ANCHESTER, N.H. - The yin and yang of the Democrats in Campaign 2000 have suddenly switched roles. With three days until the primary vote here, Bill Bradley continued slashing and attacking yesterday while Al Gore said he's ''going to emphasize the positive.''
Campaigning on the western side of the state yesterday, Bradley all but called Gore a liar, and invited comparisons between the vice president and former president Richard M. Nixon. Bradley also took to the airwaves with a scathing new ad attacking Gore's claim, in Wednesday's debate, to have always supported abortion rights.
Meanwhile, Gore, the aggressor for much of the primary campaign, took pains not to return fire, as he barnstormed along the New Hampshire seacoast. While his lead in most polls is growing by the day, Gore said he hopes that Bradley's attacks will only tarnish the image the New Jersey senator cultivated all year - of a politician who wouldn't stoop to ''politics as usual.''
For the Republicans it was a day largely without rancor. Arizona Senator John McCain bustled from town hall to town hall, continuing the string of local meetings with voters that are the foundation of his campaign here. Governor George W. Bush of Texas bombed about happily on a snowmobile at one appearance, and won the endorsement of former New Hampshire governor John H. Sununu, a man whom he helped get fired from the White House where Sununu was chief of staff to Bush's father, the former president.
Of the leading GOP candidates, only publisher Steve Forbes, who spent part of his day in a session with Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston, took direct aim at a fellow Republican, criticizing Bush's record on education as Texas governor.
The frenzy of campaigning came as trend lines in a new Globe/WBZ-TV tracking poll appeared to show growing strength for both Gore and Bush.
Gore continues to steadily build his lead over Bradley, which now stands at 51 percent to 41 percent, with the remainder undecided, according to the poll. Bush, meanwhile, has seen his support creep up, and now trails McCain by a single point, 37 percent to 36 percent.
The poll offered little cheer for the other GOP contenders. Forbes drew 12 percent, Keyes dropped to 5 percent, Gary Bauer to 4 percent.
Based on sampling of 400 likely voters in each party primary, the poll has a margin of error of 5 percent.
Both Republicans and Democratic candidates have been wary this year of throwing any sort of political punch that could be construed as a negative attack.
With voters paying closer attention as the primary draws near, experts say any trace of harshness could backfire - or at least return to haunt nominees in the general election.
Hence the risk Bradley takes in his move to take on Gore - a shift of strategy that followed the vice president's resounding defeat in Monday's Iowa caucuses.
Gore, Bradley says, has been unfair and intellectually dishonest in his criticisms of the former senator's health care plan and disingenuous about his history of support for abortion rights.
Gore, at the Wednesday debate, said he has ''always'' supported Roe v. Wade, the decision that created the federal right to abortion.
But Gore, early in his career, voted several times on bills designed to bar federal funding of abortions and, in 1984, voted for a bill that would define the word ''person'' under four civil rights laws to include ''unborn children from the moment of conception.''
Gore, however, years ago amended his stance, and now supports abortion rights across the board, including federal funding for abortions.
The new Bradley ad, which will air today, dives into the apparent gap between Gore's statement Wednesday and his early voting record.
''Of the seven men running for president, only one candidate has been pro-choice for everyone all the time,'' a narrator says in the ad.
Bradley then takes over the narration himself.
''This is the kind of issue you can't straddle,'' Bradley says, looking straight into the camera. ''You can't be on both sides. You have to decide which side you are on. ... And I decided a long time ago that I'm pro-choice.''
Gore's campaign, during the day, mounting a defense on the abortion issue, circulated a letter from 42 members of Congress affirming that Gore is pro-choice and a list of New Hampshire women who support him, in part, for his views on abortion.
But the vice president otherwise declined to mix it up with his opponent.
''I'm not going to get down to that level,'' said Gore, when asked about Bradley's stinging assaults. Though Gore has spent months methodically dissecting and disparaging Bradley's health care proposal, he said, ''I don't think the voters want to hear negative attacks. They want to hear what we're going to do for the country.''
Bradley's newly aggressive tactics brought a reprimand from New Hampshire's Democratic party chair, as well as words of caution from Lowell Weicker, the former Republican senator and Independent governor of Connecticut who endorsed Bradley yesterday.
''Jesse Jackson said this is supposed to make us better, not bitter,'' said Kathy Sullivan, the Democratic chairwoman. ''But to impugn somebody else's integrity in your own party in a primary just comes back to hurt them later on, whoever the nominee is.''
Weicker called it fair for Bradley to point out that Gore is misrepresenting Bradley's record and proposals. ''But I'm more interested in his substance on the issues, so I don't want him to abandon that to go after Gore,'' he said. ''Do I think concentrating on negative responses is fruitful for Bill Bradley? No, I don't.''
One candidate who has resisted spending much time talking about his opponents is McCain.
And at town hall meetings throughout the state, he receives loud and long applause when he speaks out against nasty, negative campaigning.
''You know it when you see it,'' McCain said aboard his campaign bus. McCain said he has been pleased with the minimal amount of fractiousness among the Republican candidates, and dismayed by the Democrats, especially Gore, who he said he believes went over the line in suggesting that Bradley's health plan would be harmful to minorities.
Bradley, as he travelled from Lebanon to Newport to Dublin, said ''enough is enough,'' by way of explaining the new tenor of his campaign.
''When you listen to Al Gore speak, you have to listen very carefully because he uses words in a very tricky manner,'' he said, making a veiled allusion to Nixon, who was nicknamed ''Tricky Dick'' by his opponents.
''You have to look at every word and every clause,'' he said.
Meanwhile, on the Republican side of the campaign, Forbes pressed his attack yesterday on Bush's record.
The millionaire publisher focused on schools in an appearance with one current and one former member of the Texas Board of Education. Forbes repeated charges made in Iowa and in Wednesday's debate that Texas SAT scores have fallen since 1994.
He also said Bush has failed to back school choice and local control over education.
''Has education improved under George Bush?'' Forbes said. ''He says yes. The facts are, it didn't.''
Bush campaign officials strongly object to Forbes' charges, saying he is using selective statistics and noting that the College Board warns against evaluating state records based on SAT scores.
Globe Staff writers Yvonne Abraham with McCain, Michael Crowley with Forbes, and Susan Milligan with Gore contributed to this report.
