Brown Draws Big Crowds, Little Support : Politics: Colorado audiences seem enthusiastic, but the candidate is down in the polls. His campaign faces financial problems.

So many people turned out to see former California Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr. at a coffeehouse here earlier this week that police had to close off the street to accommodate the overflow.

At another stop on the same campaign swing, Brown’s appearance at the University of Colorado in Boulder attracted an audience estimated at more than 2,000 people--one of the largest crowds to turn out for a Democratic presidential contender anywhere to date.

And yet, nightly polls conducted for the Denver Post and a local television station continue to show Brown drawing only single-digit support among expected voters in Tuesday’s primary. His 9% showing in Thursday’s survey placed him a distant third to former Massachusetts Sen. Paul E. Tsongas and Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, both of whom receive about a quarter of the vote in the polls.

The disparity between Brown’s enthusiastic crowds and his lackluster standing in the polls frames the key question facing his campaign.

By battling Tsongas to a virtual tie in last Sunday’s Maine caucuses, Brown demonstrated his ability to mobilize a core of committed supporters large enough to make an impact in a contest where turnout is small. Only about 13,000 people voted in the Maine caucuses.

But Brown has yet to prove that his anti-politics, up-the-organization appeal is broad enough to attract the wider audiences that decide primaries--especially because he lacks the funds to buy the amount of television advertising needed to efficiently reach large numbers of voters.

“Winning among 13,000 people is a whole lot different than winning among 130,000 people or 1.3 million people,” said Democratic pollster Mark Mellman.

Among the seven states voting next Tuesday, Brown has chosen Colorado as the place he hopes to make a breakthrough.

At stake for Brown in the state’s primary is more than a chance to silence his skeptics; his campaign’s financial viability may also be on the table.

Because Brown has failed to win at least 10% of the vote in two consecutive primaries--the opening contests in New Hampshire and South Dakota--he now faces the loss of his eligibility for federal matching funds in 30 days. The federal government matches up to $250 of individual contributions to presidential candidates.

For Brown’s already low-budget campaign--which as part of distinguishing itself from the political Establishment accepts no contributions greater than $100--any sustained loss of matching funds would be devastating. Through January, he had received more than $390,000 in matching funds--a sum that represents almost 40% of his total receipts.

Brown can regain his eligibility for federal money only by winning at least 20% of the vote in an upcoming primary. With Colorado targeted as his best bet to achieve that goal, he crisscrossed the state Monday through Wednesday.

A politician who once prided himself on confounding ideological labels, Brown now is running hard to the left, spicing his assaults on special interest money with ingredients drawn from the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s 1984 and 1988 presidential races.

Like Jackson, Brown now argues that only greater social equity will reinvigorate the economy and that bringing alienated voters back to the polls is key to carrying the Democrats to the White House.

Brown also is aiming his efforts at the groups that comprised the white, liberal elements of Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition: environmentalists, gay rights activists, consumer organizations and, especially, students.

“I certainly would like that Rainbow Coalition,” Brown said as he toured a Denver home for the elderly. “There isn’t time for me to build a totally personal campaign. I have to be the spokesperson for a variety of constituencies that have historically looked to the non-right party in America.”

To strengthen his credibility with those activist groups, Brown has begun promising to tap Jackson as his vice president if he wins the nomination.

Jackson, for his part, considers such discussion “premature and kind of moot” until the party selects its nominee, said Frank Watkins, his spokesman.

Also, there are signs Jackson is more receptive to one of Brown’s rivals--he plans to campaign in his native South Carolina next week with Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin.

But many in Brown’s enthusiastic Colorado audiences this week see him as a worthy successor to Jackson as a tribune of the Democrats’ true faith in a year when Tsongas and Clinton are gleefully trampling party orthodoxies.