CLINTON TO WATCH DEBATE, PREPARE IN WILLIAMSBURG
NO APPEARANCES BEFORE RICHMOND

Published: Tuesday, October 13, 1992
Section: LOCAL , page D6
Source: By Greg Schneider, Staff writer

© 1992 Landmark Communications Inc.

Democratic presidential nominee Bill Clinton will be watching from Williamsburg tonight as his running mate debates in Atlanta.

President Bush and challenger Ross Perot will arrive in Richmond on Thursday to square off with Clinton in a town meeting at the University of Richmond.

Clinton arrived at Richmond International Airport this morning and rode in a motorcade to Williamsburg, where he checked into the Williamsburg Lodge.

The Clinton campaign reserved 100 rooms in the lodge, said Patrick J. Milliman, communications director for the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.

The presidential front-runner also has snared ``three or four conference rooms'' at the lodge to practice for Thursday's debate.

A Clinton spokesman said the candidate plans no public appearances.

Clinton has made only one campaign foray into Virginia, when he made two stops in the D.C. suburbs last month. The state has not voted Democratic in a presidential race since 1964.

The Democrats bypassed slightly swankier Williamsburg accommodations such as the Lightfoot House, the usual guest building favored by visiting heads of state.

``Mr. Clinton and his inner circle like to have very convenient access to one another, so we made sure they could have blocks of rooms in secure parts of the hotel,'' Milliman said.

Hillary Clinton was scheduled to join her husband sometime Wednesday.

Bush campaign workers, meanwhile, began setting up operations Monday in a Holiday Inn and a Hyatt hotel in Richmond. Spokesmen said the president's pre-debate plans remained unresolved, but that Bush is likely to fly into Richmond shortly before the 9 p.m. debate.

Local Republicans were working to arrange the president's appearance at a rally after the debate.

Perot's organizers said he, too, would arrive shortly before the event by private jet, probably at a small airfield somewhere near Richmond.

Plans for a post-debate Perot party were being modified Monday, with its size increasing from 250 to 1,000 invited guests on the heels of the Texas billionaire's spry performance in St. Louis on Sunday. Michael Rau, state communications director for Perot, said the candidate is scheduled to attend the Richmond rally.

Perot and Bush both plan to leave Richmond later Thursday, but Clinton's plans are unclear. He is not booked for Thursday night in Williamsburg, but Clinton has been invited to stay in the Executive Mansion as the guest of Gov. L. Douglas Wilder.

``We don't know yet,'' Seldin said when asked about those plans.

It also was unclear Monday how many tickets each candidate would have to distribute to supporters, though the University of Richmond learned that it would have 200 tickets.

Of those, 100 were to be given to individuals and corporations which donated $10,000 or more toward the $500,000 cost of holding the debate. Eighty tickets are to be awarded in a lottery tonight to students, while 20 were given Monday to faculty and staff chosen in a random drawing.

The Richmond debate will be in the unprecedented format of a town meeting, with the candidates fielding questions from 250 uncommitted local voters, selected by a marketing firm hired by the Commission on Presidential Debates.

The commission, which is sponsoring all three presidential debates and tonight's debate of vice presidential hopefuls in Atlanta, declined Monday to identify the firm, but confirmed that the moderator for the event will be ABC News correspondent Carole Simpson.

Description of illustration(s):
ABC's Carole Simpson
To moderate Thursday's debate