ASHINGTON - Sparing Vice President Al Gore a major political embarrassment, the 13 million-member AFL-CIO appears to be ready to endorse Gore over former Senator Bill Bradley tomorrow for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Gore, who once took the powerful labor federation's early support for granted, plans to appear in person at the AFL-CIO's convention in Los Angeles to pick up the coveted endorsement.
The endorsement, a major victory for the vice president's limping campaign, would be the federation's earliest since its leaders backed Walter Mondale in 1983 in his campaign against President Reagan.
Federation leaders announced yesterday that they would almost immediately launch a $40 million effort to mobilize political support for their preferred candidates in the 2000 election.
Rather than plow union money into political attack advertisements, AFL-CIO political leaders hope to energize their members at the grass-roots level.
Perhaps more importantly, an AFL-CIO endorsement would grant Gore a respite from the bad news that has dogged his campaign. Gore aides have stressed for months the importance of the labor endorsement, which they had once expected to secure without a fight.
''Obviously, it's something the vice president's campaign expected, anticipated, and told everyone they would get,'' said Anita Dunn, a campaign adviser for Bradley, Gore's only rival for the Democratic nomination. ''So it's not really a surprise.''
Bradley, however, had lobbied strenuously to block an early endorsement of Gore. He personally implored union leaders to delay the vote, hoping his campaign's momentum would eventually persuade them that he was the Democrats' best hope for keeping the White House for another four years.
Gore convinced the AFL-CIO's senior leadership that he needed organized labor's support now in order to prepare for a front-loaded primary-and-caucus season that is expected to be decided by March 7.
AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, playing a decisive role, pushed his organization's member unions to endorse the vice president. Sweeney, a Gore ally, ''really leaned into it,'' a Gore aide conceded, privately twisting arms, then publicly declaring that Gore had wrapped up the endorsement.
Bradley aides refused to concede defeat in the endorsement fight, but they were already downplaying the importance of the AFL-CIO's backing, calling the expected union nod nothing more than a ''paper endorsement'' extracted by Sweeney after some unseemly arm-twisting.
The vaunted grass-roots activism the endorsement is supposed to represent will fail to materialize if rank-and-file union members and their leaders do not share the same enthusiasm for Gore, they said.
Besides, the Bradley aides added, the endorsement would allow their candidate to again assume the mantle of the insurgent outsider.
Gore campaign officials insisted they were not taking the endorsement for granted. Gore is expected to arrive in Southern California today, and the vice president is scheduled to meet with AFL-CIO leaders tomorrow morning before the expected vote.
But privately, they said they are now confident Gore has the two-thirds of the 700 convention delegates needed to secure the AFL-CIO's nod. Gore officials appealed to the union leaders' understanding of the internal dynamics of the Democratic Party.
Of the 4,335 party delegates who will select the party's nominee, 798 - or nearly 40 percent of the total needed to win the nomination - are so-called super-delegates, not subject to the will of the voters. Of those 798, well over 400 have publicly endorsed Gore. Five have endorsed Bradley.
