WASHINGTON – As President Bush and Senator Kerry prepared for their first televised debate tomorrow, Senator Clinton engaged in her own competition yesterday against Senator Bailey Hutchison of Texas in a bid to woo the votes of women business owners on behalf of the Democratic ticket.

In separate speeches to a conference of politically-attuned female entrepreneurs, the two women pursued a demographic group that according to one survey has the highest voting rate in the country and is thought to lean slightly toward Republicans.

Ms. Hutchison emphasized President Bush’s tax cuts and tort reform proposals, while Mrs. Clinton painted a grim picture of the economy and touted Senator Kerry’s promise to increase federal contracting to women-owned firms.

They disagreed over the key question of whether Mr. Kerry would raise taxes on small business.

The president is the only candidate who has run a business and understands the “morass” of federal regulation, Ms. Hutchison told a national conference of the nonpartisan group Women Impacting Public Policy.

Politicians who have never been in business “do not know what the real world is like,” said Ms. Hutchison, who earlier in her career co-founded a Dallas bank and owned a candy-making company.

Mrs. Clinton stressed that Mr. Kerry had been chairman of the Senate’s small business committee and “knows how to get things done for small business.” Mr. Kerry in the 1970s co-founded and later sold a cookies-and-muffins stall in Boston’s Quincy Market.

Ms.Hutchison repeated the frequent Bush campaign charge that the senator would raise taxes on small business owners. But Mrs. Clinton, who spoke to the group several hours after her Republican counterpart and was not present for her speech, said the accusation was patently false.

“It is especially shocking when you realize that Senator Kerry has not proposed any tax increases on small businesses,” she said. She noted that the senator has proposed cuts to tax rates through tax credits for small businesses that create new jobs and buy health insurance for employees.

Ms. Hutchison twice told the audience that “the top 20% of earners in the country pay 80% of the income taxes, and that half of those are small businesses.”

Mrs. Clinton countered that the Bush campaign uses an inaccurately broad definition of small business that she said includes people who receive income from certain investments.

“A CEO who rents his condo in Aspen would be a small business owner under his approach,” Mrs. Clinton said.

Mrs. Clinton spent much of her speech painting a gloomy economic picture of the economic legacy of the Bush administration.

“If you really add up what is happening to all the economic indicators, I think we are headed for stagnation at best,” Mrs. Clinton said.

She emphasized that a massive deficit, rising interest rates, high oil prices, and escalating health care costs are increasing the cost of doing business. “The largest [deficits] in our nation’s history are waiting out there like some gigantic sea monster to come after us,” she said.

Ms. Hutchison seized on the energy issue, blaming Mr. Kerry and his running-mate Senator Edwards for helping to block in the Senate the president’s energy plan, which includes tax credits for renewable energy and incentives for off-shore drilling.

Mrs. Clinton drew applause by stating that Mr. Kerry will increase the seta-sides in federal contracts for women owned businesses and restore cuts to the Small Business Administration.

“The administration is cutting the very programs that have helped millions of women business owners invest in new equipment, hire new workers, and find opportunities to grow their businesses,” she said.

Ms. Hutchison won applause when she touted the president’s plan for tort reform, including caps on jury awards for noneconomic damages in medical malpractice cases that she said increase health care costs for small businesses. She said Messrs. Kerry and Edwards have helped block medical malpractice caps in the Senate.