ANCHESTER, N.H. - As the campaign of Bill Bradley continues gaining ground, advisers to Vice President Al Gore are hoping that discrepancies between Bradley's campaign rhetoric and his voting record will halt his momentum here in the first-primary state.
Yesterday, Bradley christened his new Manchester office with an endorsement from former Senator John A. Durkin, New Hampshire's last Democratic senator, and tomorrow Bradley is expected to receive the blessing of New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan.
Amid the good news, however, Bradley delivered a warning yesterday to the 200 or so supporters joining him on a rainy afternoon.
''We're still five to six months away from the day that's important,'' Bradley said, cautioning against overexuberance after several polls showing him statistically tied with Gore in New Hampshire and New York. ''We're still running against establishment power, we still don't have the same kind of forces and firepower as the other side.''
Despite that kind of outsider, underdog talk by Bradley, Gore's campaign advisers hope to draw attention to the former New Jersey senator's years of vote-taking to show that he has changed his mind on some issues, and can be just as political as any politician.
From Social Security to school vouchers to mandatory prison sentences to ethanol subsidies, there are openings in which Gore or his surrogates will likely rebuke his challenger.
''Senator Bradley is perceived as an outsider, and there has been an 18-year track record as an insider engaged in major legislation,'' said a senior Gore adviser. ''Don't think the Bradley campaign and the candidacy, when looking in the mirror, they're not going to see a politician and not some sort of white knight who can say, `I've never been involved in this messiness of politics.'''
Bradley, who was in Boston raising money last night, as was Gore, said he plans to stick to the high ground. But he said that Gore has a record that he will have to defend as well.
And Bradley noted that he does have differences with Gore. Bradley said he believes schools should teach evolution, while the vice president would also allow schools to teach creationism. And Bradley said he wants to register all handguns, while Gore would license only gun owners.
''My hope is we'll be able to keep this on a positive tone, not a negative tone,'' Bradley said in an interview yesterday.
On Social Security, Bradley yesterday told his supporters inside an overheated furniture warehouse that ''we will protect Social Security and challenge all Americans to realize their potential.''
But Gore supporters contend he could undermine the system by allowing some of the funds to be privately invested. In 1996, he voted for a sense-of-the-Senate resolution offered by Senator Bob Kerrey, a Nebraska Democrat, to allow workers to put part of their Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes into the stock market. The resolution also called for raising the retirement age to 70 by 2030.
Bradley said he was simply calling for a debate on the subject. ''It was not a vote on the merits,'' he said. ''It means nothing other than saying, let's talk about Social Security. That's the reality.''
Allies of the vice president have already attacked Bradley for voting at least seven times since 1980 to provide vouchers for parents to send their children to private and parochial school. They argue that government money shouldn't be diverted from public schools.
Bradley supports spending more money on public schools, but plays down his support for tax credits or vouchers throughout his political career.
Last week, he told reporters that while he was a senator, many of his constituents complained to him about the poor quality of their public schools. At first, he said, he told them to run for the school board and change the policies in order to make a difference. Eventually, he said, he realized that was asking too much of poor parents struggling to earn a living.
So, Bradley said, he decided to vote for an experiment to see if vouchers would create competition between public and private schools, thereby improving the public schools.
But according to the Newark Star Ledger, during his first run for the Senate in 1978, Bradley had already promised to vote for tuition tax credits for parents who send their children to private schools.
''I strongly support aid to nonpublic schools,'' Bradley said at the time. ''If the credits are the best and only way to do that, then they'd have my support.''
Bradley acknowledged yesterday that he made a commitment to supporting tax credits before getting elected to the Senate. But he said he sees a distinction between tuition tax credits and school vouchers.
''There's a methodology difference, whether it's tax credit or vouchers,'' he said. ''The effect is a little different in terms of having it go through your tax form as opposed to getting something from the government. My thought is [tax credits] would have a different effect on the private schools.''
During a recent campaign trip to Harlem, Bradley told the Reverend Al Sharpton's National Action Network that he would abolish mandatory sentencing for criminals. When he was in the Senate, Bradley voted for the ''three-strikes'' rule imposing a life sentence after three felony convictions, and mandatory sentences for gun-related crimes.
''It sounded like a good idea at the time,'' Bradley said. ''Make sure people who commit certain crimes go to jail for a time determined by the Congress. And after the thing being in effect for several years, it's clear that the discretion of the judge is important.''
That is because, he said, many first-time offenders are being sent to prison for 20- and 25-year sentences without allowing judges to weigh other factors, such as the circumstances of the case.
Subsidizing ethanol is the most recent example of Bradley's changing a long-held position. While he once called the federal subsidies to corn farmers ''highway robbery,'' he has been espousing a new view in his campaign stops in Iowa. Bradley said his previous position was appropriate for a representative of New Jersey; now, he said, he's running to represent the country as a whole.
