HANDS ON, HANDS OFF: MANAGING THE BIG GUYS

By RICHARD STENGEL/KNOXVILLE, IOWA

THE MANAGER IS NOT THE MESSAGE, BUT PRESIDENTIAL campaigns often mirror their managers. Bill Dal Col, who runs the upstart Forbes campaign, makes decisions on the fly like the head of an entrepreneurial start-up. Scott Reed, who oversees the Dole campaign, supervises his forces like the CEO of a FORTUNE 500 company. Dal Col shadows his candidate like a Secret Service agent, huddling with Forbes to make hour-to-hour decisions. Reed talks by phone with Dole at least twice a day and consults his commanders by conference call. One is a hands-on operator; the other an arm's-length manager. "Bill wants to be aboard the space shuttle," says longtime Republican operative Bill Canary, who has worked closely with both men, "while Scott prefers to be at Mission Control."

In a sense, Reed and Dal Col are brothers fighting on opposite sides of the Civil War, for they have the same political pedigree. Both are the political progeny of Jack Kemp and come from the pro-growth, Big Tent wing of the Republican Party. Reed served as Kemp's chief of staff at the Department of Housing and Urban Development from 1989 until '91, and Dal Col was Reed's handpicked successor. "We were a phenomenal team," recalls Dal Col. "He was Mr. Inside, and I was Mr. Outside." The two have kept a cordial distance, but the rivalry turned poisonous last week as Dal Col accused Reed's operation of mounting an anonymous phone campaign against Forbes.

In style, the two heads of this campaign's bitterest rivalry are not so much fire and ice as ice and ice. Businesslike but affable, Reed, 35, is efficiency personified. His desk is so meticulously organized that he can pinpoint an individual document in the stacks of neatly piled papers. Pale and intense, Dal Col, 39, resembles a 15th century monk in a Renaissance painting. Yes, he too is efficient ("Both Scott and I make lists of lists," he says), but Dal Col is strung a little tighter. "He never loses his temper," Dal Col says of Reed. "I sometimes blow up." Reed is more wary; he would not talk about himself or his rival for this story.

The beginnings of both their political careers were serendipitous. While working as a wind-surfing instructor on the Delaware shore in the summer of 1980, Reed volunteered as a chauffeur for his neighbor, Representative Tom Evans. The Congressman got Reed his first Washington job: driving around a Republican National Committee bigwig who was distributing presidential cuff links to the faithful. Reed's political godfather was consultant Roger Stone, who saw his charge's talent as an organizer and engineered his rise to deputy regional political director for the Reagan-Bush re-election in 1984. Four years later Reed became a shining star in Jack Kemp's undistinguished presidential campaign and later Kemp's chief of staff. Next stop: the Republican National Committee, where he was executive director, leaving it in strong financial shape. The hallmarks of Reed's style are simple: organization, organization, organization.

Dal Col's fortunate fall into politics happened on the night of the 1982 G.O.P. convention in Suffolk County, New York. The Republican Party was looking for a candidate to run against an unbeatable Democratic incumbent for the state assembly. A local leader remarked that his nephew was a young, clean-cut Cornell graduate. Presto: after a 10-minute interview with party chieftain Canary, Dal Col became the sacrificial lamb. He was trounced, but "Billy D.," as he was known in the neighborhood, went on to become a Suffolk County commissioner of elections and a town councilman. He went to Washington in 1989 to work on the Bush Inauguration and then, through his Long Island connections, hooked up with Kemp as a policy and planning assistant at hud. In 1993 Dal Col was tapped by a friend of Kemp's, Steve Forbes, to be president of the think tank Empower America, which Dal Col led until last year. From his days in Long Island politics, he was schooled in the Arthur Finkelstein style of New York political advertising: Keep it simple, address the voter's needs and go for the jugular.

As Dole's campaign chief, Reed may find that his toughest job is to prevent Dole Inc. from spinning apart as Dole's previous presidential campaigns have famously done. Thus far Reed has held it all together, kept internal sniping out of the papers and survived longer as Dole's chief executive than anyone before him. He has done this through a talent for smoothing ruffled feathers and building consensus, both of which are essential in the complicated world of Bob Dole. Each morning at 8, Reed holds a conference call with the principal Dole operatives outside the Beltway, and at 9 he gathers his local team for a media and message chalk-talk. Once a week he has dinner with a group of party elders and lets them second-guess his decisions.

Reed's toughest task is reckoning with a strong-willed, third-time presidential candidate who has been known to snatch a map out of an aide's hand and direct the campaign pilot where to fly. Reed doesn't roll over; when Dole pushes, he pushes back. He keeps a list of directives by his phone so that when the candidate calls to complain, Reed can return fire. Party elders credit Reed's sternness with Dole's new discipline.

The Forbes campaign structure is far smaller and more opaque than Dole's clear hierarchy. Some Dole advisers see Dal Col as a super aide-de-camp, the ultimate body guy, with the campaign being managed from New Jersey by former Jesse Helms consultant Carter Wrenn and pollster John McLaughlin. Dal Col gives one reason why he sticks by his man: "I have a newcomer to politics who has never run for office before." And he leads a guerrilla ground operation. Through a combination of faxes and cellular phones, Dal Col orchestrates Forbes' air war from the campaign bus. One day last week Dal Col was faxed the text of a negative Dole ad; he, Wrenn and McLaughlin blocked out a response; the spot was filmed in New York and overnight-expressed to Dal Col and Forbes, who made a few changes before it hit the air. Turnaround time: 48 hours.

Forbes and Dal Col are close. "We were friends first," says Dal Col; that makes their effort seem more like a partnership. After Buchanan's upset victory in Louisiana last week, Forbes and Dal Col strategized about a response. They agreed that Forbes would go easy on Buchanan, as Forbes was fishing for voters in the same anti-Washington waters. At a press conference, a TV reporter peppered Forbes with questions about Buchanan's controversial 1992 convention speech. Forbes resolutely avoided criticism, saying repeatedly, "I preferred Ronald Reagan's speech." Dal Col looked on admiringly. "We never discussed that," he says. "His instincts and discipline make me look good." Plus, says a grateful Dal Col, Forbes carries his own bags. Dal Col and Reed know that ultimately they are only as good as their candidates, and they take solace in the campaign manager's consolation: Victory is always ascribed to the manager, but defeat is chalked up to a lousy candidate.

--Reported by Jeffrey H. Birnbaum and Michael Duffy/Washington

With reporting by JEFFREY H. BIRNBAUM AND MICHAEL DUFFY/WASHINGTON