"Campaign week fired up", 1976-02-01

"Ford in home state; Wallace in Florida. Placards wave at political rally; President Ford hit the 1976 campaign trail Saturday with an economic fight speech to fired-up Republicans in his home state of Michigan. Five Democratic candidates stumped for support in the March 2 Massachusetts primary. Elsewhere on a busy campaign weekend, Alabama Gov. George Wallace resumed his bid for a repeat victory in Florida's March 9 Democratic primary. His strongest competitor there, former George Gov. Jimmy Carter, campaigned in South Carolina. In Massachusetts, 129 state labor union leaders gave a boost to the Democratic candidacy of Indiana's Sen. Birch Bayh, announcing both their endorsement of Bayh and their promise to campaign for him. Ford chose a midwestern Republican conference in Dearborn, Mich., for his first campaign outing of the election year. He moved on after a heavily applauded speech there to an appearance in Colonial Williamsburg, Va. In Dearborn, Ford promised to reduce unemployment by stimulating economic recovery through tax incentives and other measures. He scorned the emergency public service employment programs urged by some Democrats. "What I am proposing is not going to get the unemployed back to work overnight," he said. "But it will get them back to work, with lasting and secure jobs – not dead end job supported by the government." The 1,000 GOP officials present gave for 90– second standing ovations before and after his speech and interrupted him often to applaud. Resting at home in California, Ronald Reagan got his own economic campaign message out an interview published in the new addition of business Week Magazine. Like Ford, Reagan opposed heavy federal involvement in combatting unemployment. Reagan urged stimulation of the private economic sector "through tax incentives. With control controls, so a guy can't just dump his load on government, but has to prove that this is additional employment he's putting in." In Boston, Bayh accepted his labor endorsement with a speech attacking high home fuel prices and current energy policies – a hot political topic in energy short New England. "I don't care if you supported George Wallace in the last election or George McGovern or George Meany," he told a group of the labor leaders. "If you're out of work and you can't pay your fuel bill, you need a new president." Bayh and four competitors for the Democratic nomination, arranged to appear at a "candidates' forum" in Acton, Mass., Saturday. Besides Bayh, the speakers were former Oklahoma Sen. Fred Harris, Rep. Morris Udall of Arizona, Sen. Henry Jackson of Washington and Pennsylvania Gov. Milton Shapp."