ANCHESTER, N.H. - Al Gore's campaign calls them dirty political tricks. Bill Bradley's campaign thinks some in the Gore camp are getting a trifle ''paranoid.''
The controversy began when James E. Sheridan stood in the auditorium at Dartmouth College last week and asked Vice President Al Gore what he would do to restore confidence in government after ''the behavior of some members of your administration.'' The Gore campaign team smelled a rat.
Sheridan, a retired Chinese history professor from Northwestern, also happens to be a volunteer for Bill Bradley's campaign and a cosponsor of a Bradley fund-raiser in Manchester Saturday night.
Another Bradley supporter, Lisa M. Stanley-Lupo of New Durham, asked the former New Jersey senator about ''the behavior of the '96 Clinton-Gore campaign as it relates to fund-raising.'' And a paid Bradley campaign staff member, Matt Rodriguez, was sitting in the audience.
''These forums are supposed to be for real voters to ask genuine questions and learn more about the candidates,'' said Douglas Hattaway, Gore's New Hampshire spokesman. ''Senator Bradley's campaign is exploiting these opportunities just to play dirty political tricks.''
Mo Elleithee, Bradley's New Hampshire spokesman, called the Gore charge ''completely and utterly ridiculous'' and denied any effort to stack the audience.
''These are registered New Hampshire voters who want to question the candidate,'' he said. ''The fact that the vice president's campaign is resorting to this really petty tactic begs the question, `What is Al Gore afraid of?'''
Nothing, insisted Hattaway.
''Al Gore can handle any question he's asked, that's not the issue,'' he said. ''The problem is that voters are being manipulated and the New Hampshire primary is being exploited.''
The Gore campaign believes it has uncovered still more shenanigans. Tonight, the vice president will hold one of his ''open meetings'' in Derry with undecided voters. Marilyn Hoffman of Londonderry received an invitation and called the campaign to say she would attend. The trouble is, Hoffman is a committed Bradley supporter and another co-sponsor of the senator's Saturday night fund-raiser.
The Gore campaign disinvited her.
Gore officials suspect the Bradley campaign tried to pack the hall in Hanover in hopes of posing planted questions and to cheer on their candidate. The Bradley campaign denies all and accuses the Gore campaign of ''silliness.''
''I think they're very paranoid,'' said Mark Longabaugh, the New Hampshire director for Bradley. ''I also think it's curious they're complaining about getting asked questions at a town hall meeting. ... Maybe the new Al Gore isn't as new as we thought he was if he doesn't want to take questions from all comers.''
Elleithee conceded that the campaign told supporters how to apply for tickets to the event, but said that was the extent of the campaign's involvement.
The Bradley campaign, in fact, notified CNN and WMUR-TV that Rodriguez was sitting in the audience. And while CNN asked Rodriguez if he wanted to pose a question to one of the candidates, the Bradley campaign instructed him to decline the offer for fear that they would be accused of trying to skew the event.
Tom Hannon, the political director for CNN and executive producer of the town hall forum, said yesterday that his network never promised the campaigns that the audience would be made up of uncommitted or undecided voters.
''I think that would have been impossible in such a politicized environment like New Hampshire,'' Hannon said.
Linda Fowler, director of the Rockefeller Center at Dartmouth, said she identified 115 groups, such as volunteer fire departments, churches, and employers, and asked them to each submit five names to be placed in a lottery for tickets. She also ran ads in the local newspaper for people who wanted to place their own names in the lottery.
More than 700 names went into the lottery, Fowler said, and 260 people were chosen to receive tickets. CNN then screened the people, checking to see which candidate they were leaning toward and what they would like to ask.
Both Fowler and Hannon said they do not believe it would have been possible to heavily stack the audience.
''If the Gore people are trying to make an issue of that ... I don't think it serves their interests very much because it makes them look like they're whining,'' Fowler said.
Meanwhile, Sheridan said no one told him to attend the town hall meeting and no one ever told him what to say, either. He said he is irritated that the vice president described him as a Bradley field worker on ABC's Sunday morning talk show with Sam Donaldson and Cokie Roberts.
''Nobody in the Bradley campaign had anything to do with that question,'' Sheridan insisted yesterday. ''I formulated it myself and I posed it. ... I'm nobody's plant and I'm not a plant here.''
And Hoffman said she was just hoping to bring her two children, ages 12 and 15, to meet the vice president tonight and ask him about federal funding for the arts, a pet cause. She said she did not tell anyone from the Bradley campaign that she was going to go for fear she might seem ''disloyal.''
''I didn't think of it as infiltrating, I thought of it as being exposed to the vice president of the United States and a great privilege,'' she said.
