Candidates Do the Surplus Math

It was well before dawn. But after only an hour of “poor quality sleep,” Al Gore was out pressing the flesh at Connie’s Country Kitchen and limbering up for nine consecutive early-morning television interviews.

As the vice president’s punishing schedule suggests, while much has been made of his lack of people skills and his ever-changing campaign attire, Gore has a little-noticed fire in the belly that was at the heart of his lopsided victory in Iowa on Monday. And that indefatigable drive may well propel him to another win Tuesday here in New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primary.

At least Gore himself thinks so. He arrived here at 3:30 a.m. Tuesday, after claiming victory at a boisterous late-night rally at the Iowa State Fairgrounds in Des Moines. And he was cheerfully greeting startled patrons at Connie’s before 7 a.m.

“He’s running on adrenaline,” explained Elaine Kamarck, a Gore confidant.

As the vice president himself put it a few hours after arriving in New Hampshire on Tuesday: “I’m going to be here . . . every minute of every hour of every day,” campaigning right up to the state’s primary.

(Gore’s only absence will be a quick jaunt to Washington Thursday night to attend President Clinton’s annual State of the Union address before a joint session of Congress. He will return the next morning.)

“We’re not taking a single vote for granted,” Gore said. “We’ve just begun to fight.”

Unlike Gore’s high-octane performance so far, Bill Bradley’s campaign has gotten off to a slower start in New Hampshire.

His only public rally so far was held at 3:30 a.m. Tuesday when his plane touched down at the Manchester airport. He was greeted by about 75 revved-up supporters screaming “We want Bill!” Later that morning, after a few hours of sleep, Bradley addressed about 1,000 students--only a fraction of them of voting age--at Alvirne High School in Hudson.

A high school basketball game that Bradley was supposed to attend was postponed because of snow, so the candidate spent the rest of Tuesday resting and preparing for his Wednesday night debate with Gore. On Wednesday, he visited a Manchester day care center and did two radio interviews before meeting privately with his staff to prepare for the debate.

Bradley’s aides denied that he was getting off to a sluggish start in New Hampshire.

“I can’t comment on what the vice president is doing, but Bradley has a lot of zip going,” said Eric Hauser, Bradley’s press secretary. Looking ahead to the rest of the week, Hauser added: “You’re not going to be complaining about any kind of pace other than too much over the next five days,” he said.

Gore’s unrelenting campaign style has been on display for some time.

Nearly two weeks ago, every one of his aides, citing poor weather, wanted Gore to cancel an appearance in Berlin, an unprepossessing town in the state’s distant Great North Woods region.

But the vice president refused to budge.

God-awful weather notwithstanding, Gore said, he wasn’t about to diss the good folks of Berlin.

As the vice president explained to his disappointed staff, he learned as a former congressman from rural Tennessee that folks in the boondocks are sensitive about being shortchanged by the powerful.

And so, with the little runway in Berlin closed by ice, Gore and his entourage one late Saturday afternoon climbed into SUVs and mini-vans and made the slow, two-hour-plus drive up to Berlin. All told, the journey would consume about seven hours.

By the time Gore had shaken every hand in the drafty school auditorium, after a town hall meeting with a couple hundred Berliners, and made the drive home, it was the wee hours of the morning.

On Tuesday, after his morning TV interviews, Gore attended a rally at West High School here, undeterred by this week’s blizzard.

Like Bradley, Gore’s schedule for Tuesday afternoon called for him to rest up and prepare for Wednesday night’s debate. But unlike Bradley, Gore had other ideas.

From West High, he and New Hampshire Gov. Jeanne Shaheen, an ardent backer, popped into a nearby Dunkin’ Donuts shop, where Gore gulped from a cup of hazelnut coffee and munched on doughnut holes. They left with two dozen doughnuts and cardboard boxes of coffee and went to a city garage, where they distributed the goodies to the snowplow crew.

After mingling with about 50 surprised workers, Gore still would not quit.

On the spur of the moment, he went to New Hampshire College to speak at an MTV get-out-the-vote rally called “Choose or Lose 2000.” The vice president was substituting for his eldest daughter, Karenna Gore Schiff, who was unable to leave New York City because of the storm.

It was long after dark before Gore--a 51-year-old grandfather who runs for exercise and lifts weights--finally returned to his Nashua hotel, improbably named the Sheraton Tara.

Tomorrow would be another day.