush's California campaign. He said Bush will keep stressing his beliefs in accountability and testing in the Lone Star State, as well as continue to focus on the Clinton administration's failure to do the same. "It's an example of promises made in the past but never delivered on," Parsky said.
The Gore campaign counters that Bush's proposals threaten public education. "The real trouble would be Bush's tax cut, which is so huge that he would have to impose huge cuts in education to pay for it," said Gore spokesman Doug Hattaway. A Gore campaign analysis claims Bush would have to cut federal education spending by as much as 17-percent to finance his proposed tax cut.
Though the Bush camp says it expects the race to tighten in California just as it has all over the country, Baldassare notes that the Texas governor still lags significantly behind in three groups he has worked hard to court: women, Hispanics, and independents.
"We haven't seen him making any headway in California yet," said Baldassare.