EDAR RAPIDS, Iowa - Under increasing pressure to counter Vice President Al Gore's attacks against him, Bill Bradley sent a signal yesterday that, for better or worse, he will forgo attack ads in the last, critical days before the Iowa caucuses.
Gore continues to bruise Bradley with two new television ads. One portrayed the former New Jersey senator as insensitive to Iowa's 1993 flood disaster, and the other described Bradley's health care plan as miserly toward the poor. Polls indicate that Bradley has stalled in his effort to cut Gore's 20-point cushion in Iowa.
Yet Bradley, despite pleas from many supporters to strike back, deviated from his standard speech in a stop at Kirkwood Community College to castigate politicians who try to ''smash the other guy,'' and to reaffirm his vow to maintain ''a positive vision.''
When the crowd applauded, Bradley took the unusual step of expressing gratitude. ''I'm glad you did that,'' he said. ''It's a good feeling to know that people share that sense of what the country can be and have the same belief in decency.''
Questions about Bradley's farm policy resurfaced yesterday, with a report that he was in a partnership that received $2,150 in federal subsidy payments in 1997 and 1998. Bradley got $700 of the payments from a 250-acre farm in Missouri that he owns with a high school friend, Bradley aides said.
A campaign spokeswoman, Anita Dunn, said that the subsidies were small and that Bradley had opposed the subsidies while he was a US senator. She also said the subsidies for Bradley were far outweighed by the tobacco subsidies that Gore had received over several years.
Responding to the criticisms of the tobacco subsidies, a Gore spokesman, Chris Lehane, said: ''Senator Bradley continues to stoop to new lows every day.''
The Bradley campaign also reacted to Gore charges that Bradley had voted against flood relief for farmers in 1993. Bradley has said that he eventually did vote for the relief, and Dunn said yesterday that the payments received by Bradley's farm had been donated to charity, although she did not know the amount.
Also yesterday, Bradley began running a television spot in Iowa featuring one of his key supporters, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a New York Democrat. The spot directs viewers to a new Web site that Bradley has created as an organizing tool for the Jan. 24 caucuses.
''The largest event of my lifetime was to see Americans begin to lose faith in government, to see them begin to distrust government,'' Moynihan says in the 30-second spot. ''I believe that when Bill Bradley is president that will turn around.''
