MANCHESTER, N.H. (AP)—Sen. Paul Simon turned his fire away Sunday from Rep. Richard Gephardt and focused it on Gov. Michael Dukakis, generally seen as the frontrunner in New Hampshire’s primary on Tuesday.

Television ads that began airing Sunday show Simon describing himself as a candidate with compassion for people and Dukakis as a bureaucrat.

“Mike Dukakis has accused me of being an old-fashioned Democrat,” Simon says in the commercial. “I plead guilty.

“It’s not enough to have ambition, the fire in the belly to be president. You should also have vision and substance and conviction and the fire in the heart for working men and women and the less fortunate,” he said.

Dukakis is expected to win the primary, with Simon and Gephardt fighting it out for second place.

“I think it is increasingly clear that Paul Simon is now ahead of Dick Gephardt,” the Illinois senator told reporters while campaigning in Manchester. “It is clear from the momentum, the phone calling we’re making in New Hampshire.”

Simon said polls have always underestimated his strength. “It was true four years ago when I ran for U.S. Senate. Not a single published poll showed me a winner. It was true for Iowa last week.”

Simon finished second, behind Gephardt and ahead of Dukakis, in the Iowa caucuses last Monday. He needs a strong showing in the New Hampshire primary to stay in the race and to put him in a better position to raise funds for his campaign which is a half million dollars in debt.

Simon said that making Dukakis the focus of his new ads had nothing to do with Gephardt’s criticism of his television campaign against the Missouri congressman. In the earlier advertising blitz, Simon had accused Gephardt of coming up with campaign themes that ran counter to his voting record.

After the news conference, Simon campaigned in the streets and one of his stops was the Dukakis campaign headquarters, where he greeted workers.

He also made a stop at a florist’s to buy Valentine’s Day roses for his wife, Jeanne, who was accompanying him.

Earlier, at the Temple Israel, he telephoned Elena Keis-Kuna, a Soviet refusenik who has been on a hunger strike for 12 days in Leningrad.

“I just want to wish you the very best,” Simon told Keis-Kuna, who has been trying to get visas to Israel for herself, her husband and her son. “We are grateful to you for your courage.”