Crisscrossing N.H., Candidates Step Up Sharp Attacks

From the notches in the north to the suburbs in the south, New Hampshire was alive Sunday with the sounds of stumping, as seven would-be presidents--locked in a pair of tight contests--swarmed the state 48 hours before its make-or-break primary.

Democrats Al Gore and Bill Bradley traded some of the sharpest barbs of their increasingly contentious campaign. Bradley accused the front-running Gore of jumping “into bed with special interests.” Gore charged Bradley with lying to boost his prospects. Each accused the other of dragging his contest into the gutter.

Gore had sought to run above the fray, the traditional strategy for protecting a lead. But with Bradley increasing the volume of his attacks, Gore decided to switch tactics, lashing Bradley for “stepping down to the level of personal villification.”

On the Republican side, Texas Gov. George W. Bush, the front-runner nationally, sparred with rival John McCain over who is more ready to step into the Oval Office. “There’s only one man who is fully prepared. I am fully prepared,” Sen. McCain of Arizona, the front-runner here, said on NBC-TV’s “Meet the Press.” On CBS-TV’s “Face the Nation,” Bush parried, “I am the one person in this race who has been elected to an executive position. I have been in the position of setting agendas, of making decisions.”

The frenetic activity was just the run-up to today’s final frenzy, as candidates girded their get-out-the-vote operations and hoped the snow showers forecast for tonight would clear for Tuesday’s vote.

Given the compressed electoral calendar, the contest here has shaped up as the pivotal event of the warp-speed campaign season. The primary results could effectively decide each party’s nominating contests, just eight days after the balloting started back on the Iowa prairie.

McCain and Bradley have the most at stake. McCain skipped last week’s Iowa caucuses to concentrate his efforts here. Bradley may wish he had as well, after suffering a nearly 2-1 thumping. Both desperately need a win to ignite their candidacies, and New Hampshire’s harsh landscape, with its penchant for rewarding the rugged, may offer the most hospitable terrain either insurgent will face.

“You can fairly easily see how Bush or Gore can survive a loss in New Hampshire,” said Washington-based political analyst Charles Cook, citing the big edge the two front-runners enjoy among the GOP’s core constituents. “But it’s the do-or-die state for McCain and Bradley. I don’t see how they can have a plausible shot at winning the nomination without winning in New Hampshire.”

While door-knocking and hand-shaking were the official order of the day, the heavy ammunition Sunday was fired on the morning talk shows, all broadcast out of New Hampshire.

Bush portrayed himself as a Western governor in the Ronald Reagan mold as he tried to push past McCain, who has led the polls here since late fall. “My ZIP Code--78701--that’s Austin, Texas, not Washington, D.C.,” Bush said on “Face the Nation.”

McCain, in turn, depicted Bush--without naming him--as lacking the qualifications needed to be the nation’s chief executive. “I’m fully prepared and do not need on-the-job training, particularly in fulfilling the job of commander in chief,” the former Navy pilot and Vietnam War prisoner told “Meet the Press.”

Reprising a familiar discussion, Bush and McCain agreed on the programs that, while they oppose most abortions, they do not favor prosecuting women who have them. But if abortion were illegal, each said he would favor prosecuting doctors who perform the procedure.

The Democrats, meanwhile, had their own quarrel Sunday over abortion, part of a larger discussion about truthfulness and tactics.

Campaigning in the far north, Gore launched one of his most pointed attacks on Bradley, drawing a roar of approval from a crowd of more than 1,000.

“He can’t defend his own proposals and so he’s committed foul after foul,” the vice president shouted, red-faced. “Instead of the promise of character, courage and commitment, we have manipulative attack after manipulative attack.”

After days of ignoring Bradley’s assault, Gore defended his record in support of abortion rights and campaign finance reform. “Sen. Bradley has chosen two issues and attempted to manufacture differences where there are none,” Gore charged, his tense demeanor a contrast to his relaxed attire of denim shirt, faded blue jeans and black cowboy boots.

“These issues are too important to let a politician play politics as usual, to manipulate an issue that affects millions and millions of people who deserve to have us stand together and protect them against Republican candidates.”

Gore’s campaign distributed a joint statement by the House and Senate Democratic leaders, Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri and Tom Daschle of South Dakota, saying they were concerned that Bradley’s campaign “has taken a sharp negative turn.”

“We urge . . . Bradley not to end his New Hampshire campaign with personal negative attacks on a fellow Democrat,” the two Gore backers wrote. According to a leadership aide, Gephardt and Daschle issued the statement at the behest of the Gore campaign.

