Mr. Brown’s Wild Ride: On Maverick’s Campaign Trail : Politics: Drivers are lost. Schedules are vague. Those who follow the candidate are never sure what lies ahead.

Rain pours down in bone-chilling sheets, and Jerry Brown is standing outdoors with a hole in his shoe, an overhang barely protecting him from the elements. “There’s more concern in the White House for Kuwait than there is for Detroit,” the Democratic presidential candidate shouts at the wet, shivering camera crews that encircle him.

Soon the rain turns to snow, and Brown’s van is racing the clock as usual, zipping past jackknifed trucks and abandoned cars over icy roads to Ann Arbor and East Lansing.

“If I’d have known it would be like this, I wouldn’t have come,” said a harried CBS News producer in a van chasing after the candidate.

A trip with Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr., the former California governor, is a voyage on the wild side of political campaigning, an ever-changing world of logistics bedlam, elastic schedules and, at times, audacious improvisation.

To reach an appearance in Miami last week as fast as possible, Brown ordered his car to break into the motorcade of one of his rivals, Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, oblivious to the Secret Service agents waving him off. The maneuver completed, Brown flashed the “V” for victory sign with both hands as onlookers gazed in bewilderment.

His hapless drivers, who typically are unpaid volunteers from somewhere else, often get lost on the way to events. Advance people push on without the technology that helps richer campaigns, such as cellular phones and portable fax machines. Unlike a conventional campaign that might charter a large plane, Brown’s 20-person entourage departed Kalamazoo, Mich., Thursday in a rag-tag armada of four small planes, prompting much confusion about seating, luggage and take-off times.

Those who follow the “insurgent” candidate must match his ability to thrive amid frigid temperatures, long hours without food, and little certainty of what the next hour holds in store.

“I know it’s a little vague,” conceded press secretary Ileana Wachtel when she handed out a daily schedule recently that had a four-hour hole in it. “But this is a grass-roots campaign, guys.”

The campaign is defiantly different in substance as well as style. Brown has postured himself as an outsider who rejects business as usual in Washington and such accouterments of the political elite as large, paid staffs--he employs only 10 nationally. He has requested no help from the Secret Service, preferring to maneuver his way through crowds and airports with the help of one or two assistants.

He seems to enjoy the maverick role, heaping ridicule on what he views as the insider’s “club” of Washington powerbrokers, overpaid business executives, the national media and Clinton, whom he sometimes calls “Mr. Hack.”

Morning, noon and night, Brown gleefully skewers the political Establishment for a catalogue of sins, from allowing hunger among children to persist to profiting as the economy goes downhill.

“It’s almost like people who work in a fish factory,” he said during a recent fund-raiser in a Miami suburb. “They’ve worked there so long they don’t know they smell. Then somebody comes in from the outside and says, ‘Wow, this place stinks!’ ”

Brown continues to get a mischievous kick out of uttering his 800 campaign phone number on television or radio--usually to the chagrin of those interviewing him. Before a recent press conference in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, he spotted a drawing board serendipitously located within camera range. In large numerals he scribbled down the number, set up for people wishing to call in donations of up to the $100 limit he set to dramatize his rebellion against the “big money” he says dominates the political system--the legal contribution limit is $1,000 per individual. Then he took questions.

Certainly, there can be a price to campaigning by the seat of the pants. When Brown appeared recently at Mississippi State University in Itta Benna with the Rev. Jesse Jackson, the college’s 150-piece concert band was about 60 miles away in Jackson, Miss., providing a rousing back-up for President Bush, whose advance people had reserved the band--dubbed “Max of the SWAC” (Southwest Athletic Conference)--several days earlier.

A lone faculty member was around to play the national anthem on a piano for Brown’s appearance.

Then there is the matter of the news media, which Brown’s staff is striving mightily to handle as the traveling press corps expands in size. Brown has felt slighted by the press, which has paid far more attention to the presidential bids of Clinton and former Massachusetts Sen. Paul E. Tsongas than his own.

But giving him the coverage he seeks is sometimes a challenge. In Oklahoma City last week, reporters were escorted to an appearance after the candidate had left.

During the New Hampshire campaign a month ago, a reporter drove two hours in a snowstorm to reach a Brown appearance, based on information from his staff, only to learn the candidate had gone jogging.

And one hapless journalist got left behind in Miami’s Little Haiti neighborhood recently when the candidate and his entourage dashed off to the airport and an appearance in Orlando without informing him.

To eliminate such miscues, Brown recently added a second press aide, Mark Nykanen, a former NBC News reporter. “The kinds of problems the campaign has stem from overnight growth in interest from the national media,” Nykanen said Thursday, much of which developed after Brown won the March 3 Colorado primary.

Nykanen adds: “The media missed the story. All along, Jerry’s campaign was getting stronger.”

Whatever the problems, Brown’s unorthodox approach has paid off handsomely in some ways. By running a shoe-string campaign that relies on highly motivated volunteers, he is not hobbled by debt and seems certain to press his quest straight through to July’s Democratic convention in New York. He typically lodges free of charge at the homes of supporters discovered through the 800 number, although he recently splurged for a $29 motel room in Romulus, Mich.

Moreover--within the limits of his budget--he has enjoyed some success in the campaign, albeit not enough to rank him at the top. Along with his Colorado win, Brown scored victories in the Maine and Nevada caucuses, and hopes to demonstrate strength in next Tuesday’s primary in Michigan.

At the least, he has surprised many by outlasting two earlier rivals, Sens. Tom Harkin of Iowa and Bob Kerrey of Nebraska.

For all the oddities of his turbulent campaign, Brown sees little to laugh about. He is drawing large crowds on college campuses, such as the more than 1,000 Wednesday night at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo.