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A TV blitz produces an upset

Car horns sounded a deafening tattoo in the streets of Caracas last week as Venezuelans hailed the outcome of their fifth free presidential election in 20 years. The surprise result: a defeat for the ruling left-liberal Accion Democratica Party, the country's dominant political organization.

The winner, portly, avuncular Lawyer-Politician Luis Herrera Campins, 53, leader of the centrist Social Christian Party, got some 47% of the vote. That put him well ahead of the field of nine other candidates, including Accion Democratica's Luis Pinerua Ordaz, 57, who won roughly 43%.

Both Herrera and Pinerua depended heavily on professional American campaign strategists. Herrera's adviser was Manhattan-based David Garth, whose credits include the victories of New York Governor Hugh Carey and New York City Mayor Edward Koch. Pinerua had the services of Clifton White, a former Barry Goldwater aide, and Joseph Napolitan, author of The Election Game and How to Win It, who ran the successful 1973 campaign of outgoing President Carlos Andres Perez.

In a country where seven out of ten urban households have television sets, Herrera and Pinerua fought their campaigns largely on the tube. Their American advisers did elaborate private polling to identify voter concerns (Garth conducted nine soundings), then based the candidates' TV campaigns on the results.

Garth, who speaks little Spanish, relied on two top staffers who spoke the local language, and used two American law students to take his poll surveys for him. Herrera and Pinerua each spent an estimated $8 million for TV time. President Perez, who naturally had an interest in seeing Pinerua elected, meanwhile managed to get around a law barring presidential involvement in an election by hitting the hustings on what were billed as "administrative tours." His government spent $15 million touting its achievements and otherwise burnishing its image. To critics of that blatant electioneering, Perez argued: "The government's record is involved in the campaign."

Indeed it was. Following Garth's script, Herrera hammered away on one theme: Accion Democratica had accomplished too little with the wealth that Venezuela had gained as a result of the rise in oil prices after 1973. Though the money enabled the Perez administration to triple government spending in five years, to $10.7 billion in 1978, many of Venezuela's 13 million citizens felt that they had gotten less than a trickle of the oil windfall. Venezuela's per capita income has risen sharply and is now, at $2,357, South America's highest, but poverty is still widespread. Highly skilled jobs often go begging, but within sight of Caracas' high-rise skyline hundreds of thousands of peasants live in shanty towns that lack water, roads and sewers. Agricultural policy has been a disaster; Venezuela imports much of its food from the U.S., Chile and the Caribbean. Inflation (current rate: 13%) persists, and urban street crime is on the rise. Only two weeks ago, the widow of former U.S. Ambassador to Venezuela C. Allan Stewart was beaten to death on a Caracas sidewalk.

Herrera's TV pitch was bluntspoken, to put it mildly. In one ad, a Caracas slum dweller complained that Accion Democratica representatives had promised that new housing would be built for her if she voted for the party. The government fought back with newspaper ads declaiming: LET THEM SAY WHAT THEY SAY, TODAY I LIVE BETTER. But Accion Democratica was never able to shake the image of ineptitude that Herrera kept emphasizing. Said one Caracas resident: "When you watch Perez on television, then go to the bathroom to take a shower and there's no water, you don't exactly feel like voting for Accion Democratica."

Late in the race, Accion Democratica turned to red-baiting ads that compared Herrera to a watermelon: green (the Social Christians' color) on the outside, crimson within. But Herrera, who is something of an intellectual, is a firmly anti-Communist liberal. He was exiled to Europe in the first year of the 1952-58 dictatorship of Marcos Perez Jimenez because he was a vocal campus opponent of the regime. While abroad, he forged strong links between the Social Christians (he was a charter member) and Europe's various Christian Democratic parties. Herrera returned to Venezuela after Perez Jimenez was overthrown, and became a deputy that year; in 1973 he won a seat in the Senate (where his brother is an Accion Democratica member).

Domestically, Herrera must do something about the shortcomings in health and education policy that he cited in his campaign. But he must also worry about raising hopes too high, since Venezuela's conventional oil reserves, which provide over 90% of the country's foreign earnings, may run out in 20 years. Herrera wants to continue Caracas' good relations with the U.S., which buys 33% of Venezuela's exports. He is also likely to tone down Caracas' frequent, noisy ruminations on its self-appointed role as "a bridge," as Perez frequently put it, between the developed nations and the Third World. Herrera will be busy enough just dealing with the expectations he has raised in his own country.

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