Powerful Forces Coalescing Around Gore Now Seek to Push Bradley Out

When Al Gore passed through this small town north of New York City for a campaign rally late last week, the view was breathtaking. And the politics weren’t too shabby either.

With the Hudson River looming majestically behind him and a sparkling haze shimmering over the water, Gore picked up the endorsement of the New York League of Conservation Voters, a prominent local environmental group. Nearly a dozen television cameras and a small troupe of local reporters and photographers provided the megaphone for Paul J. Elston, the chairman of the group’s board, as he declared: “No other candidate in this race can hold a candle to Al Gore on the environmental issue.”

After Elston finished, two other leading local environmentalists rose to praise Gore, who sat beaming in the bright winter sunshine. And then, for good measure, the Gore campaign announced that the group’s single most famous member--environmental attorney Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the son of the former New York senator--had cut a television ad vouching for Gore’s green credentials.

None of this by itself may move vast numbers of voters. But it reflects the institutional weight now bearing down on Bill Bradley as the Democratic presidential race nears what appears to be its inevitable conclusion on March 7.

The first two rounds of the Gore-Bradley contest were fought in small states (Iowa and New Hampshire) where it was possible to court voters one by one. But now the contest is moving onto larger stages, such as New York, Ohio and California, where institutional strength counts. And the institutions of the Democratic Party--from organized labor to the leading minority elected officials--are now rolling into action behind Gore in the hope of forcing Bradley from the field no later than March 8.

“It is now tougher for him,” said one senior Gore advisor. “He is now going into states with a large core Democratic vote. And we are very, very strong there.”

That picture is perhaps clearest here in New York--a state where Bradley starred as a New York Knick and led in the polls for much of last fall. At one point, Gore’s forces were prepared to virtually write off New York and concentrate on California. Now Gore is comfortably ahead in all surveys here, and the great grinding gears of the New York Democratic machinery are tirelessly turning to ensure he stays there.

Gore’s state campaign staff, led by his able young New York director, Eric Eve, has missed few opportunities to cut off Bradley. Bradley has emphasized gay rights; Gore won the endorsement of the state’s most influential gay rights group. Bradley has stressed racial reconciliation; almost all of the state’s leading African American politicians are with Gore, and the influential black newspaper, the Amsterdam News, is expected to endorse him Thursday. Last September, Rep. Jerrold Nadler--from a staunchly Democratic district on Manhattan’s West Side--endorsed Bradley; within two weeks, Eve arranged a meeting at which Gore locked up support from most of the grass-roots activists in Nadler’s district.

The most powerful force propelling Gore is organized labor. The 140,000-member United Federation of Teachers in New York City has launched a campaign effort so thorough it is sending absentee ballots to retirees in Florida. In addition to phone calls and mailings, the state AFL-CIO has mounted a massive effort to distribute pro-Gore literature to workers at their work sites; the program has grown so large that the federation is now printing 1 million brochures at a pop in its Albany headquarters.

Against these waves, the Bradley campaign is fielding mostly volunteers, support from only a few elected officials (led by retiring Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan) and an advertising budget likely to exceed Gore’s. Yet advertising is a diluted weapon in a campaign that hasn’t captured the broad public’s attention. Indeed, with the Gore-Bradley race so overshadowed by the duel between John McCain and George W. Bush, turnout will be low. That means the institutions backing Gore are likely to constitute an even larger share of the primary vote than usual, which makes the hill that much steeper for Bradley.

One of the things that makes presidential politics such a fascinating chess game, though, is that strengths in the primaries often become liabilities in the general election. Gore has consolidated the Democratic base so effectively that it may now be possible for him to drive Bradley from the race without losing a single primary. Yet by running a campaign so closely tied to the traditional Democratic institutions, Gore risks tagging himself a defender of the status quo--in a year when McCain’s electric appeal has shown the continued attraction of change and reform.

“Gore has run an utterly conventional campaign pitched very much to Democratic constituencies,” complains Will Marshall, director of the Progressive Policy Institute, a centrist think tank. “But what McCain has done should send a message to the vice president about the climate of the 2000 race.”

Gore advisors believe that, in securing this support, he hasn’t taken overly liberal positions that will hurt him in the general election. And with a few exceptions--his support for eliminating the ban on gays in the military, his difficulty in establishing a critical distance from controversial civil rights leader the Rev. Al Sharpton, potentially his call for licensing all handgun owners--they’re largely right. To his credit, Gore has staunchly defended several of the administration’s key centrist reforms, particularly the 1996 law reforming welfare.

What Gore hasn’t done is define a reform project of his own equivalent to Bill Clinton’s 1992 promise to “end welfare as we know it.” (Even on education, where Gore comes closest, he talks more about new spending than new standards.) By associating himself so closely with the traditional Democratic forces--and by proposing so many new programs--Gore is bound to raise questions about his commitment to cleaning up Washington and rethinking government.

That hasn’t been a problem in the primary. But with McCain running on purifying the political system and Bush pledging to reform public institutions such as the schools and Social Security, Gore, paradoxically, will likely need his own change agenda to continue the Democratic hold on the White House.

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