Tsongas Plans to Tell Today Whether He’ll Resume Race

WASHINGTON —  Former Massachusetts Sen. Paul E. Tsongas plans to announce today whether he will resume the presidential bid he suspended on March 19, but his wife, Niki, said Tuesday it was “highly unlikely” he would rejoin the fight.

“He would have to do well (in the New York primary) and Gov. Clinton would have to do poorly,” Mrs. Tsongas said before the polls closed Tuesday.

Many former Tsongas campaign workers interpreted that to mean that Tsongas would have to get more than 20% of the vote, and that Clinton would have to lose.

One Tsongas adviser said there was “no way to deny Bill Clinton the nomination” and Tsongas would only alienate the inevitable nominee if he got back in.

The adviser said Tsongas was being counseled to stay out. “The powers that be around him say absolutely not,” said the adviser, who insisted on anonymity.

The adviser said a 20% Tsongas showing in New York would not guarantee 51% anywhere else, particularly in Ohio or Pennsylvania, which are demographically similar to states in which Tsongas lost big when he was in the race.

In an address to a group of business executives in Washington on Tuesday, Tsongas blamed money troubles for his exit and said he would have been “penniless” going into New York. He estimated he would have needed $3 million to win the state.

“The business community for the most part wasn’t worth a damn,” Tsongas told the executives. “I’m probably the candidate who had more people who rode the trains into Wall Street commending me on my position. It never entered their mind to keep it alive.”

Tsongas said he’d had many pledges of contributions and fund raising since he suspended his campaign--enough to put up a real fight in late primaries if he got back in. But he expressed some bitterness that the offers had not come sooner.