Calling His Rival ‘Conservative,’ Bradley Sharpens Attack on Gore

Trying to seize the moment and turn it into momentum, Bill Bradley on Tuesday followed up his bruising assault on Al Gore in their debate in Harlem with a sharply focused attack portraying the vice president as a man running from his own conservative past.

This time, Bradley went to the suburbs, specifically Adelphi University on Long Island, to try to build on the new sense of excitement the campaign feels it ignited with the candidate’s brawling, elbows-and-knees confrontation with Gore at the Apollo Theater on Monday night.

To underscore the point that this is a new Bradley on the stump and not the policy wonk known for detail-laden speeches, Bradley unveiled a new slogan aimed at revealing the difference between the former senator from New Jersey and the vice president.

Whether the subject was health care, abortion rights, gun control, or race relations, Bradley said, he has stood firmly behind Democratic Party ideals. “That’s what I believe, it’s what I’ve always fought for and it’s what I will do as president,” he said, over and over.

As catch phrases go, it may not rank with remarks by Kennedy and King, but its purpose was to shift the emphasis of the contest to character and consistency as well as appeal to the core Democratic constituency that eluded Bradley in earlier primaries.

Bradley charged that while he has always supported key party values, Gore was drifting with the political winds.

“In Al’s case,” he said, “he was a conservative.”

Before becoming Bill Clinton’s “loyal No. 2,” Bradley said Gore was a “reliable vote” for the National Rifle Assn., a “dependable vote” for the tobacco corporations, and he voted five times to grant tax-exempt status to schools like Bob Jones University, “even though it discriminated against African Americans.”

Gore said in the debate that he does not support tax-exempt status for Bob Jones University, which does not allow interracial dating. A Gore spokesman said the congressional vote that Bradley cited was about the government’s process for determining tax-exempt status.

As he has before, Bradley also charged that Gore has not explained his role in the Democratic Party’s 1996 fund-raising scandals, even though he said the vice president claims to support campaign finance reform.

“The new Al Gore is a lot like the old Al Gore,” Bradley said. “But it’s all in keeping with the kind of politics he practices--the old politics, the politics of distortion and attack and polls and consultants.”

The Gore campaign wasted no time firing back.

“Bradley’s performance in the debate last night and speech today reeks of the politics of desperation,” Gore’s spokesman, Chris Lehane, said Tuesday. “He said he’d run a different kind of campaign. Apparently what he meant was he’d run in the Democratic Party and use recycled Republican Party attack lines.”

About 300 students and visitors packed the Ruth Harley University Center at Adelphi, a medium-sized liberal arts school that has become a hot political landing zone. First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton spoke here 10 days ago in her bid for the U.S. Senate.

While Bradley’s performance was much more low-key than it had been the day before, his words were just as barbed.

There was some concern whether Bradley’s no-holds-barred approach in the Harlem debate went too far and made him look nasty. Just as he did Tuesday, Gore used the term “desperate” to describe Bradley’s frontal assaults.

Some said they found the testiness distasteful, but a customer at Titan Foods in Queens, where Bradley stopped before making his appearance at Adelphi, made it clear he liked what he saw.

“You were great last night,” he called out as Bradley stopped in for some feta cheese and baklava. Bradley promised that if he becomes president, he would work to force the Turkish army off Cypress. Asked if he was Greek, he said, “I’m Greek in spirit.’

Then he did what was described by observers as a Zorba-type dance.

If he was feeling good, his campaign believes he has some reason. After weeks of failing to gain any traction against Gore, they said recent polls show Bradley closing the gap in New York.

They hope to make a good showing in the Washington state primary on Tuesday and build from there. The campaign is scheduled to leave today for the Northwest. A statement said Bradley expects to spend “nearly every moment leading up to the primary on Feb. 29 talking to Washington voters about his vision for America.”

Bradley, at least, has no doubts about the new direction of his campaign.

“I don’t think it was nasty,” he said of the tone of the remarks Monday night. “I think it was a fierce debate.”

As for the future, Bradley spokesman Eric Hauser said the candidate will not be backing off. He admitted the campaign is addressing the differences between the two men “more aggressively now,” but said simply: “We have conducted the campaign the way we want.”