LOS ANGELES — Now that the Democratic presidential campaign has gone national, gone are the standard-fare Iowa and New Hampshire voter questions on farm policy and special education.
In their place: The retired evangelist who identified himself and his Republican seeing-eye dog as a pair named "Johnny 'n' Carson." A Hollywood church pastor who decried the Clinton administration for "declaring war" on welfare recipients and illegal immigrants.
On one hour's sleep and at the end of nearly 24 hours of nonstop campaigning, Vice President Al Gore faced perhaps the toughest test of his pledge to carry on across the nation with the question-and-answer sessions he rode to primary-season wins in Iowa and New Hampshire.
Thursday, he and his rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, Bill Bradley, were working opposite ends of California, a state with 367 of the 2,170 delegates needed to clinch the Democratic nomination.
Starting the task of chipping at Gore's 2-1 poll lead here, Bradley had a noontime outdoor rally on deck in San Francisco before heading back east to campaign in Maryland.
Gore, who scrambled his itinerary Wednesday in an effort to burnish his abortion-rights credentials, was sticking to his program Thursday with a discussion of education and the economy at a high-tech firm in the Los Angeles suburb of Venice.
Gore believes that his exhaustive courtship of undecided voters in town hall-style meetings helped him win the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday after sweeping the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 24.
Parochial issues that had become standard fare there gave way here on Wednesday to questions of gang violence, immigration, drugs and religion.
Speaking in an uncharacteristically rambling and blurred fashion that betrayed his fatigue, Gore kept on his feet at Los Angeles City College and fielded questions from undecided voters for 31/2 hours — inching close to 4 a.m. on his East Coast body clock.
Elizabeth Reeves, an LACC student in creative writing, said Gore shouldn't get too much credit for the long hours. "It goes with the job he's trying to get. You have to crisscross the country, lose sleep, whatever you can do to get the votes," she said.
As Gore met one-on-one with lingering audience members, real estate owner Beth Anderson said his endurance "showed he's truly interested in what people think."
"But I wish people would let him go and get some sleep," she added.
His face pale and his tone flat, Gore punctuated several elliptical responses with an apology. "I've given you a mouthful there. Sorry to be long-winded."
Johnny 'n' Carson (who later told a reporter his name is really Johnny Graf) asked Gore if he and his family were born-again Christians.
Gore, a Tennessee native replied yes, "But I want to say something hard on the heels of that answer."
"There is a tendency on the part of some people who are from a different part of the country from where my family and my roots are to hear that phrase in a different way. They associate that phrase 'born again' with intolerance, with Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. And the vast majority of those, especially in my part of the country that uses that phrase, don't want anything to do with that sort of mindset or attitude."