ASHINGTON - Vice President Al Gore picked up an unusual early endorsement from the country's biggest abortion rights group yesterday - an endorsement apparently timed to take some steam out of rival Bill Bradley's effort to question Gore's record on the issue.
Bradley, meanwhile, snared the backing of local members of the Teamsters union in Atlantic City, N.J., chipping away at Gore's image as organized labor's favored candidate.
Both events reflected more the politics of the Democratic presidential primary than policy differences between the men. Both Bradley and Gore are proponents of abortion rights, and both have energetically sought labor backing.
For Gore, the public backing by the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League - which rarely makes endorsements in a primary election - may give the vice president cover from the relentless attack by Bradley on Gore's uneven abortion record.
For Bradley, the endorsement by the local Teamsters reminds voters that while Gore has snagged endorsements of union leadership, the rank-and-file may still go for Bradley. Although Gore already had the endorsement of the union's parent group, the AFL-CIO, a majority of delegates representing 450,000 Teamsters in the Eastern Region (from Maine to South Carolina) expressed support for Bradley's candidacy in a nonbinding vote yesterday.
A spokesman for the AFL-CIO called the vote ''a spontaneous expression of support'' and said it would not affect the union's official backing of Gore.
In backing Gore yesterday, NARAL president Kate Michelman talked less about Gore than she did about the ''divisive'' fight between the Democratic candidates on abortion rights - a clear reference to Bradley's ongoing assault on Gore's record.
''The threat to this freedom (to have an abortion) is too great to be used in a divisive, political way,'' Michelman said.
Gore also criticized Bradley's tactics, although Gore did not once mention the former New Jersey senator by name.
''We cannot play political games on an issue as fundamental as a woman's right to choose,'' Gore told a small crowd at a Washington, D.C., hotel.
The NARAL endorsement of Gore was a blow to Bradley, who had put Gore on the defensive on the issue. But Bradley plans to continue hammering Gore on his opposition, early in his political career, to federal funding for abortions and for writing to constituents in the 1980s that abortion was ''arguably the taking of human life.''
''I'm very surprised that NARAL would support Al Gore since he had an 84 percent right to life record and I've had a 99 percent NARAL record,'' Bradley said after speaking to students at an Orthodox Jewish school in Brooklyn. ''I don't understand it. I think they need to explain it a little better than they have.''
Bradley, who has depicted Gore as a Washington insider who is beholden to special interests, said of the endorsement: ''This is what a Washington-based interest group would do.''
In terms of the candidates' lifetime voting record with NARAL, Bradley has a 99 percent rating and Gore 61.
A Democratic strategist close to NARAL said Michelman was moved to make the endorsement because she was worried the Republicans, whose party platform opposes abortion, would use the fight between Bradley and Gore to weaken the eventual nominee.
''Kate got angry with Bradley when he made that attack'' against Gore, the source said.
But if the endorsement was intended to quell the sniping between the two camps, it didn't work. Bradley and his supporters were furious over the endorsement.
''Bradley is more prochoice because Bradley was prochoice way back when,'' said Carol Greitzer, NARAL president from 1969-72. ''Gore's record currently is fine. But he was not there at the beginning.''
Gore insists he now unequivocably favors abortion rights, which Bradley does not dispute. The issue, Bradley campaign staffers say, is Gore's lack of candor about his record.
''Fortunately, Al Gore is pro-choice today. But he has yet to explain his evolution; in fact, he has yet to fully acknowledge his antichoice past,'' said Gina Glantz, Bradley's campaign manager and a former consultant to NARAL.
NARAL's endorsement ''is a typically Washington decision that has more to do with politics than a woman's right to choose,'' Glantz said.
