Brown Prevails in Nevada Caucuses for 2nd Victory : Democrats: Clinton is runner-up and Tsongas is third amid some confusion caused by narrowed field.

Former California Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr. scored his second victory of the presidential race Sunday with a convincing first-place finish in the Nevada Democratic caucuses.

With 96% of the precincts reporting, Brown was favored by 34.2% of the Democrats, who gathered in schoolrooms and private homes on a rainy Sunday afternoon to stand up for their candidate.

Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, who had hoped for one last push heading into this week’s Super Tuesday voting, was second with 26.5%, followed by former Massachusetts Sen. Paul E. Tsongas with 19.6%.

“This win demonstrates that we are catching up with the insider’s choice of a front-runner,” Brown said in a statement Sunday night from Mississippi, where he was campaigning. “It shows how, when a grass-roots campaign joins with trade unions, that we the people can take back America.”

Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey’s decision to drop out of the race last week and the expected withdrawal of Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin today created some late confusion in the Nevada campaign that was reflected in Sunday’s contest as more than 18% of the caucus-goers cast their votes for an uncommitted slate.

The Republicans held their caucuses last month, but their delegates are not pledged to any candidates.

For Brown, the victory capped a strong week that saw his campaign gain credibility and outlast two opponents who had entered the race with high expectations. Brown started the week by winning the Colorado primary last Tuesday--triggering Kerrey’s withdrawal--and he scored strong second-place finishes in Utah and Wyoming.

“People are just starting to get it,” said Kevin Connor, Brown’s deputy campaign manager, who watched the Nevada returns. “We have a huge volunteer corps.”

In Nevada, Brown’s campaign attributed the governor’s success to former Kerrey supporters who switched when their candidate dropped out of the race on Thursday, as well as to a strong showing from the biggest union in Las Vegas.

The day he withdrew, Kerrey was set to be endorsed by Culinary Local 226, representing 30,000 food service employees in Las Vegas. Instead, the union voted to back Brown one day after the ex-governor joined a picket line of striking casino workers and blasted their employer in a televised, face-to-face shouting match on the sidewalk.

“We threw our support behind Brown because he supported us,” said Kevin Kline, a Culinary Union member who formerly backed Kerrey. “I think Nevada is going to send a strong signal that this is our guy. He cares about us.”

The union support was especially helpful in Nevada because success in a caucus often depends more on a candidate’s organization than on popular support. State Democratic Party Chairman Richard Segerblom said Brown’s union endorsement had “a major impact, no question about that.”

With Harkin expected to drop out of the race, the remaining candidates will scramble for the strong labor support that the Iowa senator had acquired. Brown is hoping that he will become the liberal alternative to Clinton and Tsongas and, as a result, that he will inherit the labor support before the campaign moves to the delegate-rich industrial states of Illinois and Michigan on March 17.

Brown, who won the Nevada caucuses when he ran for President in 1976, had been expected to do well again after he got a Western boost from Colorado. He also had already demonstrated his ability to organize a caucus in Maine, where he finished in a virtual tie with Tsongas.

The environment also is a big issue among Nevada Democrats, and Brown staked out the issue by declaring the strongest opposition of any presidential candidate to a nuclear waste dump that the Department of Energy is planning to build in Yucca Mountain, about 100 miles north of Las Vegas.

Segerblom called it the “No. 1 political issue in Nevada.” Although none of the candidates endorsed the dump, only Brown said flatly that it should not be built.

The caucuses were the first part of a three-step process to select 17 Nevada delegates to the Democratic National Convention this summer. The slate of several hundred delegates assigned Sunday will be winnowed at county conventions in April and again at a state convention in May.

Before he dropped out of the race last week, Kerrey had made Nevada a key part of his strategy to become the leading candidate in the West. His campaign had the biggest organization in the state and, when it collapsed, there was a major reshuffling of support that appeared to leave Brown as the biggest beneficiary.

Kerrey had the only campaign office in Nevada, and he had key endorsements from Las Vegas Mayor Jan Laverty Jones and the state’s two Democratic senators in Washington--Harry Reid and Richard H. Bryan.

Both Clinton, who was backed by Nevada Gov. Robert Miller, and Tsongas were in the state last fall for campaign visits. They have not been back this year, but both mailed letters to Democratic voters and solicited endorsements from elected officials.

Even before Harkin’s withdrawal, the caucuses were a three-way race that remained unpredictable until the final vote count. By Saturday, six rural Nevada counties had already held their caucuses, and, with 160 ballots cast, Brown, Clinton and Tsongas were locked in a dead heat with 23% each.

Although Sunday’s caucusing was not a major event in the presidential campaign schedule, Nevada Democrats were happy that the state got more attention from the candidates than it has in the past.

Previously, the state’s caucuses were held on a Tuesday night, and in 1988 it was completely overshadowed because it fell on Super Tuesday, when several states hold contests. The party recently moved its caucuses to Sunday afternoon in hopes of getting more attention from the candidates and energizing local Democrats.

Meanwhile, final tallies for Arizona’s Democratic caucuses Saturday showed Tsongas the winner with 34% of the vote. Clinton came in second with 29%, and Brown was a close third with 27%. Harkin was a distant fourth with 8%.

Although Tsongas won the popular vote, he finished behind Clinton in national convention delegates because of Arizona’s Democratic caucus rules, which rewarded him for having his vote total more evenly apportioned in party districts across the state.

Clinton won 15 delegates, Tsongas won 14, and Brown won 12.