October 28, 2002 11:52 AM ET

By Joanne Kenen

SMITHFIELD, N.C. (Reuters) - Poised and polished after decades in public life, Elizabeth Dole's favorite prop in her well-organized, smoothly running campaign for the Senate is a blank sheet of paper.

"I have a plan, the Dole plan," the Republican front-runner likes to say as she tours North Carolina by bus, bouncing from county courthouses to tobacco warehouses outlining her views on Social Security, tax cuts, the textile industry, tobacco and adding a line-item veto to the Constitution.

"Here is my opponent's plan," she cries, holding up the blank paper, eliciting a sure-fire laugh from friendly crowds.

Opinion polls show Dole, 66, a two-time Cabinet secretary, one-time Republican presidential contender, former head of the American Red Cross and wife of former Senate Republican Leader Bob Dole, is the favorite in the Nov. 5 election.

She hopes to succeed retiring Republican Sen. Jesse Helms, a conservative stalwart of the Senate for 30 years, and maintain Republican control of a seat her party must keep as it tries to win back control of the closely divided Senate, where Democrats now have a one-seat edge.

But Dole's Democratic opponent, Erskine Bowles, 57, a wealthy investment banker who as President Bill Clinton's chief of staff helped bring order to the White House chaos, sees the gap closing in a state that is accustomed to closely fought and often nasty Senate elections.

"The momentum's on our side, and the issues are on our side," Bowles told several hundred supporters recently at a ham and biscuits buffet in Wilson, one of the economically depressed, tobacco-dependent towns of eastern Carolina.

Knowing he needs to win over independent voters, Bowles has been trying to highlight Dole's conservatism and depict her as a Jesse Helms in pastels, without the racial baggage.

He has hit her hard on her support for private Social Security investment accounts, saying it will drain $1 trillion from the federal retiree program. He has critiqued her past opposition to legislation that lets people take "family leave" to take care of a baby or a sick relative.

In contrast, he depicts himself as the champion of ordinary people and ordinary families. Plans are a dime a dozen in Washington, he says, and what North Carolina needs is a proven conciliator, someone who can reach across party lines and cut deals the way he did when he helped the Democratic Clinton White House seal the historic 1997 balanced budget deal with the Republicans in Congress.

If elected, he pledges, "I'll work my heart out and I'll bring home the bacon."

This race is not as mean-spirited as some in North Carolina's not-so-distant past, and the racial issues are much more muted. Still, the two candidates have spent millions in a barrage of hard-hitting television ads.

After their second televised debate, a sharper-elbowed encounter than the first, some viewers said they came away with the impression these were two smart, competent, experienced people who don't seem to like each other very much.

CLOSER THAN POLLS SHOW

"I think it's closer than the polls show, because the polls don't pick up all the currents in this state," said Ferrel Guillory, head of the Southern Politics program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The state recently has voted Democratic for governor, Republican for president and split its votes in close Senate races.

Political analysts say victory will go to the candidate who consolidates their natural base and picks up enough of the roughly 13 percent of the independent vote.

Many work in service sector jobs in the Raleigh-Charlotte corridor and are concerned, as Guillory put it, with "good schools, good roads, good health care and good amenities of modern life." This bloc helped elect a North Carolina Democrat, John Edwards, to the Senate in 1998.

With his big glasses and bookish air, Bowles is less telegenic than Dole, who is still slim and stylish more than 40 years after she was chosen "May Queen" for the Duke campus. But if he does not have her star quality, or the ability to dominate a room, he has loosened up on the campaign trail. People who come out to see him are struck by his warmth.

"He's a real people person, I think he can do a lot of good for the people of North Carolina," said Timothy Heith, 30, a electric transformer maintenance man and independent voter who came to hear Bowles speak with his 5-year-old son, Wyatt.

Although Dole faltered in her brief bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 2000, she was seen as the instant favorite the minute she moved back to her childhood home and declared for the Senate.

But the Republicans were not taking victory for granted. They are bringing in all the big campaign guns -- including President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and of course her husband Bob, to keep the spotlight on what they see as a winning race.

Turning to survey a large crowd of some 2,000 people who came out to cheer Dole and salute the ailing and retiring Helms in Smithfield the other night, Oklahoma Republican Sen. Don Nickles was full of admiration.

"She's as good a candidate as I've seen anywhere and I've been to a lot of states," said Nickles, in town to campaign for Dole for the day. "She's as good as we've got."

-- Anonymous, October 28, 2002