Democratic Stage About to Get More Crowded in N.H.

With most of the eight Democratic presidential hopefuls campaigning almost exclusively in Iowa in advance of today’s caucuses, retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark and Sen. Joe Lieberman have had New Hampshire nearly all to themselves in recent days.

By early Tuesday, that will change. With four other major contenders coming to town, the two will be forced to share the spotlight and likely will be subjected to the same intense scrutiny that has made the Iowa contest one of the fiercest in years.

The final stretch in the race for New Hampshire, which holds the nation’s first primary on Jan. 27, will begin just hours after the caucus results are revealed in Iowa.

Howard Dean may be the first to arrive. The former Vermont governor plans to hop a plane as soon as his Iowa fate is known and be on the ground by 2 a.m. Tuesday for a rally on the tarmac at Portsmouth’s airport. The other candidates expect to be campaigning in New Hampshire by midday Tuesday.

With four candidates now in a close race in Iowa, many are expected to train their New Hampshire sights on Clark, who has gained considerable traction in recent weeks. His campaign is girding for an onslaught of questions and, perhaps, attacks.

“I imagine it’s going to be very intense for everybody,” said Clark’s press secretary, Bill Buck. “But I don’t see us having a bigger target on our back than anyone else.”

Others believe that the Iowa winner -- whether it’s Dean, Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina or Rep. Dick Gephardt of Missouri -- and anyone else perceived as coming out of Iowa strong will also become prime targets.

Lieberman on Sunday made a quick trip to South Carolina, which holds a key primary contest on Feb. 3. Clark is expected to make an equally brief stop today. Otherwise, the two have spent almost all their time during the last week in New Hampshire; Clark has even canceled recent trips to other states as his fortunes have risen here.

The strategy of skipping Iowa and focusing on New Hampshire worked four years ago, when Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona trounced George W. Bush here, although McCain was unable to maintain his momentum.

In this year’s Democratic race, the quest to slow Clark in this state already has begun.

Lieberman struck first last week, calling on Clark to unveil documents pertaining to his work as a lobbyist after his retirement from the military in 2000.

Clark’s campaign, which on Sunday said it would release those documents today, swiftly challenged the Connecticut senator to detail his dealings with lobbyists.

Kerry has hit even harder. His campaign has begun targeting Clark and Dean in full-color direct-mail fliers that include less-than-flattering pictures of the two. He points out that Clark earned $90,000 lobbying for a security-software firm and lists some of Dean’s more controversial remarks and asks whether he’s ready to be president.

Clark’s campaign on Sunday challenged Kerry to detail his dealings with lobbyists and to make full disclosure of his tax returns, but it stopped short of calling on all candidates to open such records.

“If you attack, you should be willing to disclose that which you attack about,” Buck said.

With poll numbers in the single digits, Lieberman has been largely free to campaign without having to respond to criticism from rivals, crisscrossing New Hampshire for “Cup of Joe With Joe” stops at diners and living in a Manchester apartment dubbed the “Manch Ranch.”

Clark is “essentially a media candidate,” said Lieberman spokesman Jano Cabrera. “People are curious about him, but they don’t know much about him.... We’ve been building up a coalition, block by block, step by step. That’s the benefit of being here a year.”

Several people attending Clark events in recent days said they did not know much about the former general, who has never run for office before. The curiosity factor, however, seems at the moment to be working for Clark.

Lieberman’s years in the Senate and his 2000 campaign as Al Gore’s running mate have made him a fairly well-known quantity here, but he’s drawing relatively small crowds, of fewer than 200. Clark, meanwhile, is now regularly speaking before audiences of 500 or more. Two thousand showed up for an event Saturday.

“Clark is certainly capitalizing on his opportunity to be the [most] visible candidate in the state right now,” said political scientist Linda Fowler, head of the Rockefeller Center at Dartmouth College in Hanover.

Clark’s rivals are already digging into his past. His campaign aides said they expected to be questioned about his past support for Republican presidents, as well as the apparently contradictory statements he made early in the race regarding his support of a congressional resolution to go to war in Iraq -- a war he now criticizes daily.

They’re also awaiting other campaigns to pounce on his work as a lobbyist and perhaps his squabbles with Pentagon officials when he was commander of NATO forces in the late 1990s. Clark retired in 2000 after being moved early from his NATO post.

Considering the compressed primary schedule this year, and the suddenly tight race in Iowa, several candidates may still be in the contest after the New Hampshire primary. Campaigns are already hammering out strategies for the Feb. 3 round of primaries, most in Southern and Southwestern states.