Brown Outsider Theme Attracts New Attention : Campaign: A strong Western showing gives his anti- Establishment approach coverage it had failed to garner.

His voice raspy with fatigue, former California Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr. was scoring points here the other night--sometimes at his own expense.

“Sometimes they say things about me that are not true,” Brown told about 450 activists at the El Paso Women’s Political Caucus. “Gov. Moonbeam. Have you heard that one?”

“I once went to Africa with Linda Ronstadt,” he continued, prompting applause from many in the audience. “I hope you won’t hold that against me.”

Brown is riding so high in the wake of his upset victory in Colorado and strong second-place finish in Utah in last Tuesday’s Democratic presidential primaries that he can afford to poke fun at his own well-publicized foibles. He even brought up the medfly--which in 1980 did more damage to his reputation than it did to any crop because he delayed spraying for the agricultural pest.

Brown’s Western successes, after his virtual first-place tie with former Massachusetts Sen. Paul E. Tsongas in the Feb. 23 Maine caucuses--have infused his campaign with credibility. Suddenly, his mad-as-hell, anti-Establishment message is getting the national coverage he had largely been denied.

The three-time presidential candidate--running the 22nd race of his long political career--sardonically proclaimed this week that he had escaped “the media dark hole of nonexistence.” He has also outlasted one of the more highly touted contenders--Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey, who bowed out Thursday--and has out-performed another, Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, in the primaries.

Brown, ever the iconoclast, has broadened his initial “Jerry-One-Note” attack on the corrosive impact of big campaign contributions, lobbyists and entrenched incumbents. His pitch invariably includes a call to replace the current federal tax system--including income, corporate, estate, gift and gas taxes--with a 13% flat tax on income and all goods and services (only home mortgage interest, rent and charitable contributions would be deductible). He also calls for a national health care system and a massive program to produce efficient and non-polluting sources of energy.

He says his program has widespread appeal because it is simple and direct and rings true to voters frustrated with political gridlock. He calls it “the strongest message I’ve ever had.”

Several Brown supporters interviewed this week in Arizona, Nevada and Texas were drawn to these specific proposals and his call for radical reform.

“I was so impressed with the things he said, especially on health care and the flat tax,” said Jamie Barron, 43, an El Paso school counselor who attended the women’s forum. “This is what the American people have been waiting for.”

Brown proudly points out that he has attracted new voters to the process in the Maine caucuses and in Colorado, where polling places ran out of ballots. He maintains that this appeal to the disenfranchised is vital for any Democrat to defeat President Bush in November.

Telling supporters gathered at a Mexican restaurant in Phoenix that he was following in the footsteps of Thomas Jefferson, Brown said, quoting Jefferson: “ ‘The goal is to stop the power of the few from riding on the labor of the many.’

“Now let’s just take that ideal, make it our cause, and we will reinvigorate our party, our country and bring about the goal of any government, which is justice . . . . That’s what this campaign aims for.”

Still, even the self-styled “senior insurgent” acknowledges that he has a long way to go before he becomes more than a wild card. At this stage, he resembles a man riding a wave of national political discontent, uncertain how big it is or where it will next break.

“There are plenty of people out there who do want a true outsider, someone who is pointing the finger at the established political structure and its failures,” said Democratic consultant Paul Maslin.

Brown is breaking various rules of presidential politicking. His seat-of-the-pants campaign has no paid political consultants. He has done no polling since Iowa. He travels with a tiny entourage of three (the entire campaign has 10 paid staffers). At each stop, he lodges at supporters’ homes and is transported by volunteers. Schedules change hourly.

And, of course, there is his oft-stated refusal to accept contributions of more than $100, even though the federal campaign limit is $1,000. At every stop, to anyone who will listen, Brown rails against the nefarious influence of $1,000 donors and relentlessly hawks his nationwide 800-number--the call to enlist in his grass-roots campaign “to take back America.”

“He’s really the only candidate who’s breathing something fresh into the campaign,” John Angen, an unemployed paralegal, said after handing Brown a check for $50 Wednesday in Las Vegas. “This nation and the world are in a period of transformation and we’re going to need new ideas to solve our problems.”

Brown, at 53 still trim and boyish-looking despite his silvery sideburns, has always sought to remain on the frontier of new ideas. But what is remarkable about this campaign has been his ability to cast himself as Mr. Outsider despite his long career in elective office.

He grew up steeped in politics as the son of former California Gov. Edmund G. (Pat) Brown and was first elected to the Los Angeles Community College Board at age 31. He has raised an estimated $20 million in his various campaigns. After a six-year sabbatical from politics, during which he undertook a spiritual quest that included working with Mother Teresa in Calcutta, he most recently served in the ultimate insider post: state Democratic chairman.

“Clearly, Jerry for nearly three decades was very much a part of the process,” said Phil Angelides, Brown’s successor as state party chairman. “He can’t change in one fell swoop what he has been for 25 years.”

Nonetheless, Angelides said Brown’s powerful message of fundamental change should be heeded by the party’s eventual nominee.

