DATE: Monday, November 3, 1997              TAG: 9711030052

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A3   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS 

DATELINE: EDISON, N.J.                      LENGTH:   80 lines

CLINTON GIVES CAMPAIGNING DEMOCRATS LAST-MINUTE BOOSTTHE DEBT-CHOKED PARTY IS HOPING FAMOUS FACES CAN COUNTER PRICEY GOP CAMPAIGNS.

Counting down to a handful of closely watched off-year elections, President Clinton hit the campaign stump Sunday to help Democrats in New York and New Jersey who've seen little or no financial help from the debt-choked national party. The president was scheduled to campaign in Virginia today.

Lacking competitive ad campaigns, the underdog Democrats were counting on presidential star power, vilification of the Republicans and voter turnout to carry them in Tuesday's elections.

``Make sure you show up, and drag three or four of your friends along,'' the president told about 1,500 people who braved a gray, damp day to see Clinton and congressional candidate Eric Vitaliano in Staten Island, N.Y.

Vitaliano's race, gubernatorial contests in New Jersey and Virginia, and the long-shot bid of Democrat Ruth Messinger to unseat New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani - each could give the Democratic Party a huge political boost going into the 1998 midterm election season and its bid to reclaim control of Congress.

``You can send a signal to the rest of the country about the direction that we have to take,'' Clinton told voters in New Jersey, where Jim McGreevey is fighting to topple Republican incumbent Christine Todd Whitman.

But even as Clinton campaigned Sunday after a $3 million fund-raising weekend retreat in Florida for the Democratic National Committee, the party's lingering $15 million debt from 1996 has forced Democrats into decidedly underdog roles in this year's races.

``I ain't got no money,'' was the refrain of one blues song played before Clinton and McGreevey took the stage Sunday.

What the party has not been able to do financially, it has tried to make up for with personal appearances by its top stars.

In New Jersey, perhaps the Democrats' most winnable of the four races, Clinton and his wife, Hillary, and Vice President Al Gore and his wife, Tipper, have all campaigned for McGreevey.

His contest remains fairly competitive. But in Vitaliano's race, and in the Virginia gubernatorial bid of Democrat Donald S. Beyer Jr., previously tight races opened considerably in favor of GOP candidates in recent weeks after the Republican National Committee poured millions of dollars into ads that Democrats could not match.

Virginia GOP candidate James S. Gilmore III enjoys a $2 million fund-raising edge over Beyer - all of it from the RNC. Vitaliano's opponent, councilman Vito Fossella Jr., benefited by several points in the polls from $750,000 in issue ads bankrolled by the RNC.

Vitaliano has gotten no such help from the Democratic Party.

Dan Sallick, spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, acknowledged not only a question of party debt, but of party priority. In Staten Island, where the House seat has been Republican for years, Sallick said: ``We think we have a shot. But we have to be careful (about money). There are 11 House seats we need to win next year.''

Kathy Bolognesi, a State Island realty agent who waited three hours in the chill to see Clinton, said the paucity of Democratic dollars was obvious to the average voter. ``We've been inundated with very negative ads, and I don't know if Vitaliano has done enough to override it,'' she said.

Resurrecting his winning theme from 1996, Clinton on Sunday repeatedly summoned public distrust of House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Republican leaders, he said Sunday, ``are still trying to implement the Contract on America.''

Voting Republican on Tuesday, Clinton said, would empower ``one more soldier in the army that opposed our economic policies, our education policies, our environmental policies, our crime policies, right down the line.''

For their part, Vitaliano and McGreevey hitched their campaigns Sunday to Clinton's record and popularity. ``I would like to provide the same leadership, the same determination, the same hard work,'' McGreevey said.

Clinton was making an evening appearance for Messinger and was scheduled to campaign for Beyer in Virginia today. ILLUSTRATION: ASSOCIATED PRESS

President Clinton campaigns for Democratic gubernatorial candidate

Jim McGreevey, left, Sunday at Middlesex County College in Edison,

N.J. Clinton will be in Virginia today to support gubernatorial

candidate Donald S. Beyer Jr. KEYWORDS: CAMPAIGN GUBERNATORIAL RACE

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