Clinton Takes Illinois, Michigan : Moves Far Ahead in Race; Bush Wins Easily : Democrats: Tsongas runs a distant second in Illinois and finishes third behind Brown in Michigan. Arkansas governor has nearly half the delegates for nomination.

By JACK NELSON

March 18, 1992 12 AM PT

TIMES WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF

WASHINGTON —

Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, marshaling the same broad-based coalition of support that carried him to victory in the South, swept the Illinois and Michigan primaries Tuesday and moved far in front of his two remaining rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Clinton polled as many votes in both states as former Massachusetts Sen. Paul E. Tsongas and former California Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr. combined. He now has almost half of the 2,145 convention delegates needed for the nomination.

“While the race is not over,” said Democratic National Committee Chairman Ronald H. Brown, “this certainly takes Bill Clinton a lot closer to the nomination. The fat lady hasn’t sung yet, but she’s checking out the sound system.”

In Illinois, with 62% of the vote counted, Clinton had 52%, Tsongas 25% and Brown 15%. In Michigan, with 83% of the vote counted, Clinton had 49% and Brown surged to a strong second-place finish with 27%. Tsongas trailed with 18%.

The big loser Tuesday was Tsongas. He had battled Clinton for the front-runner’s spot before the governor swept the Southern and border-state primaries in last week’s Super Tuesday contests and had hoped to show renewed strength when the contest moved back to the North.

But by finishing a distant second in Illinois and even further back in Michigan, he failed to expand his base in a region he earlier had said was crucial to his campaign.

Brown’s second-place finish in Michigan, combined with his newly demonstrated ability to cut into Tsongas’ base of support among upper-income and highly educated voters, is expected to help him keep his low-budget campaign alive in Connecticut, New York and the other primaries that lie ahead, including California’s June 2 contest.

While persistent attacks on Clinton’s character and personal life by his rivals continued to cost him support Tuesday, Los Angeles Times exit polls of voters in Illinois and Michigan showed that the Arkansas governor more than made up for those losses by drawing heavy support from voters who said they wanted a strong leader with experience who cared about people, who was electable and who would press for change.

Clinton’s vote also cut across various demographic categories. In both states, he won strong backing from men and women, from blacks and whites and from blue-collar workers who in recent presidential elections have deserted the Democrats for Republican standard-bearers, the exit polls showed.

The Times’ exit polling showed that the black vote played as big a role in Clinton’s margin of victory in Illinois and Michigan as it did in many Southern states. The black vote made up about 25% of the total Illinois vote and one-fifth of the Michigan vote. Clinton carried 72% of the black vote in both states.

There was one important caveat about Clinton’s display of strength: The turnout in presidential primaries is substantially smaller than the likely vote in November. It remains unclear whether the Arkansas governor could duplicate the depth and breadth of support among that vastly larger body of voters.

For one thing, some analysts suggest, many voters who are concerned by the allegations about Clinton’s personal conduct may have chosen not to cast ballots. And general elections bring out many independent voters who do not vote in partisan primaries.

Nevertheless, in the diversity of his support and the range of positive qualities attributed to him by voters in Illinois and Michigan, Clinton appears to have built a base of political appeal far broader than that achieved by either Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis, the 1988 Democratic nominee, or former Vice President Walter F. Mondale, the party’s 1984 nominee.

In a speech to backers in Chicago after his twin victories became clear, Clinton struck a series of notes designed to resonate with the various elements of his coalition.

“This is a victory for the forces of change, for the people who believe we can do better, because we can.

“Remember tonight what the people here have voted for,” he said. “They have voted for change. They have voted to go beyond the politics of both parties in Washington. They have voted to put our economics back where it belongs, based in our people and their future, to reward work and faith in the future and families; to go away from the 1980s, where greed was rewarded and people got something for nothing, and where we became both more unfair and weaker economically.”

Clinton’s triumphs in the Midwest also served as an answer to the suggestion of his opponents that he is a regional candidate, able to appeal only to his native South. Before Tuesday, his only victories outside Southern or border states had come in Wyoming and Hawaii.

Also, Clinton’s ability to substantially outpoll Tsongas and Brown among blacks, whites and all age groups in Illinois and Michigan undercuts the contentions of his rivals that he is unelectable--at least as compared to either of them.

