SAN ANTONIO - Lone Star flag at his back and black cowboy boots on his feet, Al Gore stirred the Texas budget tempest on his rival's home turf Thursday, accusing Gov. George W. Bush of favoring oil companies and special interests with a $1.7 billion tax cut at the expense of the state's children.
Bush retorted from Austin that Texas ''doesn't need the vice president'' to tell it how to spend its money.
The vice president acknowledged Bush's popularity here. But he said the Republican presidential contender has badly misplaced his priorities.
''This is a wonderful state but I think it should be - and I think most people agree - it should be a state where it's just as easy to raise a child as it is to set up an oil rig,'' Gore said.
''But here are the facts: Texas now ranks No. 1 in industrial pollution. It's No. 2 for child poverty. It's No. 3 for deaths from asthma.''
The Democrat paid glancing tribute to the two-term Republican governor's political strengths at home and his ''warm and engaging personality.'' But, Gore added, the presidency ''is more than just a popularity contest.''
The day played out like a long-distance duel.
Two hours after Gore's broadside, Bush said at the Governor's Mansion in Austin, 100 miles away, that Texas ''doesn't need the vice president to teach it about balanced budgets.''
Bush said he had cut taxes in a ''responsible way'' and still managed to create a $1.4 billion surplus. ''For vice president Gore to claim otherwise for his own political purposes is a travesty. He should be ashamed,'' the governor said.
Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer added that money from the state's surplus had been used for $3,000 raises for teachers statewide and to eliminate the sales tax on over-the-counter medicines, in addition to the tax cuts Gore cites.
Coincident with Gore's three-hour visit, Republican comptroller Carole Keeton Rylander upped her estimate of the state budget surplus to the $1.4 billion that Bush cited, from $1.1 billion. About half will be needed to cover at least $610 million in recently disclosed cost overruns this year in Medicaid and the prison program.
''My message to Al Gore is there is no deficit in Texas. The Texas economy is strong,'' she said, offering Gore a briefing on the numbers.
Gore spokesman Chris Lehane declined. ''She's no Alan Greenspan; she's a Republican partisan,'' Lehane said, adding that Gore preferred to talk to ''real families in this state who have been impacted by (Bush's) wrong-headed decisions.''
Perhaps a reflection of his delight in the issue that is now dominating the race, Gore appeared to be having more fun this week.
He stopped at a YMCA day care center and entertained giggling toddlers by twice balancing a broom on his nose for several seconds. ''Don't you try that at home. It could fall off your nose and poke you in the eye,'' he playfully cautioned.
Gore's health care discussion here with invited guests - state Democratic lawmakers and three single mothers of uninsured children - took place at the Seven Oaks Resort and Conference Center, a venue not exactly in tune with his message but the only one campaign aides said they could find at such late notice.
Gore scrambled his schedule a day earlier to make the trip.
No Gore campaign posters adorned the small stage; there were two Texas state flags. Two dozen demonstrators outside waved Bush campaign posters that read, ''Viva Bush'' and ''Gore can't handle the truth about Texas.''
Seated next to Gore, Carrie De La Fuente held daughter Natalia, 7, on her lap. Ms. De La Fuente said she couldn't get Medicaid for Natalia - who was released from the hospital that morning for a kidney infection and was still wearing the plastic ID bracelet - because she couldn't get time off work for the face-to-face interview Texas requires before children can qualify.
Gore accused Bush's government of throwing up obstacles to discourage enrollment and save money it ''can use for other things like the tax break for the oil companies and other special interests.''
About 1.4 million of the nation's 11 million children lacking health insurance live in Texas.
Gore has proposed a $146 billion, 10-year plan to insure every child by expanding the federal-state Children's Health Insurance Program.
The Bush campaign, concerned that Gore might be able to inflate the budget wrinkles into a national issue crippling to Bush, aggressively questioned whether cost overruns and the emergency appropriation required to cover them fairly constituted ''a serious crisis'' as Gore has put it.
''Standard budgeting adjustments,'' said spokesman Fleischer, no different from the supplemental spending that President Clinton routinely requests from Congress in order to meet unanticipated spending needs.
True, the Bush government used $5 billion from the state's $6.4 billion surplus in two years - for not only tax cuts but things such as a $3,000 teacher salary increase. But the budget is in balance, aides said.
