AN ANTONIO - Flanked by two Lone Star state flags and a clutch of poor families, Vice President Al Gore fired the latest shots in his budget battle with Texas Governor George W. Bush yesterday - from close range.
In a nondescript conference room in a San Antonio neighborhood, Gore renewed his criticisms of Bush's fiscal abilities during a visit to the governor's home state, through the stories of mothers who were struggling to get health care for their children.
''This is a wonderful state,'' Gore said. ''But I think it should be a state where it is just as easy to raise a child as to set up an oil rig.''
Gore assailed Texas's record on providing health care for children and families, and accused the governor of failing to make it a high enough priority. Instead, Gore argued, Bush had pushed through a large tax cut, which contributed to a budget shortfall, leaving little for the women and children who sat beside the vice president yesterday.
Bush was quick with an irritated reply, calling Gore's characterization of his Texas record a travesty.
''I'm disappointed that the vice president of all the United States would come to one of those states and try to mislead people about our state's budget,'' Bush told reporters gathered at the governor's mansion in Austin.
''Our Texas budget is balanced and our Texas budget is in the black. We have a surplus of $1.4 billion in the bank,'' Bush said. ''For Vice President Gore to claim otherwise for his own political purposes is a travesty and he should be ashamed.''
Gore clearly sensed that he was walking a fine line, coming to Texas to highlight the line of attack he has favored all week. Bush is popular in Texas, and Gore seemed aware that too strident a skewering would make him look overly aggressive and negative. So the vice president took care to credit the governor in a backhanded sort of way.
''I understand Governor Bush is a popular and well-liked governor here, and I want to give him some credit on that score,'' Gore said. ''I think he has a warm and engaging personality. But you know, the presidency is more than just a popularity contest. It involves whether or not you're willing to fight for what is right, whether you're willing to spend some of that popularity doing some difficult and hard things. That's where you get to priorities.''
The most forceful criticisms of the governor came not from Gore but from the women on stage with him who told stories of health care delayed for want of adequate medical insurance, and from local elected representatives - Democrats all - who pilloried the governor for neglecting their constituents.
But Bush and his surrogates aggressively defended their record yesterday, and suggested they welcome the Gore stratagem.
''If this becomes a question of Governor Bush's stewardship vs. Al Gore's lack of leadership, that's a fight we look forward to,'' said Ari Fleischer, a Bush campaign spokesman. ''That's a fight the vice president can't win.''
Bush said the Gore effort to ''distort and mislead'' would serve only to remind voters of what they dislike in politicians. And he went on to quote former New Jersey senator Bill Bradley who questioned Gore's veracity during the primary battle: ''Why should the American people believe Vice President Gore will tell the truth as president if he doesn't tell the truth as a candidate?''
Strategists and outside observers were divided on whether Gore's focus on Texas would work.
The state of the state surplus is at the core of Gore's argument. That surplus soared to a record $6.4 billion in 1999, at the start of the state's two-year budget cycle. Bush pushed, and the Texas Legislature approved, two major uses for that surplus: $3.8 billion for a school finance bill, and $1.7 billion for a tax cut. Those two expenditures, and other smaller ones, used up the entire surplus, said Dick Lavine, a senior fiscal analyst at the nonpartisan, Austin-based Center for Public Policy Priorities.
Now, Texas faces unanticipated expenses of at least $610 million, including $400 million to pay for a Medicaid shortfall from rising prescription drug costs, and $100 million to cover the extra costs of housing prisoners from the overflowing state prisons.
But the Texas budget will stay out of the red this year, since the state is also running a surplus this year of $1.1 billion. Yesterday, with Gore in the state, the Republican comptroller raised her estimate of the surplus to $1.4 billion.
The rainy day fund in Texas, which is separate from the surplus, contains $84 million, which Lavine said would run the state's government for only 16 hours.
Gore has been contrasting the rising federal surplus with Texas' shrinking one to make the argument that Bush would wreak havoc on the nation's economy with his tax cut proposals. He has been saying the governor's $1.7 billion tax cut left Texas without sufficient resources to deal with more pressing social needs. Neither he nor aides make mention of the larger $3.8 billion schools expenditure.
This is not the first time a presidential candidate has used his opponent's local record against him. In 1988, then-vice president George Bush traveled to Boston Harbor, then one of the most polluted in the country, to embarrass Governor Michael Dukakis. And in 1992, President Bush and other Republicans tried to tar then-Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton with accusations that he was ''the failed governor of a small state.''
''The Boston Harbor analogy does have some credibility here,'' Gore press secretary Chris Lehane said. But the harbor pollution was one example of an unexpected local weakness, Lehane said. ''There's a whole slew of Boston Harbors in Texas. We could do one a day, and that's because of the choices the governor has made.''
But will the strategy work this time, given the very circumstances and candidates? It was phenomenally successful in 1988, but produced no joy for President Bush in 1992.
''We went after Clinton's Arkansas record in '92 and we were firing blanks,'' said Charles R. Black Jr., the Republican strategist who worked on the former president's 1988 and 1992 races. ''It didn't work.''
Black, who is advising the younger Bush this year, said the Texas governor will likewise withstand Gore's onslaught. He contends that Bush's record of bipartisan accomplishment, and the willingness of some Democrats to stand up on his behalf, will inoculate the governor.
Rob Junell, the Democratic chairman of the House General Appropriations Committee stepped forward yesterday to defend Bush against the vice president's criticism that he has mishandled the state's budget.
Gore's focus on the plight of Texas children - noting that Texas ranks second worst in the nation in the percentage and number of uninsured children and that Texas children are less likely to be immunized than in other states - left Black similarly unimpressed.
''He can go down and say there are still a lot of poor people in Texas, but Clinton and Gore have been in office a lot longer than Bush has been governor. What have they done?'' Black asked.
