Clinton and Tsongas End the Round on a Sour Note : Democrats: Each assails negative tactics on eve of key balloting. Broadcast spots draw bitter complaints.

The campaigning for today’s critical round of Democratic presidential balloting in seven states ended on a sour note Monday, with the two principal contenders, Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton and former Massachusetts Sen. Paul E. Tsongas complaining bitterly about each other’s negative tactics.

During a conversation with reporters, Clinton depicted Tsongas as a hypocrite whose actions belied his claims of candor and honesty. “It’s a hazardous thing to be out there saying you ought to be elected President because you’re a truth teller and the first thing you do is run the first negative ad of the campaign that’s blatantly false and you won’t admit it,” Clinton said aboard his campaign plane in Macon, Ga.

“He’s portrayed himself as a non-politician and everyone’s accommodated him,” Clinton said. “If I had run an ad about him that deliberately misrepresented his position, I think it would have been a headline story every place in this country.”

Using strongly personal tones, Clinton said, “I believe that he (Tsongas) has done a better job than anybody else in this race of being cleverly negative about his opponents, positioning them, modulating his positions where it suits his purposes . . . and still coming out of it totally unscathed.”

For his part, Tsongas put most of the blame for the campaign’s negative tone in recent days on a Clinton aide, political consultant James Carville, known for his aggressive approach to campaigning. Tsongas labeled Carville an “attack dog” who needed to be shown that Tsongas would fight back when criticized.

Tsongas predicted the personal attacks traded by the candidates in recent days would now subside, because “I think we demonstrated to Jim Carville that we can hurt them like they hurt us.”

“I think we’ve raised the stakes of negative campaigning. . . . If they’re going to be nasty, we’re going to be nasty in return,” said Tsongas. “Jim Carville’s running their campaign, and you have to think the way he does. And we have our attack dogs, too.”

Clinton’s chief grievance against Tsongas is a commercial running in Georgia that accuses Clinton and Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey of supporting a middle-class tax cut that would boost the federal deficit. Clinton contends that the middle-class tax cut would be paid for by raising taxes on the wealthy and would not affect the deficit.

Another sore point with Clinton is a Tsongas radio ad which sought to exploit Clinton’s denunciation of Jesse Jackson for “back stabbing” after Clinton misunderstood a reporter’s question and concluded that Jackson had endorsed Clinton rival Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa.

“Clinton, before he got all the facts, accused Rev. Jackson of ‘back stabbing, dirty double-crossing,’ all because Bill Clinton heard a rumor that Jesse Jackson might have endorsed someone else for President . . . “ says the ad, broadcast on Atlanta’s largest radio station, which caters to blacks and has an audience of nearly half a million.

“Paul Tsongas doesn’t go around attacking respected national leaders like Jesse Jackson. . . . Help elect a President who respects our community, who knows that dignity matters.”

Some analysts said the Jackson incident could depress black turnout, which would hurt Clinton most as polls show him with a 4-1 lead among black voters.

Clinton called the Tsongas ad “a low-class thing to do” and sought to dismiss the Jackson dust-up as inconsequential. “If anything, that remark showed how much I care about maintaining a relationship and trust in him (Jackson),” Clinton said.

Even as Clinton and Tsongas made their final pre-primary remarks, their campaigns were gearing up for another significant contest--to shape the public’s judgment over who really wins and loses and thus who gets the momentum for the battles ahead.

Braced against the possibility that their candidate might win only one major contest--in Georgia with 76 delegates--aides to Clinton prepared to argue that it is the number of delegates won that counts the most. “Delegates are what it’s all about,” Stephen Silverman, the campaign’s deputy national political director said Monday. “For us, winning any place isn’t necessary as long as we continue to win delegates everywhere.”

But aides said Tsongas will make just the opposite case if today’s results bear out current polls showing him ahead of the field in the day’s other big primaries--Maryland, with 67 delegates; Colorado, with 47, and Utah with 23 delegates.

Three other states will hold caucuses: Washington, with 71 delegates, where Clinton and Tsongas are believed locked in a close struggle; Minnesota, with 78 delegates, where Harkin appears to have the edge, and Idaho, with 18 delegates, where no trend is apparent.

“If we win more state contests than he does, it shows Clinton is a regional candidate at best,” said Dennis Kanin, Tsongas’ campaign manager. “And it will also show that Tsongas is clearly a national candidate and that the movement is in our direction.”

Tsongas got a boost in Georgia Monday when he was endorsed by the state’s leading newspaper, the Atlanta Constitution, which praised him for combining “a strong pro-growth policy with a progressive social agenda.”

As for Kerrey, he spent the day trying to take advantage of his regional appeal by campaigning in Washington, Idaho and Colorado. At one point he poked fun at Tsongas’ repeated urging that the Democratic candidates refrain from negative campaign advertising. “If you can’t take a few bumps in a campaign, I’m not sure you can be commander-in-chief of U.S armed forces,” Kerrey told reporters.

Strolling the Pike Place Market in Seattle, he playfully tossed a salmon over the counter to a worker. “I recognize that I am not the front-runner in the state of Washington,” he told a crowd of several hundred supporters and passersby. “It occurs to me that I have a major fight on my hands.”

Times staff writers Cathleen Decker, Paul Richter, Jonathan Peterson and Sonni Efron contributed to this story.

* THE TIMES POLL: Survey finds most party chairmen pick Bill Clinton but fear his liabilities. A12