Tsongas Woos Labor; Clinton Urges Racial Harmony : Democrats: The leading rivals square off in Michigan and Illinois. TV ads attack the question of the Arkansas governor’s electability next fall.

Paul E. Tsongas spent most of Thursday doggedly wooing labor’s rank and file in Michigan and Illinois, while Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton appealed to white middle class voters to fight racial divisiveness and return to the Democratic Party.

The third Democratic candidate, former California Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr., also campaigned in heavily unionized Michigan, seeking to pick up votes that might have gone to Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, a favorite of many union activists. Harkin dropped out of the race on Monday.

Leaders of a dozen unions that had backed Harkin met Thursday in Washington but opted not to endorse any candidate for now. No further meetings of the group have been scheduled before next Tuesday’s primaries.

Here is how Clinton and Tsongas campaigned Thursday:

TSONGAS: The former Massachusetts senator, whose pro-investment economic positions may face a tough reception in Michigan, told about 100 sheet-metal production workers at the Hermes Automotive Manufacturing Corp. in Detroit that as President he would invest in manufacturing to create jobs rather than grant middle-class tax cuts.

“A 97-cent a day tax cut is not going to give you one job,” he said. “I’m going to invest and create jobs. I’m not going to take the money and give tax credits and tax cuts.” One skeptical worker asked Tsongas about his opposition to legislation banning businesses from hiring permanent workers to replace striking employees.

Tsongas replied by saying that labor strife “doesn’t help anybody” and that he favors compulsory arbitration to “force a coming together of self-interests.” Labor and management, he said, “have got to work together.”

As recently as the mid-1980s, 500 people worked at Hermes; today, fewer than 200 are still on the payroll. “And most of us are scared,” said Carla White, 29, a Hermes worker for eight years.

“When you look at a place like this, you’re talking about the real world,” Tsongas said somberly after meeting with the workers.

At a fund-raiser in Detroit Wednesday night, Tsongas called Clinton and other advocates of a $30-billion middle-class tax cut “ATM Democrats,” referring to automatic teller machines. That $1,000-a-plate dinner, followed by a rally, brought in $98,000, an amount the campaign hopes to equal or exceed Thursday night at similar functions in Chicago, Tsongas aides said.

Tsongas also met on Thursday with the editorial boards of the Detroit Free Press and the Chicago Tribune.

At every public event Thursday, Tsongas continued talking about his economic message of making “hard choices” while attacking Clinton on the issue of electability--referring to allegations involving the governor’s draft status during the Vietnam War, his marital infidelity and his connections with a businessman and investor whose savings and loan association was being regulated by state agencies while Clinton was governor.

Also on Thursday, Tsongas began running a new 30-second television ad in both Michigan and Illinois that attacks Clinton by name. It says in part that Tsongas “is no Bill Clinton, that’s for sure. He’s exactly the opposite. Paul Tsongas--he’s not afraid of the truth.”

CLINTON: The Arkansas governor declared Thursday that the nation’s problems cannot be solved as long as Republicans succeed in persuading whites that blacks are to blame.

“The problems are not racial in nature,” he told a predominantly white audience in a Democratic suburb of Detroit, which voted heavily for both Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bush. “This is a crisis of economics and of values. It has nothing to do with race.”

Clinton, whose Super Tuesday victories were based on the support of both black and white middle-class voters, accused both Bush and GOP presidential challenger Patrick J. Buchanan of race-baiting and of masking the real economic and social problems in the United States.

“I’m trying to give you a new Democrat Party based on old values that will make you want to come home to the Democratic Party,” he said. “But you have got to say, ‘OK, let’s do it with everybody in the country.’ ”

Clinton recalled the television commercials that Bush ran during the 1988 presidential campaign that criticized then-Gov. Michael S. Dukakis of Massachusetts, the Democratic presidential nominee, for running a prison furlough program in his state that permitted the release of a convicted murderer, Willie Horton.

Because Horton was black, the ad was widely viewed by Democrats as an effort by Bush to appeal to racial fears.

“This guy (Bush) runs Willie Horton, scares the living daylights out of people, then cuts back on aid to local prosecutors, cuts back on aide to local law enforcement, cuts back Coast Guard, Customs and Border Patrol funding to intercept drugs,” he said.

Racial problems in the United States can be solved by providing new economic opportunities to minorities and white middle-class people alike, Clinton said.

“It’s amazing how, when your life works, you don’t feel those resentments,” he said. “It’s amazing when you work with people who share your values and who are winning, all the reservations you might have kind of fade away.”

At the same time, Clinton was still struggling on Thursday to lay to rest questions about his personal life.

During an appearance at a cheesecake factory in Chicago, he argued that his ability to withstand the criticism proved that he is a person of strong character and perseverance.

“People of my state are pretty smart,” he said. “I’ve been through some brutal and tough elections. . . . I would be subject to personal attacks. . . . I’ve been called everything but a blue goose. Voters keep voting for me who know me.”