Tsongas Seems Headed for Victory; Clinton 2nd : Democrats: Voters gave the ex-Massachusetts senator high marks on standing up for his convictions, ethics.

Former Massachusetts Sen. Paul E. Tsongas, who made up in dogged determination whatever he lacked in charisma, appeared headed for victory in the New Hampshire Democratic presidential primary Tuesday night, based on network projections and exit poll results.

Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, the early front-runner in the polls, was second. Clinton’s candidacy was badly damaged by unsubstantiated allegations that he had been unfaithful to his wife and by a controversy over his Vietnam-era draft status. Though Clinton denied the charges, the controversies seemed to distract from his message promising national economic revival.

Well behind the leaders were Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey, Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin and former California Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr.

With 21%, or 64 of 298 precincts reporting, the returns were: Tsongas, 10,992 votes, or 34%; Clinton, 9,448 votes, or 29%; Kerrey, 4,140 votes, or 13%; Harkin, 3,743 votes, or 12%; Brown, 2,500 votes, or 8%.

The write-in campaign for New York Gov. Mario M. Cuomo drew a negligible response. With 21% of the precincts reporting, he had 223 votes, or 1%.

Tsongas, whose bid for the presidency came after an eight-year battle against cancer, scored well with voters for standing up for his convictions and ethics, according to a Times exit poll of more than 1,500 voters who participated in the Democratic primary. Tsongas backers also said they felt they could trust him more than the other candidates.

By contrast, Clinton voters cited his experience, his leadership qualities and his electability, and said he cared about people like them.

Roughly three of every four voters named jobs and the economy as the issues most important to them--not surprising in this recession-ravaged state. More of these voters backed Tsongas than Clinton.

Brown’s backers singled out “new ideas” as their biggest reason for backing him. His position on environmental issues also helped his candidacy.

Tuesday’s balloting marked the end to a relatively brief, often spasmodic campaign that was intensely contested by the five major candidates. But for all their striving on the stump, the course of the campaign was shaped by forces and events outside their control.

These included the Persian Gulf crisis, which abridged the campaign and limited the Democratic field; the prolonged economic recession, which brightened Democratic prospects of regaining the White House, and questions about Clinton’s personal life, which transformed him from a front-runner in the polls into a runner-up.

The impact of the nation’s preoccupation with the Gulf War was felt not just in New Hampshire, but in the entire Democratic campaign beginning last winter. The war blotted out the partisan debate normal for the onset of a presidential election year. Instead of challenging President Bush, once the fighting in the desert began, Democrats were compelled to rally behind him.

The triumphant outcome of Operation Desert Storm left the Democrats in disarray and on the defensive because most of their leaders initially had opposed the use of force against Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and his invasion force in Kuwait. As Bush’s poll ratings soared, the idea of challenging him seemed foolhardy.

Tsongas announced his candidacy in April, proclaiming himself an “economic Paul Revere, committed to making his own party more sympathetic to business and to re-establishing the United States as “the world’s preeminent economic power.”

But as a politician who had been out of office for more than seven years he was not taken seriously. Meanwhile, two of the party’s best-known prospects--House Majority Leader Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri and Tennessee Sen. Albert Gore Jr.--decided not to run. Gephardt said that his first duty was to Congress, Gore that he had obligations to his family.

Others put off a decision. Not until early fall did Harkin, Clinton, Kerrey and Brown plunge into the race.

But the lateness of their entry hindered their efforts to establish their organizations and define their appeals to voters. To give them more time to prepare, the New Hampshire state party postponed its convention--designed to be the first multi-candidate “cattle show”--for a month, until early November.

By the time of the convention, the leaves had turned and so had the political climate. The economic recovery that had been predicted for spring and summer was turning into a recession relapse, encouraging Democrats to train their big guns not on each other but on Bush and his economic policies.

Harkin labeled the President “the Herbert Hoover of the ‘90s.” Tsongas vowed to lead the recovery from “the worst hurricane to hit America in 50 years--it’s called Hurricane George.” Kerrey pointed out that “for the first time in two generations, in 1990, the net worth of Americans declined--by $184 billion.”

More significant than the rhetoric was the growing realization among the candidates and their supporters that their party’s nomination, which only a few months before had seemed virtually worthless, could turn out to be a ticket to the White House.

This possibility was underlined in New Hampshire, whose residents complained that the damage done to their economy by the economic downturn was unsurpassed anywhere in the nation.

The irony that such desperate economic conditions should prevail in the very state whose Republican voters had rescued Bush’s candidacy in 1988 was not lost on the Democratic contenders to replace him. Bush had lost in Iowa, then staged a comeback in New Hampshire.

“George Bush took New Hampshire’s votes and then forgot New Hampshire,” Clinton declared. Tsongas challenged Bush “to come back to New Hampshire and look the people in the eye and tell them what you’ve done.”

But if opportunity at last beckoned the Democrats, it was still unclear which of them could answer the call. Each of the candidates was hampered by his own obscurity and the need for time to gain support for his proposals.

Harkin, who called himself “the only real Democrat in the race,” cited his “new growth agenda” based on investing in infrastructure improvements, reforming the country’s educational and health care systems and toughening trade policies.

Clinton proposed setting up a national fund to help finance college educations, along with a national service corps that would give young people the opportunity to repay college loans from the fund.

Kerrey stressed his proposal for health care reform, along with a plan for restructuring the federal government by eliminating half-a-dozen Cabinet departments.

And Brown concentrated his fire on the links between politicians and the sources of their campaign contributions, which he charged had corrupted the entire political process and governing structure. He vowed to accept no contribution greater than $100.

Still, none of them seemed to be getting through to the voters. Early polls showed the front-runner to be Cuomo, a non-candidate whose national renown gave him a big advantage over the candidates in the race.

Finally in December Cuomo declared that his state’s budget problems would not permit him to run. Now the road to the top in New Hampshire was clear for the other candidates. And with Bush’s poll ratings still on a steady decline and Democratic chances for winning the presidency rapidly improving, a new watchword was heard among party activists as the key criteria for backing a candidate: electability.

By mid-January Clinton seemed to have emerged as the man who best met that standard. Party leaders found him to be the most persuasive speaker of the lot and voters were impressed by his 15-page “Plan for America’s Future,” outlining his schemes to “fight for the forgotten middle class, radically change government” and “reclaim the future for our children.”

Tsongas’ boosters contend that their man moved into the leadership slot vacated by Clinton primarily because of his “Call to Economic Arms,” an 86-page manifesto for reshaping his party and reviving the national economy. The treatise, they said, proved Tsongas’ readiness to get the country back on the road to prosperity.

But independent analysts also attribute Tsongas’ surge to the facts that he was from a neighboring state, he had campaigned in the state longer than his rivals and he generates a down-to-earth, sincere impression with by his sober style and his “eat-your-spinach” approach to economic policy.