ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, March 4, 1996 TAG: 9603040066
SECTION: NATL/INTL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SERIES: Election '96
SOURCE: WILLIAM E. GIBSON AND DAVID JACKSON FORT LAUDERDALE SUN-SENTINEL
NOTE: Below
Lamar Alexander - known as Lamar! everywhere he can put up a campaign sign - has turned south and headed home.
The farther south he goes, his folksy style gets folksier and his piano-playing takes on a livelier bounce, like something out of a Nashville opry house.
His smile, already as wide as Tennessee, keeps getting wider.
Alexander was so happy to get out of frigid New Hampshire with a strong third-place finish in the Republican presidential primary that he personally handed out doughnuts to reporters before boarding an airplane bound for what his staff called a ``Southern homecoming.''
Alexander, former governor of Tennessee, is the only Southerner left in the race - the only one, that is, except President Clinton. Alexander does not hesitate to make the comparison.
``I believe a Republican governor from the new South can beat Bill Clinton,'' the candidate told cheering supporters in Tampa, Fla.
Alexander's bid for the Republican nomination relies heavily on the theory that only he could defeat Clinton, former governor of Arkansas. Alexander's Southern strategy counts on support in his home region, especially in the March 12 Florida primary, which he calls ``decisive.''
But a shadow keeps falling across Alexander's sunny disposition, now that he faces the close scrutiny that comes with being a major contender.
Questions about Alexander's financial dealings keep cropping up. And beneath the political speculation over his chances in the race is a larger puzzle - who exactly is the man in the red flannel shirt? - and a nagging sense that he is not quite what he seems.
Alexander says his career has been neatly divided between government and business. He calls himself a Washington ``outsider,'' but his resume says otherwise. A two-term Tennessee governor, Alexander also served in President Bush's Cabinet as education secretary from 1991 to 1993.
It is also fair to note that he was campaigning for political office when he wasn't in one, and exploring private business deals when he was.
The close-knit group of Tennessee businessmen who financed Alexander's bids for office also invited him into a series of lucrative investments that helped build his reported net worth from $151,000 when he ran for governor in 1978 to between $1.5 million and $3 million when he went to Washington in 1991. It is substantially more today.
``I think that's good,'' Alexander says. ``I think it's important to have a president who knows how jobs are created.''
While none of his transactions has been called illegal, Alexander's cascade of deals included many that appear to blur the line between public office and personal enrichment. Among them:
* As Tennessee governor in 1981, Alexander joined an investment group that helped broker the sale of a Knoxville newspaper. That sale, arranged by several of his campaign financiers, cost Alexander nothing and netted him $620,000 worth of stock.
* Shortly before he left office in 1986, Alexander convened the first meetings of a company called Corporate Child Care Inc. in the governor's mansion and brought on board his human services commissioner, Marguerite Sallee, now a campaign adviser. Six months earlier, she had completed a taxpayer-financed survey of companies to learn their day-care needs and strategies. Alexander's founders stock in that company is now worth at least $1 million, according to his financial disclosure reports.
* Alexander's personal property holdings were financed in part by favorable loans from First Tennessee National Bank, and he later served as a paid consultant and board member for the bank. As governor, he appointed the bank's chairman, Ron Terry, to the Tennessee Higher Education Commission.
Alexander brushes off questions about his investments, saying: ``I plead guilty to being a capitalist.''
He is counting on victories in Southern primaries to wash away the nagging questions. His upbeat image as a fresh face from the Sunbelt already has helped him, even in snowy Iowa and New Hampshire.
``He looks like a youngish Southern governor, and that rings a bell,'' said Steffen Schmidt, professor of political science at Iowa State University. ``People wonder, `Who is the best Republican to go up against a young Southern governor who became president?' Some people see that as a good matchup in style.''
Alexander announced his presidential bid from the steps of the county courthouse in his hometown of Maryville, Tenn. Across Lamar Alexander Highway were the foothills of the Smoky Mountains and behind him was the small-town skyline of church spires and swaying elms that has changed little since he was a boy.
A tall man with limpid, blue-gray eyes, Alexander is a quiet but unfailing presence in the back pews of Westminster Presbyterian Church in Nashville, and face-to-face he comes across as down-to-earth, neighborly and possessed of wry intelligence.
His top aides readily concede that his plaid shirts are a ``gimmick,'' an election-year prop to help cast him as a man of the people instead of what he also is - a millionaire lawyer who has used political connections to amass personal wealth.
It's actually a borrowed gimmick, a style of campaigning Alexander learned from Florida Gov. Lawton Chiles, who walked across Florida in well-worn shoes and a red-flannel shirt to foster his regular-ol'-Southern-boy image in his Senate campaign of 1970.
In his 1978 bid for governor, Alexander walked 1,022 miles across Tennessee and into the national limelight.
Alexander says his first task as president would be to overhaul the tax system. But rather than propose a single shining solution, such as the flat tax idea, he cautions that a panel should be commissioned to study the matter.
He opposes abortion but is also against federal laws that would prohibit it. He says such decisions should be left entirely to the states.
He wants the federal government out of gun control as well, and he wants welfare and school programs turned over to the states.
The core of his message is personal responsibility.
Along the campaign trail, Alexander has attracted an enthusiastic cadre of grass-roots volunteers, some of whom traveled from Florida to New Hampshire to deliver oranges door to door and help pump up support for their candidate. With this network in place, Alexander is searching for the $2 million to $3 million he needs to carry on a campaign across the Sunbelt, all the while hoping rivals Pat Buchanan and Bob Dole will stumble.
LENGTH: Long : 122 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. Lamar Alexander brushes off questions about hisby CNBinvestments, saying `` plead guilty to being a capitalist.'' He
labels himself a Washington outsider but is a veteran of its inside
as well. color. KEYWORDS: PRESIDENT POLITICS PROFILE