Bush expresses regret over Bob Jones U. appearance, while Bradley and Gore stump in Seattle

From staff and wire reports

February 27, 2000
Web posted at: 10:51 p.m. EST (0351 GMT)

WASHINGTON -- Texas Gov. George W. Bush on Sunday sent his strongest signal yet that his appearance at right-wing conservative Bob Jones University may come back to bite him at the ballot box.

Meanwhile, with time winding down before Republican and Democratic presidential primaries Tuesday in Washington state and Virginia, Democratic presidential rivals Vice President Al Gore and former New Jersey Sen. Bill Bradley stumped Sunday in Washington state. Bradley hopes to get a boost for his slumping campaign in Tuesday's Democratic primary in Washington state.

Reeling from criticism that he failed to condemn the school's ban on interracial dating and school leaders who have expressed anti-Catholic views, Bush sent a letter of apology, released Sunday, to Cardinal John O'Connor, Archbishop of New York. O'Connor is a nationally recognized Roman Catholic leader.

"I should have been more clear in disassociating myself from anti-Catholic sentiments and racial prejudice," Bush's letter read. "It was a missed opportunity, causing needless offense, which I deeply regret."

Bush's main GOP rival, Arizona Sen. John McCain, said Sunday on ABC that he would have carried a different message to Bob Jones University.

McCain said he does not mind "going any place where people have views that I find hateful" -- but "when I go there, I'm going to tell them exactly what I think of them."

McCain added that he would have told the Bob Jones audience that "they ought to get out of the 16th century and into the 21st century."

"The things that they espouse, including a ban on interracial dating, are personally offensive to me, but more importantly offensive to almost all Americans," McCain said.

But Bush campaign workers and supporters accused McCain of unfairly focusing on religious division to harm the Texas governor's campaign.

"We have not since 1960 seen religion injected in such an ugly way in a presidential campaign," said Bush spokesman Karl Rove on NBC, referring to John F. Kennedy's Catholic faith as an issue in that presidential race.

"I think that Sen. McCain and his campaign were very effective in using this incident to try to paint Gov. Bush as something he is not," added New York Gov. George Pataki, a Bush supporter, on CNN's "Late Edition" with Wolf Blitzer.

McCain has been using Bush's appearance at the school as material for anti-Bush recorded phone calls aimed at potential voters. On Sunday, McCain defended the practice.

"I also authorized a factual statement that George, Gov. Bush, visited Bob Jones University that practices both anti-Catholic and racial discrimination," McCain said. "I stand by that statement."

Meanwhile, Bush won 26 more Republican convention delegates this weekend, at Saturday caucuses in the U.S. territories of Guam, American Samoa, the U.S.Virgin Islands, and a Sunday primary in Puerto Rico.

In Puerto Rico, with 89 percent of the polling stations reporting, Bush received 77,196 votes, or 93 percent, and McCain had 4,668 votes, or about 6 percent. Former United Nations Ambassador Alan Keyes and publisher Steve Forbes, who dropped out of the GOP race earlier this month, each received less than 1 percent of the vote.

The victories increased Bush's delegate total to 93, narrowing the gap between himself and McCain. McCain had 96 delegates going into the weekend races; a candidate needs 1,034 delegates to win the Republican nomination for president.

Residents of U.S. territories are allowed to participate in presidential caucuses and primaries, despite their ineligibility to vote in the general election.

On Tuesday, Republican primaries will be held in Washington state and Virginia. A Democratic primary in Washington will also be held Tuesday.

Washington state's primary is a so-called beauty contest, offering no delegates in either party, but promising possible campaign momentum into important March 7 primaries in delegate-rich New York and California.

"We're making a real effort. I am the reform candidate in this race," Democratic challenger Bradley told CBS's "Face the Nation" while on a campaign stop in Seattle. Bradley, who has slipped further behind in polls in recent weeks, said he believes he is the only Democrat who could beat either of the GOP candidates in November.

Taking a swipe at Gore, Bradley said the vice president was too vulnerable to Republican challengers because "he cannot get rid of the background of the 1996 fund-raising scandals that will be there to haunt him throughout the fall."

"The rest of the country is yearning to have someone come to Washington (D.C.) like a clear mountain stream and clean out the corruption that's there and change the way things are done," Bradley said. "That's what my candidacy offers."

While Bradley campaigned, across town in Seattle Gore addressed a friendly crowd of about 900 at a Democratic Party chili feed. Although he spent most of his animated, arm-waving speech castigating Bush and McCain, Gore reserved some of his ire for Bradley.

"I think it is wrong to try to conquer our party by dividing our party," Gore said. "I think it is wrong to make the Democratic primary a cauldron of wedge issues and phony labels instead of a contest of ideas and ideals."

White House Correspondent Kelly Wallace, Reporter Beth Fouhy, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.