Brown Is Building Up Muscle : Campaign: The former California governor gains heavy-hitting union support in Michigan. He may overpower Tsongas in Tuesday’s primary.

In the depths of the Great Depression, police here shot at a group of unemployed auto workers who were protesting hunger. Five died.

On Saturday, former California Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr. retraced the steps of those protesters in a march to show solidarity with the disaffected voters he hopes will rally to the cause of his Democratic presidential candidacy in Tuesday’s Michigan primary.

Moments after the march, which was organized by local labor activists, the president of the largest industrial local in the United Auto Workers endorsed Brown.

Jim McNeil, president of the 25,000-member local, said Brown “is earning the hearts of the UAW membership.”

Brown, whose presidential campaign initially was written off by many, has emerged as the wild card at a crucial moment in the battle for the Democratic presidential nomination, threatening to eclipse former Massachusetts Sen. Paul E. Tsongas in this troubled, industrial state. Polls show that while Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton has a substantial lead, Tsongas and Brown are locked in a close race for second.

In another sign of his new strength, Brown is drawing attention from Clinton.

For the first time in his campaign, Brown has the dubious distinction of being the target of an attack advertisement by Clinton. The spot criticizes Brown for his proposal to create a 13% across-the-board tax rate, which some argue would favor rich taxpayers.

At Brown’s appearances, however, there has been relatively little discussion of the tax plan. But there has been a strong, sometimes emotional response to his claim that greedy managers and uncaring politicians are trading away Americans’ jobs to Mexico and other countries.

Inside union halls and outside shut-down factories, Brown is striving to win over organized labor and draw a coalition of alienated citizens into the voting booth in Tuesday’s primary. He now has three UAW locals pushing for him, along with officials of the Michigan Teamsters. The Sheet Metal Workers union, meanwhile, has four employees working full time on his behalf.

In appearance after appearance the last few days, he has demanded that negotiations for a trade accord with Mexico be slowed. And repeatedly--often at high volume and with an angry tone--he has called for a U.S. policy of full employment at a living wage. The approach seems to have struck a chord with many of the worried factory workers who hear him.

“Honestly, I wasn’t going to vote for him. But I may vote for him now that I’ve heard him speak,” said Jeff Trevorrow, 33, a welder for a General Motors Buick plant who attended a Brown rally Saturday in Flint.

Also in his speeches, Brown derides Clinton for having courted employers to Arkansas by promoting it as a “low-wage” state. Instead, Brown says, Clinton should have done more to improve working conditions and pay in Arkansas.

Brown’s own television ads in Michigan attack his rivals for supporting the push for a free trade agreement with Mexico. And he says of Clinton’s attack on his tax proposal: “Obviously he feels threatened, or he wouldn’t have wasted money on it.”

“You give Jerry Brown a wedge and he’ll make it into a pie. That’s exactly what he’s doing in Michigan,” observed Democratic consultant Peter Hart. “He saw a crack--an opening--and he’s taking advantage of it.”

Hart adds: “He figured out exactly where he needed to be on the issue of trade.”

Part of the crack that opened for Brown was the withdrawal last week from the Democratic presidential race of Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, who had built strong ties with Michigan’s labor leaders here.

“Our candidate dropped out. Brown seems to be the only one talking about labor issues now,” said Nancy Schiffer, 41, a UAW lawyer who was standing on a windy bridge in Flint as Brown marched by Saturday, grasping a “Local 600” banner in leather gloves.

Beyond that, Brown is trying to carve out an approach and stress a message that is strikingly different from his rivals’--trying to appeal to the poor, minorities and others who often don’t vote.

At a high school on Chicago’s largely black South Side last week, he borrowed a line from the Rev. Jesse Jackson--although he reversed the order. “Up with hope; down with dope,” he shouted into a microphone.

In Flint on Saturday, a windy day with snow flurries, Brown marched alongside a coalition of unionists and local citizens 60 years after the hunger demonstration had turned to tragedy.

“I’m here to celebrate the past. But I’m also here to make sure you don’t become history,” Brown told the demonstrators, who carried placards with signs like “Reclaim America” and “Then Hooverville. Now Bushville.” Loudspeakers played “This Land Is Your Land,” providing the flavor of a 1960s peace rally.

“Any votes I get, they’re not votes for me--they’re votes for you,” he said after receiving the endorsement from the Local 600 leadership. “They’re votes to protect your jobs.”

Referring to the auto workers killed 60 years ago, Brown said: “These people died, and now they’re coming at you not with bullets, not with gas and water hoses. They’re coming at you with a ‘fast track’ to take your livelihoods and put them down in Mexico.”

After the commemoration of the hunger march near a Ford complex in Dearborn, Brown attended a campaign rally in Flint, where he shared the stage with officers from locals of the UAW, Teamsters and Sheet Metal Workers. He was introduced by Michael Moore, director of the movie “Roger and Me,” which lampooned General Motors for cutting jobs in Michigan and being detached from the needs of the community.

“Each one of us has to walk out of here today and talk to five or 10 or 20 people and get them to the polls,” Moore said in introducing Brown.

Despite the growing enthusiasm of organized labor for his candidacy, many appear to retain some doubts. Brown’s reputation as “flaky” has followed him to Michigan and remains an obstacle to many voters.

“There’s questions about how he relates to the workingman,” said Sam Tolin, 50, a laid-off defense worker in Detroit. “Most people when they look at Jerry Brown think of Sonny Bono or a California beach somewhere.”

Arthur Pierce, 46, an auto worker who came to the Dearborn rally, worries that Brown may not be electable because of his image. “He doesn’t seem to be able to carry the torch as far as winning,” Pierce said. But he added that he appreciates Brown’s message, especially about losing jobs to Mexico, and probably will vote for him.