N.C.'s Bowles works to overcome country-club image

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. -- His political consultants said he should have hidden his bald spot in a commercial with a little spray. How about a downgrade for those thick, big-framed glasses?

Erskine Bowles said no thanks to both.

"They said I look like Harry Potter," he said to howls at a recent Young Democrats meeting at the University of North Carolina. "I told them I'm not changing my glasses, and I'm not changing my principles."

While Bowles has focused his U.S. Senate campaign on his work at the White House and in North Carolina, he's also been working to add a bit of self-mocking levity in speeches and TV ads to help him shed a country club image.

One ad shows the candidate at a bowling alley ("Erskine bowls?" it asks), while a quizzical schoolgirl is amused by his trademark glasses in another.

A large lead in fund-raising over the eight other Democratic candidates and support from party heavyweights has given Bowles the luxury of honing his image for what could be an epic battle with likely GOP nominee Elizabeth Dole.

Quiet on Clinton

Bowles was criticized early in the race for his silence on his association with President Clinton, but the former White House chief of staff says now he won't run away from that past.

"I remember his name," Bowles said sternly when asked about his former boss. "His name is Bill Clinton."

In his first run for political office, the 57-year-old investment banker and former White House chief of staff says he's got both business and government experience to move the levers in Washington and work with Republicans to do it.

"I think the difference is who has the ability to go to Washington to get something done," Bowles said in an interview this week.

"People just don't give you their respect up there," he said. "You have to earn it over a period of time. I had five years to earn it."

Some Democrats at the college meeting believed Bowles' qualifications and deep pockets make him the party's best bet to win the general election -- not just the Sept. 10 primary.

"Most people are leaning toward Erskine simply because they feel he's most equipped to compete with Liddy Dole," said Young Democrats co-president Scott Jones.

On the campaign trail, he talks about issues such as health care and the economy through the lenses of someone who has dealt with them on the federal level.

Taking credit

Bowles says the balanced budget he helped shepherd through the Republican-led Congress in 1997, as Clinton's chief of staff, expanded child health insurance programs. But he also mentions his work with the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation after his son was diagnosed with the illness.

While his tenure on the board of pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co. has been criticized by fellow candidates, Bowles chides Dole for her large donations from the drug industry executives. He said his proposed reforms to lower drug costs for seniors are more comprehensive than any candidate's.

On business issues, he recalls his work heading the Small Business Administration. In international affairs, he served on the National Security Council and was involved with peace efforts in Northern Ireland and the Middle East.

After leaving the Clinton administration in 1998, Bowles went back to his Charlotte investment firm and became a partner in the New York equity firm Forstmann Little.

Because of his background as a multimillionaire businessman and Washington insider, some of Bowles Democratic opponents have accused him of being out of touch with the state's working people.

In his continuing mission to portray himself as an easygoing everyman, Bowles recently shed his tie for a knit shirt and slacks to coach against retired UNC basketball coach Dean Smith in a pickup game featuring middle-school children. Bowles -- a Tar Heel alum -- said it was a thrill.