Early Edition

Election 2000: McCain Calls for End of Negative TV Ads as Fight for Nomination Continues in South Carolina

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LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: The two major survivors in the fight for the Republican nomination are slugging it out this morning in South Carolina. John McCain has a town hall meeting set for this hour, and George W. Bush hosts a political forum one hour from now.

We get the latest from CNN's John King. He is in Spartanburg, South Carolina, this morning.

Hi, John.

JOHN KING, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Leon.

These town halls pretty gentle affairs, generally; policy questions tend to dominate. But turn on the TV here in South Carolina, you see a very different Republican campaign than we saw in New Hampshire. John McCain has an ad on saying that Governor Bush has trouble telling the truth. Governor Bush has an ad on that essentially calls Senator McCain a hypocrite on the issue of campaign financing. In the McCain camp, they desperately want to follow up the New Hampshire victory with another upset here in South Carolina. There's a growing concern that the focus in the McCain camp view should be on the candidate, not on TV ads and tactics, so last night on CNN's "Larry King Live" Senator McCain said he would pull his negative advertising if governor Bush would do the same.

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SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R-AZ), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: What I'd really like to do is stop all this back-biting and fighting, and say, George, come on, let's quit, both of us, let's quit. If I'm guilty of saying unkind things and running a bad ad, I'll drag mine down, we'll get back on the plane that we were on in the state of New Hampshire where people applauded the way we conducted that campaign. So George, come on let's stop this, let's stop our surrogates from attacking and impugning each other, let's get back to a campaign that the American people can, frankly, we can be proud of. And I'm not too proud of the way it's going right now.

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KING: But governor Bush says he's just setting the record straight. The Bush camp says Senator McCain is distorting the governor's position on shoring up the Social Security system, and Governor Bush says it's fair to point out that while Senator McCain criticizes the influence of lobbyists in Washington, the McCain campaign is actively raising money from lobbyists and has lobbyists among its top advisers.

So, a very bruising campaign here in South Carolina. Eight days left to campaign. Governor Bush wants a victory to reestablish himself as the clear Republican frontrunner. Senator McCain looking to prove his New Hampshire victory was no fluke and that he can go on to win the Republican nomination.

John King, CNN, reporting live from Spartanburg, South Carolina.

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