BOSTON -- The director of Vice President Al Gore's presidential campaign in Massachusetts has acknowledged he is running operations out of the office of a lobbying and consulting firm with clients that have business before the administration.

Dennis Newman said he uses the Dewey Square Group's Boston offices as a base, along with his home. Campaign finance law prohibits corporations from providing free resources, such as phones and staff, to candidates.

"I basically work out of my home, and I've got a cell phone," Newman told the Boston Herald. The Herald reached him at the firm's office.

The Gore campaign has "contractual arrangements" with Dewey Square to pay for its services, Newman said. Newman didn't know what the exact arrangements were.

Members of the Dewey Square Group has close ties to the Gore campaign. The firm's senior partner, Michael J. Whouley, is a senior Gore advisor, and oversees the vice president's campaigns in New Hampshire and Iowa. He ran the vice president's campaign in the 1996 national election, and was national field director for the Clinton-Gore 1992 campaign.

Whouley and other Gore advisors have curbed their lobbying work during the campaign season, according to firm officials.

Newman and other Gore campaign workers have been using the firm's offices as a de facto campaign headquarters, sources close to the campaign told the Herald. The Vice President does not have an officials campaign office in Massachusetts, even though it's just seven weeks before the state's March 7 primary.

The campaign has been focusing on the New Hampshire primary, and will move to another office after Feb. 1, Newman said.

Newman is not a Dewey Square employee, but has done freelance work for them on a ballot initiative, he said.

The firm has offices in Washington, Boston and Florida. In recent years, its clients have included Northwest Airlines and Puerto Rico, In 1997, Whouley arranged at least three White House meetings for two lobbying clients. Whouley personally escorted one client to the White House meetings.