Tsongas-Clinton Rivalry Heads to Duel in Florida

Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton campaigned through Florida on Wednesday, seeking to persuade voters that former Massachusetts Sen. Paul E. Tsongas stands too far to the right on economic issues. Tsongas, who ended his day in the state, said he plans to concentrate on getting better known among the South’s black and lower-middle-class voters.

Strategists for the two front-runners for the Democratic presidential nomination believe Florida, with its diverse population and unique mixture of Southern and non-Southern elements, is shaping up as the main battleground among the 11 states voting in next week’s Super Tuesday slate of primaries and caucuses.

Former California Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr., meanwhile, embarked on a campaign swing through Arizona, Nevada and Texas seeking to capitalize on the newfound political credibility he won with his victory in the Colorado primary Tuesday.

The vote, he wryly proclaimed, had transformed him from “nuisance to wild card” in the eyes of political pundits. He also said his campaign had a new motto, which he recited in Latin: “Ad astra per aspera.-- To the stars, through the thorns.”

During his campaign stops, he pushed hard for support from unions and environmentalists as he tried to occupy the left side of the political playing field.

Clinton, campaigning in Miami’s predominantly black Liberty City area, ridiculed Tsongas’ economic approach as “the same view we had in the ‘80s--lower the cost of money to people who invest in stocks, relax the accountability rules on people who run big corporations in the country and they’ll do everything right and fix this economy up.”

“Tell that to the Pan Am workers,” Clinton said, referring to laid-off Florida airline employees. “Tell that to the people who live up and down these streets.”

Tsongas, reacting to results in the Georgia and Maryland primaries Tuesday that saw Clinton win the lion’s share of support from black and lower-middle-class voters, said he will try to improve his performance among those segments of the electorate on Super Tuesday. He hopes to do that, in part, by emphasizing what he can do for the economy, he said.

“You have to become a comfortable commodity--people have to get a sense of you, and that takes time,” he told reporters during a stop at Chatham Steel, a steel distributor in Columbia, S.C. “Ultimately, I have to convince people that I can restore the economy.”

In Tuesday’s votes, Clinton won the Georgia contest--his first victory in the campaign season--while Tsongas won the Maryland and Utah primaries and appeared headed for a win in the Washington state caucuses.

Tsongas flew to Florida late Wednesday and campaigned among unemployed white-collar workers. He repeated his opposition to Clinton’s proposal for a middle-class tax cut that would be paid for by increased taxes on those with annual family incomes exceeding $150,000. The proposal would do nothing to create new jobs, he said.

On a day when one of the five major Democratic candidates, Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey, appeared to be taking steps to drop out of the field, Tsongas insisted that he did not see the contest as a two-person race.

Referring to Brown’s Colorado win, and to Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin’s victory in the Iowa caucuses in early February and in the Idaho and Minnesota caucuses Tuesday, Tsongas said: “They’ve all won as many states, or more, than Bill Clinton. So why would we presume that they’re out?”

In the effort to avoid a two-person race, Tsongas got probably more help than he really wanted from Brown, who attacked Tsongas Wednesday for his ties to the nuclear power industry and lambasted him for his proposals to cut capital gains taxes.

“Mr. Tsongas can say all he wants that he’s ‘no Santa Claus,’ ” Brown said at a campaign stop in Las Vegas, referring to one of Tsongas’ favorite lines when he describes his economic proposals. “But he’s got to have something in his sack other than capital gains lollipops for the people who pay for his campaign.”

Looking for a victory in Sunday’s Nevada caucuses, Brown sought to link Tsongas with nuclear power and to capitalize on widespread opposition to a proposed nuclear waste facility at Yucca Mountain, about 100 miles north of Las Vegas.

Tsongas, he told several hundred students at a noon rally at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, “is a director of a nuclear utility called the Boston Edison Co. that every hour creates nuclear waste, and nobody knows what to do with it, and they want to put it in Nevada, and I want to stop it.”

Later, Brown picketed with members of unions who have been on strike for six months at the Frontier Hotel, speaking to them about the need to form a “rainbow coalition” and talking by telephone with the originator of that concept, the Rev. Jesse Jackson.

Although Brown at times has talked about Jackson as a potential running mate, Jackson so far has avoided too close an identification with him. Instead, Jackson has agreed to appear in new advertisements that Harkin plans to air on television and radio in South Carolina, according to Harkin’s press secretary, Lorraine Voles.

Harkin has made South Carolina’s Saturday primary a test of whether his presidential bid remains viable. “We have the money right now to play in South Carolina,” Voles said. But beyond that, she said, “No.”

The campaign plans to reassess its position Sunday, Voles said. If Harkin does well enough in South Carolina to attract additional money, he will aim to resuscitate his campaign in the Michigan and Illinois primaries March 17.

Wednesday morning, leaders of nine unions that have supported Harkin met in Washington and agreed to continue backing his campaign at least through the Michigan vote.

Exactly how many delegates Harkin won in Minnesota remains unclear, and because of the complicated nature of determining caucus results, the actual delegate count will not be known for weeks, party officials there said Wednesday.

A similar situation holds in the state of Washington, where Tsongas won the largest share of support among those attending the caucuses Tuesday night, but where the actual delegate allocations will not be known until next week.

Results from 2,444 of Washington’s more than 6,000 caucuses showed Tsongas with 30% of the votes, an uncommitted slate with 22%, Brown with 21%, Clinton with 14%, Harkin with 8% and Kerrey with 5%.

Together, the Minnesota and Washington caucuses will determine 149 delegate votes of the 383 at stake in Tuesday’s voting. In the other five states and American Samoa that voted Tuesday, Clinton won 102 delegates, Tsongas 89, Brown 27, Harkin 6 and Kerrey none. Five uncommitted delegates won election and the votes of five other delegates from Idaho remain undetermined.

Clinton leads the delegate race overall with 198 votes to 110 for Tsongas, according to an Associated Press tally. Harkin has 79, Brown 35 and Kerrey 22. A total of 2,145 are needed to win the nomination. Clinton also leads in terms of total votes cast in the six primaries so far, having won 567,926 votes, or 38%, to Tsongas’ 466,425 votes or 31%. Brown has 176,253, 12%; Kerrey, 123,488, 8%, and Harkin, 81,288, 5%.

Times staff writer Alan Miller in Las Vegas contributed to this story.