National Campaign

WASHINGTON -- Geraldine Ferraro's campaign for the Senate is, above all, a test of her own political skills and ideas after 13 years off the national stage. But it is also a test of the way we play politics these days.As Walter F. Mondale's running mate in 1984, Mrs. Ferraro never had much chance of becoming vice president. President Ronald Reagan was about as close to unbeatable as anyone can be in American politics.Specious mob tiesBut Mrs. Ferraro was put through a wringer anyway -- an explosion of accusations and, more often, innuendo suggesting that, as an Italian-American, she had some nefarious secret connection with the Mafia.

WASHINGTON -- With only 16 days before Election Day, President Clinton and Bob Dole now confront the high-stakes choices that face a national campaign in the sprint to the wire: what to say, where to say it and whether they can help candidates below them on the ticket.In political parlance, these three considerations are known by three simple words: message, schedule and coattails."We have to make decisions all year, but they become crucial at this point in the campaign," says White House political director Douglas B. Sosnik.

DES MOINES, Iowa -- As political novice Steve Forbes faces his first formal test of voting strength tonight in Iowa's caucuses, at his side will be a little-known political operative who literally runs the Forbes campaign out of a briefcase.He is William Dal Col, 39, a Cornell graduate in agronomy from Babylon, N.Y., who was chief of staff to former Bush administration housing secretary Jack Kemp.As the Forbes national campaign manager, he travels almost constantly with the candidate. They met when Mr. Forbes was chairman of Empower America, the conservative think tank founded by Mr. Kemp and Reagan Cabinet member William Bennett, and Mr. Dal Col was the group's president.

NEW ORLEANS -- Louisiana Republicans will kick off the 1996 quest for national convention delegates today in party caucuses around the state, with Sen. Phil Gramm of Texas facing only two active competitors -- but high expectations.Of the Republican field of nine candidates, only commentator Patrick J. Buchanan and Alan L. Keyes, the former Maryland senatorial nominee, are running delegate slates in the seven congressional districts.The six other candidates are boycotting the voting at the urging of the Iowa Republican Party, which is miffed that Louisiana "stole" its traditional first-in-the-nation caucuses.

WASHINGTON -- With surprising suddenness, affirmative action has thrust itself into the national political debate -- and seems destined to be a dominant political issue in state capitals across the nation and in the 1996 presidential campaign."

Boston -- When Kathleen Sylvester began researching welfare reform for the Progressive Policy Institute, she asked a Baltimore school principal the one thing she'd do to reduce the number of teen-age pregnancies.The principal had an immediate two-word answer for her: ''Shoot Madonna.''She was probably thinking of the Madonna of the 1980s, the one who wrote the classic paean to teen-age motherhood: ''Papa Don't Preach.'' The Madonna of the '90s has a line in ''Bedtime Stories'' that sounds more like paean to Joycelyn Elders: ''Happiness lies in your own hand.

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia -- The campaign to brin democracy to Cambodia two decades after it degenerated into genocide and Communist rule ended yesterday with political rallies, parades and occasional gunfire.On Sunday, about 4.7 million Cambodian voters will begin six days of balloting to choose leaders from among 20 new political parties. The multiparty elections are the first since 1972 and are being held under the eyes of a huge U.N. task force.But there is widespread fear that the nation's fragile new political system -- established at a cost of billions of dollars and involving 22,000 U.N. personnel and 50,000 Cambodians -- might not survive what is supposed to be a cooling-off period between now and Sunday.

CONCORD, N.H. -- Here where it all began last winter, things look a little different today. The trees that were bare and bleak are now crimson and gold fading to auburn. The political names in the news are Gregg and Rauh, Arnesen and Merrill rather than Tsongas, Kerrey, Harkin and Buchanan.But, in a reversal of the usual pattern for New Hampshire, the presidential campaign is essentially the same as what it was during the primary contest last January and February. President Bush, under assault from Patrick J. Buchanan eight months ago, is showing the same weakness he displayed then -- trailing Democratic nominee Bill Clinton by 10 to 12 percentage points and being written off by many of his fellow Republicans.

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. -- Paul Sullivan, a veteran of Democratic presidential campaigns going back to George McGovern's in 1972, looked around the old Arkansas Gazette newsroom that is now a beehive of activity as Bill Clinton's national headquarters. Earnest young men and women manned telephones and pecked at desk computers with a sense of purpose and order that is more often associated with button-down Republican campaigns.Mr. Sullivan, reflecting on the difference from the usually chaotic and untidy Democratic campaign headquarters in which he has toiled over the past 20 years, said with a grin: "This even looks Republican.

Fax machines, copiers and typewriters -- no matter what the brand -- have one thing in common. They break down.It's on that premise that Baltimore's Eisner & Associates has designed a $4.5 million advertising campaign for Minolta Corp. business equipment dealers nationwide.The contract will give almost an 8 percent boost to Eisner's annual billings of $57 million and could attract increased national attention to the agency's work.The humorous campaign paints the Minolta dealer as a hero, saving its clients more quickly and efficiently than "the other guys" from what can be inconvenient, and sometimes costly, breakdowns in business machines.