DAVID NYHAN

For Bradley, the hard part is yet to come

By David Nyhan, Globe Staff, April 25, 1999

PORTSMOUTH, N.H. -- Al Gore was never going to have an uncontested romp to the Democrats' presidential nomination.

But new poll numbers giving Bill Bradley a very respectable early number -- maybe a third of the vote -- against the vice president in New Hampshire eliminate any sense of complacency in the Gore high command. For Bradley to be inside 20 points 10 months out from the first primary test is heartening to Democrats who resent the ring around the party's bathtub left by the Clinton impeachment saga.

Voters angry at Clinton can't get at him anymore via the ballot. But they can take out their fury on Clinton's faithful lieutenant. And there may be another factor at work in elevating Bradley at Gore's expense.

Presidential politics is inextricably linked to local politics in the two kickoff states, Iowa and New Hampshire. Once you leave those two in the rear-view mirror, campaigns become much more compressed, expensive, sound-bite-and-tarmac oriented, and nationalized. But until you get past Iowa and New Hampshire, the Scylla and Charybdis of the preliminary presidential process, you have to deal with the local ramifications.

And the chairman of Gore's large and impressive organization in the Granite State is Bill Shaheen, First Husband to Governor Jeanne Shaheen. Initially, this was a coup for Gore, who's courted the Shaheen clan for a generation, it seems.

But the bloom is off the gubernatorial rose. The liberal-to-moderate Dems who formed her core constituency in two statewide elections are bawling at her for vetoing the state income tax scheme pushed through the House to fix the school funding dilemma, which is now almost a crisis with teacher layoff notices flying.

The Gore operation is wide, deep, well-heeled, and well-connected. But similar campaign organizations, top-heavy with frontrunning escorts, didn't prevent the likes of Ed Muskie, Walter Mondale, George Bush, and Bob Dole from getting winged by the contrary New Hampshire primary participants.

In the Gore camp, it is to be devoutly hoped that local Democrats stirred to anger by the governor's refusal to sign the income tax imposition don't take their ire out against the presidentrial candidate being managed locally by the guv's spouse. Of course, this far out, it's all inside baseball anyway. Bradley is getting a nice parade around the paddock because he's the only other horse Democrats can play with.

Still, the former New Jersey senator, a bit of a sobersides on the stump, is raising money to beat the band. He lifted $250,000 at a Seattle fund-raiser last week, a tidy sum for a fledgling candidate just getting off the ground.

Bradley is positioned as The Democrat Who's Against the War in Kosovo. That may be a nice, safe spot along the rail in the summer and fall if the war goes badly. But if it ends relatively quickly, cleanly, or in a notably victorious fashion, Bradley's naysaying will not wear nearly so well.

Bradley is starting to lift some endorsements from Democrats not enamored, for whatever reason, with Clinton or Gore. Senator Paul Wellstone (D-Minn.) toyed briefly with the idea of running against Gore himself. He was expected to endorse Bradley this weekend.

No one knows quite how deeply the antipathy to Clinton's Monica-mania will cut against Gore. We'll be treated to endless analysis of that factor; the TV gang will keep cassettes of the beret-ed Monica hugging You-Know-Whom right at the top of their Gore's-in-trouble file.

Bradley will also get a big boost from the media types, who generally like him. The TV crowd will have all sorts of silly fun with old kinescopes of Bradley playing basketball for the Knicks and Princeton. And the anti-Clinton establishment, personified by The Wall Street Journal, will extol Bradley's virtues, to the detriment of Gore, all the while soft-pedaling those Bradley positions, like support for affirmative action, that the Journal abhors.

But, to pilfer a roundball expression before we are all sick to death of such, any two-man primary contest inevitably boils down to a high-stakes game of one-on-one. As Ross Perot, Dan Quayle, and Jack Kemp discovered, Al Gore is no cigar store Indian in televised debate.

There are plenty of wrinkles the Gore team can resort to, if stemming Bradley's momentum becomes more of a priority. Clearly, Bradley has to come close, if not win, either Iowa or New Hampshire, to avoid getting rolled up early.

With the likelihood that the whole shooting match will be over by next St. Patrick's Day, Bradley either breaks through early, or he gets swamped. Gore will not be outspent, out-staffed, out-advertised, out-organized. He will have to be out-foxed or out-classed. But there are so many advantages, of incumbency, of national experience, of political contacts, that Team Gore enjoys, that no matter how good a candidate Bradley becomes, the advantage will always lie with the other guy.

Which is why the savvier among those coalescing around the Bradley challenge understand that this is the easy part. From here on out, it only gets harder.