Bradley, Gore Go to the Democratic Core to Seek Support

Fighting over the core voters of the Democratic Party, Al Gore outlined his health care plan to enthusiastic labor supporters here Monday, while Bill Bradley campaigned for minority support in Florida by emphasizing better race relations.

Gore also sharpened an ongoing attack against his rival, charging once again that Bradley was a disloyal Democrat for leaving the U.S. Senate after Republicans took control and for criticizing the achievements of the Clinton administration.

“Don’t think you can run for the nomination by running down the Democratic Party,” the vice president charged in a speech to about 1,000 union supporters.

After Republicans took control of Congress in 1994, “I thought it was time to stay and fight,” Gore said, reviving a signature line of his campaign. “To fight for working families, to fight for jobs, and then because we stood up to [former House Speaker Newt] Gingrich, we brought health care to more than half a million children in New York, and we hired thousands of new teachers.”

Bradley faced new polls on Monday that show a widening gap in his race against Gore for the Democratic presidential nomination. But unlike recent days, the former senator from New Jersey took a loftier tone and avoided direct criticism of the vice president.

Bradley’s aides, however, responded to Gore’s comments by saying, “The vice president so long ago lost any vestige of credibility that it’s virtually impossible to take his analysis with any weight. It’s the same old distortions,” said spokesman Eric Hauser.

Bradley focused his attention on affirmative action and traveled to Florida, where the issue has been a topic of public debate since Gov. Jeb Bush’s moved to rescind racial preference laws.

“I strongly oppose the actions of [Florida] Gov. Bush,” Bradley said in Tampa. “Giving people an opportunity, investing them with responsibility, holding them accountable, is not a preference or a quota, it is the standard by which the march of progress is made in this country.”

While he was warmly received by the crowd of about 250 at the historic Italian Club in an area with a long history of Cubans, African Americans and others working side by side, political analysts questioned why Bradley was in Florida since it is not among the states that will vote on March 7, the next crucial day for Democratic candidates.

Bradley has said he must do well in several states that day, particularly California and New York. But Hauser said the visit to emphasize race relations in Florida, which holds its primary March 14, was both morally right and a chance for African Americans and others in Southern states to get to know Bradley better through “topical” issues.

Bradley planned a similar topical visit today in South Carolina, where Republicans, but not Democrats, have a key primary next week. The South Carolina visit was also aimed at highlighting race relations, which would give Bradley an opportunity to condemn the state’s flying of a Confederate flag over its capitol, an issue that some Republican candidates have called a local matter.

Bradley, who lost the two initial contests in Iowa and New Hampshire, plans to be in Southern California by week’s end. “I have to win California,” he said in a television appearance Sunday. “I know I have some ground to make up. . . . I have to take off on March 7.”

In New York, Gore appealed to a crowd of labor supporters to help his campaign in the March 7 primary. He promised to lead the nation to “universal health care, step by step, starting with every child.”

The vice president highlighted his plans to defend Social Security and Medicare, civil rights and women’s rights, and to seek government-financed preschool for all children.

Audience members, many of them wearing green union T-shirts, belonged to one of New York’s most politically powerful local unions, District 37 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. District 37, which endorsed Gore last April, wields political influence far beyond its 125,000 members by operating a sophisticated system of phone banks and political operatives.

Gore also repeated his criticism of Bradley’s health care plan, charging that it would eliminate Medicaid “for more than 3 million New Yorkers who depend on it.”

And he chastised Bradley for failing to agree with the Clinton administration’s plan to use a large portion of future budget surpluses to help the financial solvency of Medicare, which provides health coverage for people over 65 and the disabled.

Gore met with state and local union leaders early in the day and then visited a muddy site where a 41-story condominium building is under construction. He donned a green hard hat from Local 608 of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America and chatted with workers.