Tsongas Calling for Truce Among Democratic Rivals : Politics: He urges party leaders to negotiate pact that will halt presidential candidates’ attacks on each other.

After a week of rapidly escalating hostilities between the Democratic presidential contenders, former Massachusetts Sen. Paul E. Tsongas on Friday urged party leaders to negotiate a formal truce.

But peace appeared the least likely prospect as the candidates fended off old charges and unveiled new ones just four days before the latest set of electoral showdowns next Tuesday in Maryland, Georgia, Colorado and four other states.

Appearing at a breakfast fund-raiser in Beverly Hills, Tsongas called on “the leadership of the Democratic Party” to negotiate a “pact” that would ban negative advertisements in the presidential race and restrain other attacks by the candidates.

“All we’re doing is playing into the hands of George Bush,” Tsongas told about 200 supporters who paid $250 a plate to hear him speak. “I would hope that the leadership . . . would call upon the candidates: No more attack ads, no more defining the other candidate, just be positive in what we do.”

Tsongas’ call for “a nonaggression pact” came after a week of intensifying acrimony among the Democratic contenders that included Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey’s assertion that controversies surrounding Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton’s personal life had left him unelectable as well as Clinton’s denunciation of Tsongas’ economic plan as “cold-blooded.”

That criticism from Clinton visibly irritated Tsongas, who shares with him a willingness to break free from many of the party’s traditional positions. “The fact is (that) during all of Bill Clinton’s troubles, I never said a word,” Tsongas said Friday. “It wasn’t until I went ahead of him in the polls that he began to attack. . . . This is a kind of kamikaze approach. He’s not doing as well as he expected; therefore, if he cannot get the nomination, he will try to take everyone else down with him.”

The sharpening words reflect the heightening stakes in the still largely undefined Democratic contest. Between now and Super Tuesday--March 10--the candidates must compete in 23 states that will elect almost 1,300 delegates. That is more than half the number needed to win the nomination.

Tsongas’ request for a break in hostilities received a warm response from Democratic National Committee Chairman Ronald H. Brown, but it was immediately dismissed by most of the other campaigns.

“This isn’t Dartmouth or some debating club,” Kerrey said as he campaigned in Minnesota. “It’s a rough-and-tumble debate.”

In characterizing Tsongas’ call for a truce as “ridiculous,” Kerrey added: “This is a debate where you ought to be able to bring your arguments and make them forcefully.”

An aide to Clinton made a similar point, saying that in a campaign, “you’ve have got to debate the issues, and you’ve got to say how you’re different.”

The aide, Clinton media adviser Frank Greer, also labeled the truce request “pure hypocrisy” because the Tsongas campaign was prepared to air a new TV ad that criticizes Clinton.

The ad was to begin appearing Friday in several areas of the country but was pulled during the day because of concerns about the accuracy of one the charges it contained, said Edward Jesser, a senior adviser to the Tsongas campaign.

The ad’s original version accused Clinton of criticizing Tsongas for proposing a gasoline tax increase even though he doubled such taxes in Arkansas; the revised version--which may not be used--will say only that Clinton “raised” the gasoline tax in Arkansas.

Jesser said that the ad may have run “on one of the soaps somewhere” before the stop order was delivered. He said the campaign did not plan to immediately resume airing the ad, but he added that could change if the other candidates continue to run their negative spots.

“We will run it if (Tsongas’ truce request) doesn’t have any effect,” he said.

In any case, Tsongas on Friday began airing another ad in which he accuses Clinton and Kerrey of slinging mud at him. And Kerrey aired a new ad in Colorado that lashes Clinton and Tsongas for their records on environmental issues.

Despite the intensifying ad wars, the candidates themselves largely

holstered their weapons Friday as they crisscrossed the West in search of votes and dollars. Campaigning in St. Paul, Minn., Kerrey turned his fire away from Clinton toward President Bush. Kerrey labeled Bush’s economic recovery program “economic smut.”

“It titillates the rich while it exploits the vulnerable,” Kerrey said.

Appearing in Seattle, Clinton defended himself from the charges leveled by Kerrey earlier in the week. “If the character test in this election is who can take a punch and keep on going, I pass,” Clinton told a rally. “If the character test is perfection, nobody passes--write somebody else in.”

Tsongas likewise defended himself against old charges at an afternoon appearance outside Los Angeles City Hall. Moments after calling on the candidates to aim their invective at Bush, he fired back at Clinton for calling his economic plan “cold-blooded.”

“My economics, which provides jobs as opposed to a middle-class tax cut, is not cold-hearted,” Tsongas told reporters. “The opposite is true. To take an economic position based on polling data that does nothing to create one job in this country, that’s cold-hearted.”

Tsongas was in Los Angeles trying to convert his new strength in the polls into cash. After failing to raise any significant money in Southern California during the first ten months of his presidential campaign, he was expected to leave the area with over $125,000 in receipts from three events hastily organized after his breakthrough win in the New Hampshire primary.

Tsongas still lags in the Southern California money hunt. Even as he was leaving, Clinton was arriving for another major cash transfusion. Local campaign officials said that Clinton’s Friday evening fund-raiser at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel was expected to raise about $400,000--that on top of another $75,000 collected earlier in the week at local events featuring his wife, Hillary.

Money was also on Kerrey’s mind Friday. Campaign officials said they had raised more than $400,000 this week--though much of that total represented pledges, not desperately needed cash. “I need money,” Kerrey acknowledged at a news conference Friday.

Among the remaining Democratic candidates, former California Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr. spent the day campaigning in Denver and Boulder, Colo.--the fourth day he has spent in the state this week. There were signs that his sustained attention was paying off: Local tracking polls showed him running a strong third to Tsongas and Clinton.

Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin spent the day in Washington state and Idaho--two of the states holding caucuses next Tuesday.

Times staff writers Robert W. Stewart, David Lauter and Dave Lesher contributed to this story.

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