Harsher critics have accused Brown of hypocrisy or opportunism for seeking to establish a standard to which he did not subscribe for most of his political career. Many analysts have praised the message but said the messenger was wrong.

Brown angrily dismisses such attacks.

“That’s a cynical opposition to reforming the system,” Brown said, as his chartered, twin-engine plane flew from Las Vegas to El Paso during a grueling dawn-to-post-midnight campaign day. “ ‘Don’t ever change. Let’s pull the wagons around and protect things the way they are.’

“It would have been better had I started out a different way,” he said. “It would have been a different kind of experience. It would have been a movement a long time ago.”

Then, after momentarily peering out the window at the clouds below, Brown added with an edge to his voice, “It would be fine if Saul of Tarsus didn’t persecute the Christians before he was struck off his horse.” (That was a reference to the Apostle Paul, who persecuted Christians before he was struck by lightning and converted. He then changed his name from Saul to Paul.)

Brown draws on his political experience to attest to the system’s failings when he tells audiences that he tried for years to reform it from the inside. As party chairman, he said with a sneer, “I really rubbed my nose in it.”

He flirted with the notion of a U.S. Senate bid this year--he ran unsuccessfully in 1982 when his second gubernatorial term ended--before training his sights on the White House. He had fared surprisingly well in 1976, when he won seven states, but failed miserably in 1980, when he did not win a single one.

This time, his initial campaign message was crafted with the aid of Patrick Caddell--a Democratic consultant also grown bitterly disenchanted with the process--and several other veteran strategists.

Brown seems to revel in the role of electoral renegade. The former Jesuit seminarian sometimes speaks in apocalyptic terms about the country’s malaise, casting himself as the leader of a crusade to reverse the nation’s decline. His talk of spearheading a movement has prompted speculation that he will carry on the effort after the presidential election--perhaps with an eye toward running in 1996.

But he disavowed any intention to run as an independent this fall if he does not win the nomination. “I’m running with the Democratic Party,” he said.

His program, however, is less detailed than those of some of his rivals. He sketches his vision for America in broad strokes. He would slash the military budget by 50% over five years. He would phase out nuclear power over 10 years. He would make student loans available to all who qualify academically. He would prohibit companies from hiring permanent replacements for strikers. He would push for high-speed rail lines. And he would advocate arms control and human rights abroad. He would bring more women and minorities into top government positions, as he did in record numbers during his Administration in California.

As the campaign has evolved, Brown has aspired to become the voice for traditional liberals who remain uninspired by Tsongas’ pro-business stance and Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton’s moderate appeal to the middle class.

On Wednesday, for instance, Brown visited day-care and Head Start centers in gritty North Las Vegas, walked the picket line with strikers at the Frontier Hotel and addressed more than 500 students at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, before flying to El Paso.

He is courting the kind of voters that Jesse Jackson attracted as part of his Rainbow Coalition in 1984 and 1988: environmentalists, union members, students, gays, feminists, blacks and Latinos. He has vowed to make Jackson his running mate if nominated.

Meanwhile, he tells voters that Tsongas and Clinton are both part of the problem.

“Mr. Tsongas can talk all he wants that he’s no Santa Claus,” Brown told about 25 teachers and parents at thR. Crawford Day Care and Head Start centers in North Las Vegas, a largely black neighborhood. “But he’s got to have something in his sack other than capital gains lollipops for the people who pay for his campaign. And Mr. Clinton, the same thing.”

Brown maintains that in a race that is now wide open, “I honestly believe that I am more electable than Clinton or Tsongas.”

However unlikely his nomination, Brown has already exceeded most expectations. And his low-budget campaign appears poised to carry him through the primary season, including to California on June 2.

He has generated 120,000 calls to his 800-number from individuals who have contributed about $700,000, campaign manager Jodie Evans said Thursday. Overall, Brown has raised slightly more than $1 million. He has also received $520,000 in federal matching funds and has applied for another $320,000, Evans said.

This is not enough to do the expensive television commercials that are the lifeblood of most presidential campaigns. But it is enough for three 30-minute “infomercials” that he has run on cable stations around the country, and for several radio spots. Brown mostly relies on local press coverage, satellite television interviews, radio talk shows and personal appearances to wage his uphill bid. He sleeps little and eats infrequently but still manages to run five to six miles several mornings a week.

Where, then, will his wave of support break next? The more conservative Southern states that dominate next week’s Super Tuesday primaries do not look as promising, although Brown hopes to do better than expected in high-stakes Texas, Florida and possibly Mississippi. Economically troubled Michigan, with its big union vote, is a major target on March 17.

Mostly, the campaign races on, one day at a time, to an unpredictable future.

“Having done this political stuff for over 20 years, I’ve never seen anything like this one,” said Michael Ford, a Democratic consultant who was the national field coordinator for Walter F. Mondale’s 1984 presidential campaign and is one of Brown’s informal advisers.

“There’s something going on.”

KERREY WITHDRAWS: Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey, out of money after a jolting series of defeats, ends campaign. A32