Tsongas Running Hard to Stay in the Fast Lane : Politics: Democratic candidate is jamming his schedule as he tries to take advantage of momentum. His campaign is showing signs of disorganization.

RAPID CITY, S.D. — If these are trying times for Paul E. Tsongas, you could hardly tell it on Monday as he shook hands, humored children and swiped a french fry off the plate of a diner at a corner restaurant here, his demeanor as usual self-effacing and his humor dry.

But for the second time in a week, Tsongas woke up the winner the morning after an election, only to find himself lost in the hubbub over surprise second-place finishers--Patrick J. Buchanan on the Republican side in New Hampshire and fellow Democrat Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr. on Sunday in Maine.

Indeed, there is still a chance that Tsongas has not won Maine at all because the final results of the excruciatingly tight caucuses there will not be known for some time.

Even if Tsongas does hold on, it will be a thinner victory than expected, and it presents a political imperative: With his momentum from New Hampshire fading, the former Massachusetts senator dearly needs a victory, and fast.

Tsongas himself was looking at the bright side on Monday, denying that Brown’s showing cast any doubts on his own momentum.

“We got more votes than Bill Clinton and Bob Kerrey and Tom Harkin put together, and I think that’s a powerful message,” Tsongas told reporters outside Augustana College in Sioux Falls, S.D., where he campaigned before heading to Rapid City.

“If I had said to you three weeks ago I would get more votes than Harkin, Kerrey and Clinton combined in Maine, you would not believe me.”

As Tsongas suggested, the last few weeks have hurled him into the political maelstrom. And his campaign, a small-time operation that likely would have folded had he lost in New Hampshire, is now showing the effects of blossoming overnight into a national organization.

Strategically, the campaign appears to be struggling over where best to aim its still-limited funds. Events have been scheduled and canceled willy-nilly, replaced by other events that sometimes come off and sometimes do not. Just where he is going is sometimes unknown--even to Tsongas--until just hours before he gets there.

The sometimes exasperating disorganization is, in part, the price of success.

Tsongas, for example, looks exhausted after a weeklong marathon that has seen him run the circuit from Maine to Georgia to South Dakota and back again several times. Aides had planned to give him the day off Wednesday but instead they scheduled a second trip to Georgia, where Tsongas hopes to capitalize on a well-received visit last Friday.

Georgia is one of two states with March 3 primaries in which Tsongas has shifted his hopes since New Hampshire and which could provide the kind of boost he needs going into the Super Tuesday primaries in the South a week later.

A poll of Colorado voters published Sunday in the Denver Post showed Tsongas’ support at 28%, followed closely by Clinton at 24% and the remainder of the candidates in single digits. Tsongas was particularly pleased by the results because he has not campaigned in Colorado for four months.

“The fact that I could do well in a state that I’ve not been to in some time--I’m just very excited,” he said. “I have more wins than anybody else, so there’s no reason to stop that streak.”

The poll virtually dictated new appearances by Tsongas in Colorado, and he plans to campaign there this weekend. But campaign operatives said that shift required him to cut back time in the South and in Maryland, another March 3 primary state that Tsongas had decreed would prove he is not just a New Hampshire flash-in-the-pan.