Two-Step Time For Bradley

Bill Bradley, wrapping up his six-day us-against-the-world presidential campaign in Washington state, says Pacific Northwest voters can send a message across the nation during Tuesday's primary.

But they have to remember to send it again in the party caucuses a week later, if he's to make a dent in Vice President Al Gore's status as front-runner for the Democratic nomination.

“This is the first step of the Washington two-step. If we do well on Tuesday, then we do well in the caucuses,” Bradley told more than 300 supporters crammed into a middle-school auditorium in Vancouver, located across the Columbia River from Portland, Ore. “Then we beat the establishment powers!”

Bradley has been campaigning in Washington state since last Wednesday in hopes of winning the state's “beauty contest” presidential primary on Tuesday. But no delegates will be awarded Tuesday; they will be apportioned based on party caucuses one week later.

Bradley planned two last events in Seattle today greeting ferry commuters and attending a rally at the University of Washington before heading off to California, which is the big prize in next week's “Super Tuesday” battle.

Gore, meanwhile, campaigned Sunday at Seattle's Franklin High School and later talked to local families in Redmond, Wash., on the issue of pipeline safety something Bradley addressed in two bills in the Senate and campaigned on here last week.

Three people were killed last June when a pipeline leak turned into a massive fireball in Bellingham, Wash. The same pipeline runs through Redmond.

Just as he stepped off Air Force Two in Denver late Sunday night, Gore hit all the local 10 o'clock TV news broadcasts with a round robin of live interviews from the tarmac.

“I don't know why the other candidates have been ignoring Colorado,” which has 51 Democratic delegates up for grabs in its March 10 primary, Gore told KMGH-TV.

But even as Gore campaigned in Colorado, he was keeping an eye over his shoulder at Washington state. He was phoning in drive-time interviews to five Seattle radio stations this morning before heading out to rallies in Denver and Pueblo.

Bradley picked up newspaper endorsements Sunday from The Hartford Courant and The Maine Sunday Telegram. Gore, who was heading to Denver, was endorsed by The Baltimore Sun.

Gore's one cutting swipe Sunday at Bradley followed a more elaborate assault late Saturday before loyalists at a state Democratic Party chili fest. There, Gore said he wanted a “clear and decisive” verdict from Tuesday's nonbinding primary, and he accused Bradley of trying to sink the Democratic Party in “a cauldron of wedge issues and phony labels.”

In his stump speeches and advertising, Bradley has been scrutinizing Gore's past record against abortion rights and gun cntrol.