Bradley, unmoved, resumed his assault on Gore, focusing on the vice president’s role in questionable fund-raising activities in the 1996 campaign. “What happened in 1996 was a disgrace on both the Republican and Democratic sides,” he told an overflow audience of about 600 at Franklin Pierce Law School in Concord, where he waved a copy of a recent magazine article on the scandal. “But particularly it was embarrassing to Democrats, because we are the party of reform. We are the party of protecting those who are without, those little people out there.

“If we get into bed with special interests, the result is going to be to damage our identity, our credibility with people, and that’s why those events were so tragic for our party.”

But even as an upbeat Bradley rallied crowds, his campaign was once again dogged by reports concerning his irregular heartbeat, a replay of events on the eve of the Iowa caucuses.

On ABC-TV’s “This Week,” Bradley acknowledged that future episodes could require treatment under anesthesia, as happened on three prior occasions. He said that as president he would probably invoke the 25th Amendment, temporarily turning power over to his vice president.

Despite that theoretical possibility, campaign aides brushed off questions about prospective running mates whom Bradley might entrust with the powers of the presidency. “I don’t think that it is necessary to think about the vice presidency now,” spokesman Eric Hauser said. “Our goal is to win the Democratic nomination. . . . Everybody says he’s in excellent health. I think that pretty much addresses voters’ concerns.”

In the brief window between the TV talkfests and Sunday night’s Super Bowl--when most politicking gave way to the pigskin pageant--the candidates fanned out beneath sunny skies, savoring a day of unseasonably warm temperatures.

McCain staged his final town hall meeting, No. 114, in Peterborough, drawing a crowd of more than 1,100. As light from the clear January day filtered through the high windows, he reprised his unspoken contrast with Bush, telling the crowd, “I am fully prepared to lead.”

Nearby, in Hudson, Bush made his hand-shaking way from his big brown bus into the packed and stuffy auditorium of Alvirne High School, where he exhorted residents to turn out on Tuesday.

The appreciative crowd of more than 700--200 more were kept outside by fire marshals--cheered Bush’s tax cut plan, applauded when he vowed a limited federal role in education and lit up each time Bush lit into Gore. “The vice president went to my own state . . . where, by the way, our education record is fantastic,” Bush said. “And he started talking about building buildings. And they asked me about it and I said: ‘Look at the contrast. He talks about bricks and mortar. I talk about saving lives by making sure that every child gets educated in America.”

In Nashua, Republican Steve Forbes again took up the tax cudgel, questioning whether Bush would truly deliver on a promised $483-billion cut. “It’s a weak proposal on the table, leaving all the Washington gravy trains on the track,” Forbes charged at a news conference. “And he says, well, he might get it done in his first term. Maybe, maybe not. Those are not fighting words, that’s not leadership. That’s not how you get things done.”

“I’m in it to get things done,” said Forbes, who seems to have gained little here from his strong second-place Iowa showing.

Another GOP candidate, Alan Keyes, picked up an endorsement from David Schippers, who headed the House investigation in President Clinton’s impeachment case. And Gary Bauer, whose candidacy appears to be hanging by a thread, said conservatives must summon the courage to nominate a true conservative, such as himself.

Whatever the outcome Tuesday, the campaign has done little to upset the legend of the New Hampshire primary: that voters respond best to candidates who talk straight and shake their hand.

From the start, McCain campaigned here the way folks expect, close enough to see the whites of a candidate’s eyes, trekking from the tiny towns in the notches of New Hampshire’s northern mountains to the sprawl along the southern border with Massachusetts.

Bush and Gore initially failed to heed the lessons of tradition and paid a price. Not until each dropped behind in the polls did they shuck their imperial, motorcade-laden campaigns and mingle more in the crowds.

With his 100-plus town meetings, “McCain set the rules for this campaign, and everyone else, Democrats included, had to follow,” said Dick Bennett, a Manchester pollster and one of the state’s leading indigenous campaign-watchers. “You have to be accessible. You have to take questions and answer them honestly, not pander and not show negativity.”

*

Times staff writers Matea Gold, James Gerstenzang, Janet Hook, Maria L. La Ganga, T. Christian Miller and Anne-Marie O’Connor contributed to this story.

* DUELING REFORMERS

Ronald Brownstein contrasts Bradley, McCain camps. A5

* HIS PRIMARY CONCERN

Alan Keyes hopes to exceed expectations Tuesday. A15

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Poll Tracks

Five tracking polls of likely voters in Tuesday’s New Hampshire presidential primary indicate that John McCain holds a small lead over George W. Bush among Republicans and Al Gore is leading Bill Bradley among Democrats.