Biker Babbitt

By DAN GOODGAME

Politicians will go to remarkable lengths to get the attention of voters, but Arizona's Democratic Governor Bruce Babbitt outdid even the most tireless baby kisser and hand shaker last week. From Sunday to Saturday, he bicycled across 397 miles of Iowa, pausing only for an emergency trip to Phoenix to attend the funeral of a legislative ally. "They told me this state was flat," mumbled the tall, lean presidential hopeful, as he and his wife Hattie forced their Schwinns up a series of long, steep hills. Following along in an air- conditioned camper, Babbitt's two sons good naturedly egged him on. "There are 7,500 people on this ride, Dad," said Christopher, 10. "But there's only one who has to make it to the finish."

Avid bicyclists enter the Des Moines Register's Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa, better known as "Ragbrai," to enjoy Iowa hospitality, 10 cents lemonade, and the excellent local bratwurst. Babbitt came to peddle himself to Iowa Democrats, whose caucuses are the first major test of the 1988 presidential campaign. The Arizona Governor, whose successes are little known east of the Rocky Mountain states, needs all the early recognition he can get.

Yet in spite of his low national profile, Babbitt has begun to stir interest with his impressive record as a two-term Governor and his provocative ideas about national policy and the future of the Democratic Party. "There are two Democratic Parties," Babbitt declared at a hog roast in Red Oak. "One is our national Democratic Party, which has lost four of the last five presidential elections by increasing margins. The other Democratic Party has won 34 of the governorships and control of a majority of the state legislatures and county commissions. One party is failing. The other is a winner."

Babbitt's politics are difficult to label, which could be a virtue for a Democrat seeking national office these days. When he called out the National Guard to quell a violent 1983 contract dispute in Arizona's copper industry, Babbitt stirred suspicions among some liberal Democrats that he is a closet Republican. A critic of government entitlement programs spawned by Democratic lawmakers, Babbitt proposes that most government benefits, from Social Security to farm subsidies, be "means tested." That idea, even when coupled with a pledge of support for the family farm, did not endear Babbitt to some of Iowa's hard-pressed growers, whose middle-class life-styles depend on government subsidies. Said one, Jon Malloy of Essex: "I'm impressed with his intelligence and his ideas, but I'm not comfortable that he would give us the help we need right now."

Babbitt would not use the money saved from slashing benefits for the wealthy and middle classes to cut the federal budget. Instead, he would increase benefits for the poor. Yet this liberal-sounding proposition belies Babbitt's record of penny-pinching pragmatism in Arizona, where he has worked successfully with business and with the Republicans who control the legislature and where state spending is lower as a proportion of personal income than when he took office.

Intense but soft spoken, self-confident but unassuming, Babbitt can seem aloof and cool, yet he is seldom arrogant. The scion of a wealthy mercantile family in Arizona, he ruefully describes himself as "hopelessly overeducated." (He received a geology degree from Notre Dame, studied in England under the prestigious Marshall Scholars program and earned a law degree from Harvard.) In private conversation, he shows an exceptionally nimble, curious and original mind.

Respectfully but somewhat tepidly received by most audiences last week, Babbitt seems to lack the ability to stir up a partisan crowd. The bilingual Governor actually seems more warm and relaxed giving speeches in Spanish, as he did to farm workers in Des Moines. "If we can just get him to talk like that in English," said a Babbitt aide, "we'll have it made."

The Babbitt family will be traveling widely during the coming months. With his penchant for combining politics and athletics, the Governor plans to visit New England's White Mountains in the fall to ski the legendary Tuckerman Ravine. The daredevil slope is in New Hampshire, the state that just happens to offer the second presidential preference vote of 1988, right after Iowa.