OWA CITY, Iowa - Less than one week from the first voting in the 2000 Democratic presidential contest, Bill Bradley said yesterday that he hopes to exceed expectations here, but that he is already looking ahead to what he called a ''separate national campaign'' beyond Iowa and New Hampshire.
Bradley, speaking at West High School here a day after his final Iowa debate with Vice President Al Gore, told students that ''politics should do big and bold things.''
Bradley's pitch for expanded health care, gun control and campaign finance reform was well received by the students. But by most measures, he continues to trail in this state. A Los Angeles Times poll released yesterday of likely Democratic caucusgoers showed Bradley 23 percentage points behind Gore. Among women voters, Bradley lags way behind Gore, 64 percent to 29 percent.
Meeting with reporters, Bradley would say only that he hopes to do ''better than expected'' at Monday's caucuses. While he refused to set a specific bar for success, he cited the 31 percent showing of Senator Edward M. Kennedy in 1980 against President Jimmy Carter.
Reminded that Kennedy's campaign quickly fizzled, Bradley argued he is better-prepared than Kennedy was to carry on past the Iowa caucuses and the Feb. 1 New Hampshire primary.
Bradley said he is preparing for a pivotal ''national primary'' on March 7, when several key states, including New York and California, as well as Massachusetts, hold their primaries.
''There really is a separate national campaign, and we have the resources to commit to that national campaign,'' said Bradley, who has been a lucrative fund-raiser.
Bradley also elaborated on several exchanges from Monday's debate in Iowa on racial issues, including Gore's charge that the former New Jersey senator ignored pleas from the mayor of Newark to help stop ''racial profiling,'' the law-enforcement practice of questioning or detaining people based on their skin color.
A Bradley spokesman said yesterday that Bradley does not recall having conversations with Newark Mayor Sharpe James about the issue. And the Bradley campaign issued a news release with glowing comments James has made about Bradley, including a 1992 quote in the Bergen Record from James saying Bradley was ''the only national figure who is talking about racism in America'' and speaks ''from the heart.''
Bradley told reporters that racial profiling did not come to his attention until 1997, after he had left the Senate.
Bradley also revisited the debate's most pointed exchange, when he asked Gore why he hasn't pressed President Clinton to sign an executive order outlawing racial profiling by federal authorities. Gore has repeatedly said signing such an order would be among his first acts as president.
Gore had replied that Clinton didn't need ''a lecture from Bill Bradley about how to stand up and fight for African-Americans and Latinos.''
Yesterday Bradley pointed out he was talking about Gore: ''This was about his leadership, and not about Bill Clinton. I think Bill Clinton would be very receptive to this. Why wouldn't he, given his whole record?'' Bradley asked.
