He has barely a visible campaign apparatus yet and he says he wants to defer re-election politicking as long as he can. But demurrals aside, President Clinton all but officially opened his re-election campaign here today as he embarked on a mission to raise $3 million over the coming week.

Returning to New Jersey, a pivotal state in Presidential politics that gave Mr. Clinton a narrow victory in 1992, the President addressed his first major fund-raising event of the 1996 campaign tonight, urging Democrats to come to his side in what he said was a "debate of first principles" taking place in Washington.

"We ask you for your voice," Mr. Clinton told Democrats gathered for a $1,000-a-plate dinner at the Garden State Convention Center in Somerset, a dinner that party officials expected would raise $1 million. "We ask you for your labors. We ask you for your passion. We ask you for your heart. We are going to have to fight and debate and struggle to make sure that in this season we make the right decisions."

The President heatedly assailed the Senate defeat today of Dr. Henry Foster Jr. as Surgeon General as a vote against a woman's right to choose abortion. And he vowed to fight to keep a ban on assault weapons, referring to the narrow defeat of Gov. Jim Florio, a Democrat, in 1993, a defeat that some have partly attributed to his support of gun control.