Gore Fans the Fire at Kentucky Cookout : Campaign: Candidate adds spice to annual picnic with tradition of political sparring. He sparks chanting duel between Bush, Clinton supporters.

Democratic vice presidential candidate Al Gore ventured into an old-style Kentucky cookout Saturday where more than 15,000 people gathered for an annual meal of barbecued pork and roasted politicians.

The custom at the 112th annual Fancy Farm Picnic, held at an old fairgrounds, is for Democrats and Republicans to take turns touting their own party and taunting the other at a flag-bedecked podium. So, with some crowd members waving signs for the Democratic presidential ticket headed by Bill Clinton and others hoisting placards for President Bush, Gore kicked off the event with a rousing call for change.

“The choice in this election is very simple and very clear,” said Gore, speaking in shirt sleeves from a makeshift wooden stage. “Do you want more of the same or do you want change?”

The audience, overflowing onto truck beds, is used to being a participant in Kentucky’s cookout politics, so the senator from next-door Tennessee touched off several chanting duels between the Democrat and Republican partisans.

The Democrats shouted, “Change, change.” The Republicans responded, “Four more years.”

Gore, appearing to enjoy himself, turned to the Republican contingent and asked, “Do you want four more years of this old stuff?”

At one point, Gore singled out some of the Bush backers who tried to heckle his speech and asked if they thought employers should be required to grant leaves for family emergencies.

When some shouted “No,” Gore raised both hands and said: “OK, that’s the basic choice, ladies and gentlemen. That’s why I’m asking you to vote for change in this country and elect Bill Clinton and Al Gore.”

And as has become his custom since he used the technique in his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention last month, Gore repeatedly asked his audience, “What time is it?” And the Democratic supporters yelled back, “It’s time for them to go.”

Gore also chided Bush for his recent angry retort to hecklers during an appearance last week before friends and relatives of American prisoners of war and those missing in action.

“President Bush doesn’t like to put up with this kind of rough and tumble,” Gore said. “You know what he says when he gets (heckling): Shut up and sit down. That’s what Bush and (Vice President Dan) Quayle have been telling the American people: Shut up and sit down.”

Kentuckians view the Fancy Farm Picnic as the kickoff of their campaign season. The event, sponsored by the local Catholic church in this farming town of about 600 people, was once recorded in the Guinness Book of World Records for being the largest one-day outdoor picnic in the world.

“It’s hot weather and hot politics,” said Don Mitchell, a carpenter who wore a “Clinton for President” cap.

The Fancy Farm visit continued an emphasis on stops in rural America by Gore since he and Clinton ended a six-day bus caravan across several states a week and a half ago.

After leaving Kentucky on Saturday on his way to California, Gore stopped in Oklahoma City, where a crowd of about 300 people greeted him on the airport Tarmac.

An Oklahoma Democratic leader who introduced Gore reminded the crowd that the candidate’s great uncle, Thomas Gore, was the state’s first elected U.S. senator in 1907. Gore is the son of a former U.S. senator from Tennessee.

In his brief comments, Gore continued his stinging attacks on the Republican ticket. He charged that Bush and Quayle spend part of their time “huddled in the White House, telling themselves who can we blame tomorrow. . . . They even blamed Ross Perot. They’re sweet-talking him now but . . . they were swinging mud at him just before” he announced last month that he would not launch an independent bid for the presidency.