Once again, he'll have to share stage

Until now, Clark has enjoyed a luxurious month in the Granite State while most rivals jostled in Iowa. Only Senator Joseph I. Lieberman has competed for local headlines, and Clark has basked in the glow of a well-publicized surge. In recent weeks, he has drawn within 10 points of former Vermont governor Howard Dean, who once seemed to have an insurmountable lead in the polls. The crowds at Clark events are filling high school gymnasiums.

But Clark and his aides know that everything changes at some point this morning as his rivals arrive from Iowa, giddy with momentum or fighting for survival. And if the attacks Dean has faced recently are any indication, Clark's New Hampshire successes make him all the more certain a target.

The other Democrats will face a more confident Clark than the one who first hit New Hampshire this fall. He has honed his stump speech and raised enough money to ensure a constant flow of television ads, including a new one set to air after tonight's State of the Union address, attacking President Bush's record on the deficit, job creation, and health care.

And he has brought aboard some high-profile endorsers, from 1972 Democratic presidential nominee George McGovern to filmmaker Michael Moore, who whipped a packed crowd of 2,000 into a partisan frenzy at a Clark rally on Saturday.

But any sign of momentum, the Clark team knows, draws increasing scrutiny; at a town hall meeting in Newport on Sunday, at least three "trackers" from rival campaigns recorded Clark's every word on video cameras. And Clark has already started to show some signs of wariness. That night, when a man in a flannel shirt asked about Clark's earnings as a lobbyist, the candidate snapped back with unusual irritation, telling the man to "sit down" and asking if another campaign had fed him the question. The man insisted he was acting on his own.

Clark's lobbying record -- he earned nearly $500,000 working for a database company that won a deal with a Defense Department contractor -- is already mentioned in a mailing from Senator John F. Kerry's campaign. The Clark campaign has tried to take charge of the message, stressing that Clark has disclosed all of his lobbying and financial records. This week, aides opened a "reading room" at a local hotel, with copies of Clark's financial forms and military records and empty boxes set out to await Dean and Kerry's records.

Clark is likely to launch similar counterattacks on two other common lines of scrutiny: his statements, over time, about the war in Iraq, and his past votes for Republican presidents.

As they awaited the Iowa caucuses yesterday, Clark's aides were reluctant to speculate on what the results might mean. Eli Segal, Clark's campaign chairman, told reporters that the Iowa returns would have little effect on Clark's message for the week, which would focus on his status as "a leader, not a politician."

Clark, meanwhile, spent most of yesterday in South Carolina, where he marched in a Martin Luther King Day parade. He picked up endorsements from two African-American politicians: former transportation secretary Rodney Slater and Representative William Jefferson of Louisiana.