CLINTON, GORE EXPECTED TO VISIT CAPE

President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore will jump out of the campaign starting gate following next week's Democratic National Convention with a visit to Cape Girardeau.

An official with the Democratic presidential ticket's Missouri campaign office in St. Louis said Clinton and Gore are scheduled to visit Cape Girardeau Aug. 30.

"The president and vice president will start a bus tour immediately after the convention," said the official, Rachel Fayman, Missouri press secretary for Clinton-Gore '96. "The first stop at this point is supposed to be Cape Girardeau."

As of Wednesday night, plans had not been finalized concerning where Clinton and Gore will visit while in Southeast Missouri, presuming that their travel itinerary does not change.

Since many Missouri Democrats will leave this weekend for the party convention in Chicago, Fayman hopes to receive details of the visit from the national campaign within the next couple of days. The convention officially begins Monday and runs through Thursday in Chicago.

"I believe what will happen is that a planning team will be sent to Cape to find a site and work with local Democrats and authorities to set it up," Fayman said.

Fayman said the president, vice president and their entourage would likely fly from Chicago and begin the bus tour from Cape Girardeau.

"I think this is a pretty big plus for Missouri," Fayman said. "That this is the first stop shows that Missouri is a pretty important state."

Fayman said she is unsure where the tour will go after Cape Girardeau -- although Paducah, Ky., was mentioned.

Since the turn of the century, six men who were either president or would become president have visited Cape Girardeau.

William Howard Taft, a Republican, stopped in Cape Girardeau on Oct. 26, 1909, as he and his advisers were conducting a tour of the Mississippi River. He was the first president to visit the area.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt spoke at Courthouse Park on Oct. 1, 1920, in his unsuccessful vice presidential campaign as running mate for James M. Fox on the Democratic ticket. Roosevelt was elected president in 1932, and served until his death on April 12, 1945. His successor, Harry S. Truman, visited Cape Girardeau on many occasions as a U.S. senator from Missouri.

Richard Nixon stopped in Cape Girardeau on a whistle-stop campaign as the Republican vice presidential nominee on Oct. 21, 1952. He and Dwight D. Eisenhower were elected to office in November of that year. Nixon served as president from 1969-74.

Ronald Reagan was the last sitting president to visit Cape Girardeau. He appeared at the Show Me Center on Sept. 14, 1988, to deliver a campaign speech for then-Vice President George Bush. As vice president, Bush made his own visit to Cape Girardeau in 1984, on a campaign stop for his and Reagan's successful endeavor for a second term.

Clinton would be the third sitting -- and the first sitting Democratic -- president to visit Cape Girardeau.