Brown Blasts Rivals on Fund Raising : Politics: Presidential candidate opens national headquarters in Santa Monica. He calls on competitors to ‘cut the umbilical cord to the corrupt status quo.’

Capping his first week in the presidential race, former California Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr. blasted his Democratic rivals Saturday for running “hidden” campaigns focused on raising money from “a small, tiny fraction of the wealthiest people in the country.”

Appearing before 200 supporters who gathered to mark the opening of his national campaign headquarters in Santa Monica, Brown described his candidacy as a “challenge” to all his competitors “to cut the umbilical cord to the corrupt status quo.”

“You have these hidden candidates foraging, foraging hotel dining rooms, not for scraps of food but for campaign contributions, large ones,” Brown declared to laughter and applause. “They’re not meeting people, they’re not having gatherings like this because there’s no time.”

In fact, since declaring his candidacy in Philadelphia last Monday, Brown has averaged only one public event a day, while devoting the rest of his time to private fund-raisers, and radio and television appearances. But Brown has limited himself to contributions of $100 or less, while his opponents are all accepting up to the legal maximum of $1,000.

Brown said Saturday that his unorthodox, low-budget campaign--which so far has relied heavily on volunteers, hired only a skeleton staff, and placed unusual emphasis on talk radio and cable television for disseminating his message--provided him the independence to pursue fundamental reforms.

“What I am trying to do is short-circuit that whole process and build a whole new constituency,” Brown said. “Because the vise of . . . the traditional orthodox method of running for major office is that even if you win, by the time you get to where you’re going . . . the existing patterns of relationship have not been changed.

“The lobbyists are still in Washington,” he added. “The $100 million from the PACs are still going half to the Democrats, half to the Republicans. . . . No real decision has been created and no real mobilization of political energy has happened.”

While a campaign crew filmed the event for possible use in advertisements, Brown called for enhanced steps to protect the environment, a reassessment of U.S. spending to protect Europe from a diminished Soviet threat, and greater respect for Third World cultures endangered by “this idea of progress that just moves people aside.”

He also offered some specific ideas for diminishing the influence of money in politics, including allowing challengers the same free-mailing privileges as incumbents, and requiring television and radio stations, as a condition of their federal license, to provide a “certain amount of free time” to candidates.

But he seemed most animated when defending his tenure as governor of California--he compared his appointments to the state Supreme Court favorably with President Bush’s choices for the federal high court--and lashing his fellow Democrats for their complicity in Washington’s “decrepit pattern of governing.”

“The existing leadership of the Democratic Party . . . are incapable of carrying out a new initiative,” Brown said scornfully. “The major shifts that are going on in the country are initiated by the Republicans and the Republican Party . . . and it is evidence of why we need to restore vitality to the opposition party.”