ES MOINES - The campaign paths of Al Gore and Bill Bradley lead into the same room tonight, when the two contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination make their pitches to 3,000 hard-core Democrats.
As Gore struggles to regain a solid footing in the campaign, this will be the first head-to-head confrontation by the candidates. For the vice president, it is an opportunity to show that his downward spiral is not permanent. For Bradley, it is a chance to woo the party faithful.
Gore is expected, sources said, to be far more direct in his criticism of Bradley than ever. Building on a theme he has been developing for a couple of weeks, the vice president will assail Bradley for retiring from the Senate during the Gingrich Congress, and abandoning fights to raise the minimum wage, support abortion rights, protect the environment, and help farmers.
Gore will particularly attack Bradley on his commitment to farmers, noting that the former New Jersey senator missed a key farm vote in 1996 because he was on a book tour, sources said. That vote was on a Democratic alternative to the Republicans' Freedom to Farm Act that would have given farmers more of a safety net during hard times. The criticism will come on the heels of Bradley's announcement yesterday of his agriculture plan, to provide $5.5 billion of direct, emergency payments to farmers when prices fall.
But while Gore is going to take on Bradley, Bradley plans to shrug off Gore.
''What you can expect is he'll talk about many of the things he's talked about in the course of the campaign,'' said Anita Dunn, Bradley's communications director.
Both Gore and Bradley will spend today campaigning before tonight's Jefferson-Jackson dinner, the Iowa Democratic Party's largest annual fund-raiser at $60 a head. Both candidates will knock on doors, with Gore seeking support in Ames and Bradley going house to house in Des Moines.
In a bit of good news for Gore after weeks of poor polling results in New Hampshire and New York, he won the coin toss for tonight's dinner. He'll speak last, giving him the opportunity to jab Bradley without reply. The last time the two candidates came close to meeting was at the Democratic National Committee meeting two weeks ago, where each spoke separately and neither saw each other. Their next get-together will be in Hanover, N.H., on Oct. 27, at a town-hall style meeting at Dartmouth College.
Until Gore began showing signs of weakness, he studiously avoided Bradley. For example, he skipped New Hampshire's Democratic convention in Manchester earlier this year, rather than share a stage with Bradley. Instead, he sent his wife, Tipper.
Now, however, Gore has reversed course, calling on Bradley to hold a series of debates about the issues every two weeks.
Though Gore has taken to calling himself the underdog in New Hampshire, Bradley's aides stress that their candidate is at a disadvantage in Iowa's party establishment setting, which they contend favors the ''establishment candidate'' Gore.
''It's going to be like the Knicks going to play the Celtics in the Garden,'' said Dunn. ''We're under no illusions about what the crowd will be like and who has the home court advantage at this event.''
Nevertheless, Dunn said Bradley will stick to the game plan he laid out for himself last year. That means talking about his vision for the nation, rather than responding to every snipe from the Gore campaign.
During the last few weeks, as Gore's poll numbers began slipping, the vice president began attacking Bradley on such things as voting for aid to the Contras, voting for Ronald Reagan's budget to slash social programs, for proposing a health-care plan that Gore said would ''destroy'' Medicaid and undermine the solvency of Medicare.
Meanwhile, Bradley has decided to ignore a longstanding rule in politics - don't let your opponent define you. Instead, the former senator refuses to answer questions raised by Gore, or to explain why he voted the way he did during 18 years in the US Senate. His campaign says Bradley will not engage in mudslinging.
''One of the reasons the Bradley campaign is doing so well is that Bill Bradley has kept things so positive,'' said James Shannon, a former Massachusetts congressman from Lawrence who actively supports Bradley. ''I think the Gore campaign has fallen into a trap with these attacks. Not just that they look desperate, but they tie themselves to a political culture that people are tired of.''
