The Democratic mayoral nominee, Fernando Ferrer, yesterday pegged a campaign event with a failed Democratic presidential nominee, Senator Kerry, to the problem of uninsured children in the city. Less than an hour later, Mayor Bloomberg presented a plan to tackle that very problem.

The near simultaneous campaign stops marked the second time in the last week that Messrs. Bloomberg and Ferrer have addressed the same issue on the same day.

Political analysts said it was another sign that Mr. Bloomberg, who is leading in most public opinion polls by nearly 30 percentage points, is not willing to give his opponent even the smallest opening for positive press coverage.

“It’s no coincidence that the Bloomberg campaign announces these initiatives on the same day that the insurgent Democratic nominee is trying to get traction on his own initiatives,” a political consultant, Scott Levenson, said. “The Bloomberg campaign has run a fairly sophisticated program of stepping on the news stories of the insurgent.”

Yesterday started as a potentially positive day for Mr. Ferrer, with Mr. Kerry standing by his side praising Mr. Ferrer’s commitment to “Democratic ideals” and urging voters to get behind him.

“I think he’s in touch with Democratic values and I hope the Democrats here in this city are going to embrace those values and make him the next mayor of this great city,” Mr. Kerry said.

Mr. Kerry – who won about 1.8 million votes in New York City, about three times as many as President Bush – did not attack Mr. Bloomberg. When pressed by reporters, though, he said, “a lot of money was transferred” from the mayor to Republicans in Washington like Rep. Tom DeLay, the former House majority leader.

“He’s a Republican,” Mr. Kerry said, referring to the mayor. “I’m a Democrat, and I think the country is better served” by Democrats, he said.

Mr. Kerry cited a proposal Mr. Ferrer presented in August calling for enrolling 290,000 eligible children and 200,000 adults citywide in public health insurance programs. It also seeks to expand community health centers and to upgrade technology to make enrolling in health insurance less burdensome.

The Ferrer campaign said its plan would save the city about $500 million annually.

Yesterday, Mr. Bloomberg attempted to one-up his opponent when he said his plan would seek to get all of the uninsured children enrolled in insurance plans, subsidize enrollment in private health insurance for low-income families, and invest $25 million in new technology to provide electronic medical records to 3,000 doctors in public hospitals and clinics citywide.

Mr. Bloomberg did not put a total cost or total savings amount on the plan, but a spokesman for his campaign, Jordan Barowitz, said it was disingenuous for Mr. Ferrer to say the city would save money from a plan that hinges on outside factors, like the state to agreeing to take over Family Health Plus.

The Bloomberg campaign put the number of eligible children at 214,000 and later cited the Mayor’s Office of Health Insurance Access as its source. A spokeswoman for Mr. Ferrer said the campaign’s figure came from a United Hospital Fund report.

“We’ve added a million people to the public health insurance rolls over the last four years,” Mr. Bloomberg told reporters in the Bronx.

“We’ve done all the right things and we keep going,” he added. “Do we have more to do? Absolutely, we do have more to do, and that’s why we’ve got to reach out with these programs.”

Last week, Mr. Bloomberg expanded on his plan to provide “affordable housing” in the city on the same day Mr. Ferrer was holding an event about the issue with the former secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Andrew Cuomo.

A Ferrer spokeswoman, Christy Setzer, said yesterday, “After four long years, Mike Bloomberg’s finally giving answers to the problems he’s ignored, but he loses points for plagiarism.”

It turns out, however, that Rep. Anthony Weiner, one of three Democrats who ran against Mr. Ferrer in the Democratic mayoral primary, released his health care plan in May, before either of the current candidates. It was similar to the Bloomberg and Ferrer plans.