Gore's New Ball Game

While flying to Houston on the afternoon of the New Hampshire primary, Al Gore phoned his campaign manager, Fred Martin, and got word that Paul Simon seemed to be capturing the second spot, behind Michael Dukakis. The Tennessee Senator could not suppress a smile: Super Tuesday might in fact herald the "new ball game" he had been predicting. But Gore wasn't smiling when he talked to Martin later. Richard Gephardt was scoring a solid second, undermining Gore's risky gambit of skirting the early contests. Instead of facing two liberal Yankees on Super Tuesday, Gore must now jump-start against a Border State moderate with Southern appeal. "Gephardt has an anti-foreign, anti- Establishment pitch -- a send-'em-a-message message," says Political Consultant Carter Eskew, a friend of Gore's. "That and the populism of resentment are likely to do well in a part of the country that gave birth to Huey Long and George Wallace."

A shared desire to keep Gephardt down had led to an alliance between Gore and Simon in New Hampshire, with their lieutenants trading intelligence. Gore had not-so-secret hopes of pulling off a surprise: he campaigned 42 days and spent $400,000 there, about the same as the front runners. But he was unable to beat even Jesse Jackson. Among the last calls he made Tuesday night were one to Martin and one to Albert Gore Sr., his father-mentor. The two men agreed: it was time for the candidate to start explicitly attacking Gephardt. And thus the new ball game began.