ONCORD, N.H. - Republican Senator John McCain, after months of focusing mostly on New Hampshire, is preparing to spend millions of dollars on advertisements in several states with later primaries. Former Senator Bill Bradley, who for months insisted he wouldn't throw ''darts,'' has begun slinging them regularly at his Democratic opponent, Vice President Al Gore.
With 21/2 weeks until the primary, McCain and Bradley are carefully reworking their strategies and beginning to look beyond the Granite State. While they, like all the candidates, have political mountains to climb before the New Hampshire primary vote - and they continue to trail Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Gore by wide margins in national polls - their actions demonstrate a new degree of confidence in their standing here.
That confidence is matched by moves in the Gore and Bush campaigns to play down expectations here - and also to suggest, in a way that candidates rarely dare, that New Hampshire is not a make-or-break state.
''Our mental approach and our mindset is that we are down,'' Gore spokesman Chris Lehane said last night about New Hampshire.
Gore has, for some weeks, taken to calling himself an underdog. But for the Bush campaign, talking down prospects here is something new.
''New Hampshire is a very critical state, obviously, but I'm not going to say how important it is,'' said US Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, Bush's top elected backer here. ''That's a question for one of those national wags. As wonderful as New Hampshire is, carrying New Hampshire in the general election is not going to get you the nomination,'' Gregg said, turning the conventional wisdom about the importance of the Granite State on its head.
Often at this stage of the primary, candidates like Bradley and McCain would be launching rounds of negative advertisements that attack the national front-runners, seeking to boost the odds of a win in New Hampshire that might give them momentum as they head into other states. But so far, both men have resisted negative ads, running instead on their personalities and highly detailed programs.
''There's no percentage in it for us,'' McCain strategist Michael Murphy said, referring to negative ads. ''This is not a campaign where everything depends on New Hampshire.''
Murphy, in an interview, said that McCain already is spending heavily in South Carolina, which holds the second major primary, on Feb. 19. He said McCain plans to spend $1 million on advertisements in Michigan, which holds a Feb. 22 primary, and soon will begin spending significant amounts in Washington and Virginia, two states that have received little attention but which hold significant contests on Feb. 29.
McCain and Bradley, who appeared jointly last month to demonstrate their commitment to campaign finance overhaul, are making a risky move by deciding not to run the usual attack ads. Bush's senior adviser, Thomas Rath, said he expects two-thirds of voters to make up their minds in the week before the primary.
Rath, who has advised numerous campaigns in past primaries, is preaching caution. ''I know a lot of guys who went to bed Saturday thinking they would be president, and who woke up Wednesday (after the primary) drafting their withdrawal statement.''
In New Hampshire, a Quinnipiac College survey released this week shows Bradley ahead of Gore in New Hampshire by 10 points, and McCain ahead of Bush by nine points. Other surveys suggest the race is considerably tighter in New Hampshire and also that Bush and Gore maintain large leads in national matchups.
The danger for Bush is that in some ways he is running a cautious campaign here, preferring to remain vague on some key issues. For example, Gregg made his comment playing down the importance of New Hampshire at a news conference in which he repeatedly bashed McCain's plans for Social Security. But when he was asked to explain how Bush would rescue the retirement program, Gregg admitted that the Texas governor so far has issued no plan. Would Bush unveil one before New Hampshire voters go to the polls?
''I don't know,'' Gregg said. ''I suspect he will at some point in the future.''
The week's schedule of candidate appearances said much about the Republican race: McCain has been here for four straight days of back-to-back forums and town meetings, while Bush yesterday appeared for a couple of quick events and one town meeting last night. Bush aides said, however, that the candidate will spend 15 days in New Hampshire during January, noting that McCain has more time here because he is not actively campaigning in Iowa.
On the Democratic side, Bradley, who has been visibly irked at Gore during their debates, wavers between his usual calm, professorial persona and an occasional eagerness to deliver jabs at Gore.
Gore, who has taken to describing himself as the underdog in New Hamsphire, has often been the aggressor in recent weeks, attacking Bradley's health care plan and questioning his support for Iowa farmers. That has posed a dilemma for Bradley, who has often pledged to run ''a different kind of campaign,'' built around a positive vision and largely free of the rhetorical fisticuffs that, Bradley believes, alienate the electorate.
''When you can't be positive about what you're going to do, you tend to be negative about what the other person does,'' Bradley told a New Hampshire audience last week.
But by the standards of a typical primary campaign, Bradley has been unusually gentle - especially for an underdog.
Less than two weeks before the Jan. 24 Iowa caucus, Bradley trails Gore by 21 points, according to a Des Moines Register poll published Saturday. While it is true that local caucuses are volatile gatherings and the results are often hard to predict, Bradley has been remarkably calm in the face of likely defeat, preferring low-key events to taking on Gore.
In a talk at an elementary school in rural, western Iowa Monday, and again in an easygoing discussion with inner-city fourth- and fifth-graders here yesterday, Bradley bore a closer resemblance to Mr. Rogers than a presidential candidate.
But at other times this week, Bradley has been tougher, criticizing Gore's record on farm policy, tobacco, and abortion rights. For instance, Bradley derided Gore's role in the Clinton administration's farm policy, saying that when a 1996 agriculture bill signed by Clinton left small farmers in peril, ''Al Gore did nothing about it.''
At times, Bradley has seemed to contradict his own positions. After complaining for days that Gore was dredging up Bradley's Senate votes from years ago, for instance, Bradley called the media's attention to a handful of pro-tobacco votes and quotations made by Gore - all more than a decade old.
As is often the case, Bradley did not personally utter harsh criticisms of the vice president. Instead, Bradley aides distributed a handout questioning Gore's record.
''He said he wouldn't do that, and I guess he's changed his mind,'' Gore told reporters, whose stories prominently noted the contrast between Bradley's positive rhetoric and his increasingly negative message.
McCain has endured a tough couple of weeks, spending much time on the defensive this month explaining why he wrote letters to the Federal Communications Commission urging a decision on a matter raised by a contributor who also was providing corporate jets to his campaign. McCain responded by saying he did nothing wrong and was a victim of a system that has to be changed.
McCain also has been the subject of negative ads by independent groups. One group, Americans for Tax Reform, says McCain's proposal to eliminate unregulated ''soft money'' would amount to a violation of free speech. Another group has criticized McCain for making a joke at the expense of people with Alzheimer's disease. But McCain isn't about to change his style. On the day the Alzheimer's ad began running this week, he joked about overweight people, describing sarcastically how much he loved to fly in a center seat between ''two large Americans.''
Kranish reported from Concord, Crowley from Iowa and Boston. Correspondent Curtis Wilkie contributed from Iowa.
