Durham, N.H. ? Eight Democratic presidential contenders on Tuesday strongly disputed that Howard Dean was the party’s best chance for beating President Bush, or that former Vice President Al Gore’s endorsement of the front-runner would seal the nomination.

“This race is not over,” declared Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts as the candidates gathered in this first-in-the-nation primary state for the year’s eighth and final debate. The first votes will be cast in Iowa’s Jan. 19 caucuses and New Hampshire’s Jan. 27 primary.

One after another, the field ganged up on Dean, who has a double-digit lead in New Hampshire polls, and Gore in an effort to take the luster off the newly minted endorsement. They appealed to the independent streak of voters and suggested the endorsement smacked of old-style party machine politics.

Joe Lieberman, Gore’s spurned 2000 running mate, asserted that “my chances have actually increased today.” The Connecticut senator said people had stopped him in the airport to express outrage over Gore’s backing of Dean.

For his part, Dean told the others: “Attack me. Don’t attack Al Gore. I don’t think he deserves to be attacked by anybody up here.”

Clearly Gore’s endorsement overshadowed the debate. In 2000, Gore won the popular vote by half a million votes but conceded to Republican George Bush after a tumultuous 36-day recount in Florida and a 5-4 Supreme Court vote against him. The endorsement of Bill Clinton’s No. 2 was a coveted prize for the Democratic hopefuls.

Not giving up

The response to Gore’s stunning decision was precipitated when one of the debate’s moderators, ABC’s Ted Koppel, opened the debate by inviting the field of nine candidates to “raise your hand if you believe that Gov. Dean can beat George Bush.”

Only one, Dean, raised his hand.

Democratic presidential hopeful Rev. Al Sharpton, right, points toward former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, left, as they stand with Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., background center, retired general Wesley Clark, second from left, and Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., far right. The candidates joked together after their debate Tuesday at the University of New Hampshire in Durham, N.H.

In endorsing Dean earlier in the day at campaign stops in New York and Iowa, Gore urged Democrats to unite behind the front-runner and said, “We don’t have the luxury of fighting among ourselves.”

That touched off an avalanche of criticism from Dean’s rivals.

Al Sharpton said Gore’s tactics smacked of “bossism,” and added, “We’re not going to have any big name come in now and tell us the field should be limited … No Democrat should shut us up today.”

Said Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina: “We’re not going to have a coronation.”

And Rep. Dick Gephardt of Missouri declared, “I’m sure all of us think we have the best chance to beat George Bush.” But, he said, he stood a better chance than the others in the battleground states of the Midwest that would likely decide the election.

Winning in the South

As the debate at the University of New Hampshire focused on other topics, Kerry was asked whether Democrats could win in conservative, deeply religious parts of the South, given the importance Bush has put on religion.

“There is nothing conservative or traditionally Republican about this administration,” Kerry said. “It is radical in the way that it has trampled on that fine line drawn between church and state and in the way it has trampled, through its attorney general, on the civil rights of Americans.”