Gore Appeals to Traditional Base

As he drives to shove Bill Bradley out of the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, Vice President Al Gore is reaching ever deeper into his party’s traditions, shunning for the moment the moderate center Bill Clinton mined so successfully.

For his part, Bradley on Friday capped off three days of questioning Gore’s liberal credentials on issues such as gun control and abortion and, in ways both subtle and overt, linked Gore to his boss at the White House.

Gore’s courting of traditional Democratic constituencies was evident at a Beverly Hills fund-raiser Thursday night, where he adamantly told a group of Democratic women that he supported abortion rights and that Bradley was trying to divide their party over the issue.

His remarks anticipated by 15 hours a speech by Bradley, who accused the vice president of dodging questions about his changed views on abortion, saying women deserve a candidate they can trust.

And on a daily basis, Gore is lining up party activists. In particular, he is singling out the support of such core Democratic allies as the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and the Service Employees International Union, two groups that turned out members for a speech he gave Thursday at County-USC Medical Center.

On Friday, before flying here from Los Angeles for the state Democratic convention, Gore accepted the endorsement of the nation’s largest gay and lesbian rights organization, the Human Rights Campaign.

At the same time, Bradley is driving him to outline specific policy positions, challenging, for instance, his loyalty to gun control by bringing up congressional votes and Gore statements from the 1980s opposing restrictions on weapons.

During a Seattle news conference with top Washington female supporters, Bradley once again raised the specter of Gore’s abortion views while he was in Congress. He said Gore opposed federal funding for abortions and quoted from a 1983 letter he wrote to a constituent saying abortion “is arguably the taking of a human life.”

“I think he shows a lack of respect for women by refraining to explain the evolution of his views,” Bradley said, speaking in a downtown hotel ballroom. “Over the last month, the vice president has tried to twist his record rather than explain his convictions. His record is clear; his reasoning and evolution are very muddy.”

Bradley even made a veiled allusion to President Clinton’s tendency to dissect language to his advantage, saying that Gore has contended that the word “arguably” could be interpreted many ways.

“It sounds familiar,” Bradley said. “The parsing of words is not what women need. I believe a candidate should respect women, who crave honesty from their leaders above all else.”

Gore acknowledged at the Beverly Hills fund-raiser--as he has only recently been willing to do as he came under increasing pressure--that earlier in his career (when he represented a more conservative constituency in Tennessee) he was not always so certain about the issue.

“I did wrestle with the question of Medicaid funding” for abortion, he said. “But since then, I have come to believe that because poor women deserve the same constitutional right to safe, legal abortions that more affluent women have, they need Medicaid funding so they can make that decision for themselves.”

As he debated whether government had a role in the matter at all, he said, “I was challenged by the stories told to me by women who described in great detail for me the circumstances which can occur and do occur” when women seek abortions.

These situations, Gore said, “are so varied and so numerous and so beyond the capacity of any government bureaucrat or elected official to describe in the language of a law or regulation that it is impossible for me to now imagine anyone making that choice except for the woman who is involved.”

Gore’s approach is in contrast to that followed eight years ago by Clinton, who went out of his way to present his centrist credentials by, among other things, picking a fight with the Rev. Jesse Jackson. Clinton’s purpose: to demonstrate his willingness to part company with traditionally liberal elements of the party.

Not so Al Gore. Listen to him as he rewarded several hundred people in a backyard tent overheated against the February chill Thursday night. They had contributed $200,000 to his campaign, and, in return, chewed on grilled veggies, bruschetta, and a mouthful of red-meat rhetoric from Gore as he assiduously distanced himself from Republicans and scored a preemptive strike against Bradley.

In perhaps his toughest statement yet on a subject, Gore accused Bradley, a former senator from New Jersey, of using the abortion issue divisively: “For far too long some politicians have been willing to play with the issue of choice for their own personal political ambition without putting the best interests of American women first. So I say to Sen. Bradley: Stop trying to divide us on the issue of choice.”

With dramatic anger in his voice--and a note card script at hand--Gore declared: “I do not need a lecture from Sen. Bradley about how to protect a woman’s right to choose.”

In effect, Gore is seeking to appeal to both the elites of the party--in Beverly Hills, for example at the home of developer Richard Zyman and his wife, Daphna--and the rank-and-file. Today, in San Jose, he is likely to deliver a traditional meat-and-potatoes Democratic stump speech at the party convention.

A good idea, said Gov. Gray Davis.

Historically, the governor said, the elites of the party flirt with a new face at the outset of primary campaigns--witness his own struggle at first against Al Checchi two years ago. But as election day approaches--the California primary is March 7--the rank and file opt for “the experienced, reliable” veterans, the governor said as he traveled aboard Air Force 2 with Gore.

Bradley’s supporters in Seattle, meanwhile, praised his integrity, saying many women feel betrayed by the current administration--and that Gore’s ties to it are a liability.

“It would be impossible not to associate Al Gore with Bill Clinton,” said Michelle Chang, a 27-year-old attorney. “In terms of my support for who the next president is going to be, it has a lot to do with the integrity of the person. It’s hard for me to believe that Al Gore isn’t somehow tainted.”