Clinton Steps Up Pace in N.H. Primary Contest : Democrats: Poll leader Tsongas keeps low profile in final weekend of campaigning before nation’s first ballot.

The campaign for the first victory in the Democratic presidential race moved into its final weekend Friday with Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton battling to gain ground while former Sen. Paul E. Tsongas continued to stay mostly out of public sight.

Despite polls indicating Clinton has ended his weeklong slide and may be narrowing the gap with Tsongas, aides to the former Massachusetts senator denied he was trying to “coast” to a victory here.

“You can try to create that perception,” said Tsongas press secretary Peggy Connolly. But, she added, “Mr. Tsongas is the last person who can be accused of coasting. He started in March, and in terms of cumulative hours, he’s way ahead.”

Nonetheless, in these last crucial days before Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary, Tsongas--who waged a successful battle against cancer five years ago--has limited his public appearances to an unusual degree for a candidate this close to a key election.

Tsongas scheduled no public events last Wednesday, one on Thursday and one on Friday, plus a party for his 51st birthday Friday night. Earlier in the evening, Tsongas even turned down an offer for a live interview on WMUR’s 6 p.m. newscast, the most watched news program in the state and a coveted slot for aspiring candidates. And this weekend, Connolly said, Tsongas plans to spend most of his time in private as well, preparing for Sunday’s nationally televised candidates’ debate.

For Clinton, meanwhile, a scheduled routine drop-by at a senior citizens’ center in Nashua came suddenly to life Friday as Mary Annie Davis, a 70-year-old partially disabled woman, burst into tears while describing to him the difficulty of surviving on $800 a month with $200 a month in medical bills.

As Davis began to weep, Clinton knelt in front of her to hear her tale, consoling the elderly woman and promising to find a way to ease her plight. “We simply have to do a better job” in controlling the costs of health care for the elderly, Clinton said.

As Clinton got back up and began shaking hands with others in the crowd, 73-year-old Yvonne Parker pulled from her pocketbook a photograph she took in 1960 of John F. Kennedy, telling Clinton he reminded her of the late President.

“I wish you lots of luck,” she told him. “Go ahead in the right fight.”

And fight Clinton has. The candidate who spent much of January with a large lead in the polls and a cautious, front-runner’s strategy has sharpened his rhetoric and pumped passion into his speeches in the last week as he has struggled to overcome controversy over his Vietnam-era draft record.

On a half-hour televised call-in program paid for by the Clinton campaign Friday night, he fielded 13 questions on issues ranging from AIDS to Social Security. Only one question raised the draft issue. The caller, Kevin Lundgren, asked Clinton whether he would have been better off politically if he had “told the truth” about not wanting to go to Vietnam.

“First of all, I didn’t lie,” Clinton said, repeating his assertion that he had voluntarily agreed to give up an ROTC deferment and re-enter the draft.

During the broadcast, Clinton also referred to his encounter with Mrs. Davis. “It was a devastating thing,” to hear Mrs. Davis and her husband talk about not being able to have “food in their refrigerator,” Clinton said.

Earlier in the day, Clinton moved back onto the offensive, ignoring his Democratic opponents and firing at President Bush. At several appearances, he denounced the President for delaying middle-class tax cut proposals that Bush laid out in his State of the Union speech but then left out of the budget the White House sent to Capitol Hill.

Borrowing a line from a 1960s country-music hit, Clinton said the result of Bush’s program has been that “his rich friends get the gold mine and New Hampshire got the shaft.”

“It’s wrong and it’s going to ruin the country,” he said.

Tsongas, too, concentrated on Bush during his single campaign event Friday, avoiding attacks on Clinton. “The chemistry is good” between him and Clinton, Tsongas said as he toured the factory of Logicraft, a southern New Hampshire computer maker. “I happen to value that.”

“Any Democrat would be better than George Bush,” Tsongas added later. But, he said, he was less “comfortable” with some of the Democratic candidates than with others.

As for Bush, Tsongas noted that Bush had promised four years ago to be the environmental President but “never mentioned” the environment during the State of the Union speech. “How can you be an environmental President and never mention the word in your most important speech,” he asked.

With Tsongas continuing to lead the race in daily tracking polls, Tsongas received the ultimate political compliment--questions about whom he might choose as a running mate. “I have in my head probably about 10 names,” Tsongas said, “In my quiet moments I think about it.”

Asked about Democratic party insiders who have been prompting senior members of Congress to get into the race because of fears that neither Tsongas nor Clinton could beat Bush, Tsongas displayed the wit that has helped boost him in the affections of New Hampshire voters.

“My understanding was that it is the people who determine who the President is,” Tsongas said. If others are thinking of getting into the race, he said “fine, send in the clowns.”

While the two leaders in the field attacked Bush, those further down in the standings attacked their rivals in the Democratic field.

At a press conference on the edge of a toxic waste Superfund cleanup site, Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin attacked both Clinton and Tsongas for their environmental records, saying that neither man had paid enough attention to environmental questions. For the second day in a row, he attacked Tsongas for supporting nuclear power.

But when asked how many nuclear power stations operate in his home state of Iowa, Harkin responded, “Darned if I know.” Asked if he had accepted contributions from political action committees sponsored by corporations that are major polluters, Harkin offered the same answer: “Darned if I know.”

Sen. Bob Kerrey of Nebraska attacked both Harkin and Tsongas.

Referring to his background as a businessman, Kerrey said “unlike Paul Tsongas, I created jobs. I don’t talk about job creation in the abstract and the theory.”

Of Harkin, Kerrey said “I just don’t believe Tom’s old style liberalism--though it brings an audience to its feet--is going to defeat George Bush.”

Former California Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr. said none of the other candidates could beat Bush. The influence of special-interest money on the political system has created a form of “political apartheid,” Brown said in a speech. “The only way to really offer a challenge to President Bush is to offer something entirely different.”