Gore Switches Strategies in Tightening Democratic Race

WASHINGTON — Vice President Al Gore abruptly responded Wednesday to the growing support for Bill Bradley by challenging his rival to a series of debates and announcing he will move his campaign headquarters to Nashville.

Gore unveiled the twin measures as central to “a completely new campaign” in his quest for the Democratic presidential nomination. His bid for the White House, he said, now would be “closer to the grass-roots” and “out of the Beltway and into the heartland.”

Wednesday night, Gore also sought to recalibrate the expectations that have surrounded his candidacy. During an appearance on CNN’s “Larry King Live,” he said, “In many ways I think you ought to count me as the underdog in this race now. . . . I feel like the underdog. I’m going to campaign like the underdog, and I think that’s the way to get elected.”

Earlier Wednesday, speaking at a hastily organized news conference at his soon-to-be-vacant political headquarters here, Gore for the first time mentioned Bradley by name in a campaign setting, a tacit acknowledgment that the Democratic contest is tightening.

When Bradley emerged as Gore’s only competition in the race, the vice president’s plan was to ignore the former New Jersey senator and present his own nomination as inevitable. But Bradley enjoyed surprisingly strong fund-raising success and steadily gained momentum, culminating in a poll last week showing him narrowly ahead in the early primary state of New Hampshire. These developments forced Gore’s switch in strategy.

Conceding that the campaign underestimated Bradley, one Gore advisor said Wednesday the vice president now “knows things are not going well.”

Gore put a more positive face on his announcement: “This is a hard, tough fight. And I’m going to fight my heart out for every single vote.”

The call for debates was a significant concession on Gore’s part. Typically, a front-runner is loath to share a stage with a challenger because the equal footing confers equal status.

Meanwhile, Gore’s campaign said it would report today that it has raised $6.5 million over the last three months, bringing its 1999 total to $24 million. It is a sizable sum, but still less than half the $52 million or more that Texas Gov. George W. Bush, the GOP front-runner, is believed to have amassed.

Bradley’s campaign declined to release figures in advance of today’s deadline, but his receipts during the last three months are expected to be competitive with Gore’s. As of the last report on June 30, Gore had raised $17.5 million to Bradley’s $11.7 million.

Significantly, Bradley’s report may show his leaner campaign has more cash on hand than Gore’s. The vice president’s campaign is believed to have $9.5 million to $10 million available.

Bradley, taking part in a health care discussion at the St. John’s Well Child Center in Los Angeles, offered only a brief response to Gore’s debate challenge.

“For the last 10 months, the vice president and his campaign have been ignoring me. I think it shows we’re making some progress,” he said.

His spokesman, Eric Hauser, added: “Our strategy has never been dictated by anybody else’s shifting tactics. We’ll do what we want to do.”

Bradley has already agreed to appear at a town meeting with Gore in Hanover, N.H., on Oct. 27.

In abandoning his spacious headquarters on Washington’s K Street, a concrete canyon of lobbyists’ offices, Gore is heeding the advice of President Clinton and others that his struggling campaign needs to signal that it is in touch with the nation’s voters.

Gore, on “Larry King Live,” called shifting his headquarters from Washington to Nashville a “move from K Street to the aisles of K mart.”

“I’m taking this campaign to my roots,” he said earlier Wednesday.

That may be a difficult message to sell. Although his family owned a farm in Carthage, Tenn., where he passed his summers during childhood, Gore spent most of his schoolboy years in a Washington hotel while his father served in the Senate. He lived in Washington for 16 more years while representing Tennessee in the House and Senate, and moved into the vice president’s mansion nearly seven years ago.

Still, the campaign’s move to downtown Nashville provides an opportunity for Gore to shake up and winnow his staff, which has been criticized as top-heavy with expensive consultants. It could also save rent.

Office space in Nashville costs about one-third that in downtown Washington, where the Gore operation is paying $59,000 a month in rent. But it is uncertain whether the lease here can be broken.

Campaign Chairman Tony Coelho, a former House member from Northern California who has become an entrenched member of the Washington establishment, said he is ready to move to Tennessee. Before he heads to Nashville, however, he is expected to pare down the staff.

Nineteen Gore staff members are being paid more than $50,000 a year, compared with seven on Bradley’s staff. In a report made public in July, Gore employed 113 people--many of them fund-raisers whose work will end around Thanksgiving, shortly before federal campaign funds become available. Bush reported 95 paid staff members; Bradley had 79.

The location of campaign headquarters can be symbolic. Candidates often set up their headquarters outside the nation’s capital partly to show they are free of a Washington mind-set.

Bush’s operation is based in Austin, the capital of Texas. Bradley’s is in West Orange, N.J., near his home. Clinton’s was based in Little Rock, Ark. But in 1988, Bush the elder, seeking the presidency when he, like Gore, lived in the vice president’s mansion, ran his operation from an office building a few blocks from the White House.

The question facing Gore is what impact the strategy changes will have.

“The move to Tennessee is bizarre,” said one Democratic strategist who is neutral in the primary contest. “It points up the central problem in this guy’s effort and that’s failing to . . . figure out what he’s all about, what he wants to say to the American people and what his rationale for running is.”

But the significance of the debate challenge is clear, the strategist went on. “This is an enormous shift. Usually when a campaign is begging for debates, it’s a sign of trouble. He’s acknowledging for the first time publicly that Bradley poses a real threat.”

Gore did not specify how many debates he wants, other than to say “a bunch.” Potential topics, he said, include education, health care, the environment, national defense, reshaping democracy, crime control and disabilities.

The vice president said the move should be judged by its results. “It’s not a gimmick,” he said.

“Gandhi once said you must become the change you wish to see in the world,” Gore said, speaking without notes. “I want this campaign to become the change that we’re fighting for in the country. I want change that works for working families, and I want the campaign to be at the grass-roots and not [inside] the Beltway.”

Pressed to explain why he was finally acknowledging Bradley’s presence in the race, Gore offered this marketplace analogy: “There are only two candidates. You’ve got Pepsi and Coke.”

Times staff writers Maria L. La Ganga in Los Angeles and Faye Fiore and Lisa Getter contributed to this story.