Godfather Gore?

By ANN BLACKMAN AND JOHN F. DICKERSON/WASHINGTON

Wonder why Bill Bradley's former Senate colleagues have little to say about the dark-horse candidate? There's a perception in the Democratic cloakroom that anyone who publicly speaks well of him these days will pay a price. "It's been made clear to me that the things I say about Bradley that are nice are heard in Gore's office," says Delaware's Joe Biden, who may endorse Bradley. Biden isn't sweating, and the threats haven't kept Senators Paul Wellstone of Minnesota and Bob Kerrey of Nebraska from endorsing him, but other Senators feel the heat. "There is a clear message that there shouldn't be a primary," says a staff member for a Senator who has already told Gore he will support him. According to Biden, since Gore launched his campaign, some Senators have sensed that the V.P.'s team would strike against anyone sounding too many pro-Bradley notes. "Ninety-five percent of my colleagues here on the Democratic side believe that Bill Clinton has consciously turned over the reins of political power--the power of appointment, the power of pardon, the power relating to those things that affect partisan politics--to Al Gore," Biden says. "Whether that's true or not, and it appears to be, is not really the point. That's an unusual tactic, a 1940s tactic. Not retribution, but just real clear." Gore's camp had no response.

--By Ann Blackman and John F. Dickerson/Washington