Tsongas, who had said he was eager to compete with Clinton on neutral territory after being badly beaten in the South, did not stay in the Midwest for the primary results Tuesday night. Instead, he flew to Hartford to begin campaigning for next week’s primary in Connecticut.

Upon arriving at the airport there, he struck a grace note, after uncharacteristically harsh attacks on Clinton in recent weeks, by congratulating the winner on his victories. He also conceded that losing Connecticut would be “very damaging” to his already faltering campaign.

But he renewed his pledge to press on despite his latest setbacks, saying he is the only mainstream alternative to Clinton should the Arkansas governor’s campaign collapse because of recurring allegations concerning marital infidelity, his draft status during the Vietnam War and his and his wife’s business dealings in Arkansas.

Commenting on Tuesday’s results, Tsongas gave Clinton his due. “He went into two large states and did well,” he said. “When someone does that, you have to stand back and give them credit, and I do that tonight.”

Tsongas’ strategists hope that Connecticut, with its large number of upper-income and well educated Democratic voters, will be favorable ground for a comeback.

Tuesday’s results raised questions about that possibility, however, because Brown drained votes from Tsongas among those types of voters in the suburbs of Illinois and Michigan.

Brown also congratulated Clinton, saying, “He did very well in both states.”

But he again emphasized the “outsider” theme that is central to his campaign--a message that is aimed at voters who have been hurt by the nation’s economic problems and believe that Washington does not understand their problems.

“There is a line between those who are the governing elite and those for whom the system works . . . and those who have never been able to touch that level of power,” Brown said. “And it’s those people, the majority, we the people, that’s the group that I want to represent. And I am going to do that in Wisconsin and Connecticut and New York and all across this country.”

Exit polls by The Times and the major television networks found that Brown, whose long-shot campaign has gained credibility in recent weeks but still is given virtually no chance of capturing his party’s nomination, did best among voters who were influenced by environmental issues.

Brown has insistently said that Clinton is unelectable because of being dogged by “a scandal a week.” But George Stephanopolous, the Arkansas governor’s assistant campaign manager, said Tuesday: “Anytime you get close to 50% of the votes in a three-way primary, that’s pretty good. If those are the kind of upsets Jerry Brown is going to pull week after week, I think we are going to be on the road to the nomination pretty quick.”

Democratic Chairman Brown has expressed agreement with that view and said a big win for Clinton in the New York primary on April 7 would mean that it was time for the other candidates to assess whether he has virtually locked up the nomination.

Despite weeks of scrutiny of Clinton’s personal life, his draft record and, most recently, the law practice of his wife, Hillary, he appeared likely to leave the Midwest with roughly 1,000 delegates, nearly half of the number needed to clinch the party nomination.

Given the party’s proportional representation rules in its primaries, catching him will be extremely difficult for either of Clinton’s remaining rivals, his strategists believe.

Although Clinton probably cannot numerically clinch the nomination until the final day of Democratic primaries, the math “is such now that winning Michigan and Illinois and just doing well the rest of the way will guarantee enough delegates that he can’t be denied this nomination,” said Mickey Kantor, chairman of Clinton’s national steering committee.

Other top campaign aides remain less sanguine, believing that because of the continuing worries about his character, Clinton cannot afford to lose a string of large-state primaries at the end of the campaign the way Jimmy Carter did in 1976.

Nonetheless, Clinton strategists believe that neither Tsongas nor Brown can put together the sort of coalition that could catch Clinton. Indeed, campaign manager David Wilhelm said, the chief message of the Michigan and Illinois victories is the campaign’s ability to “put together a coalition of working-class whites and African-Americans” that will be key to any hope the Democrats have of winning in November.

“There has not been a campaign since Bobby Kennedy’s which has managed to come into two racially polarized states like these and do this,” said Wilhelm, who managed Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley’s election in 1990. Clinton, he said, has demonstrated that he can put together a message that “reaches across those barriers.”

Clinton strategists hope that coalition can be important not only as a source of votes, but also as a symbolic “counterpoint to Bush,” campaign pollster Stanley Greenberg said. The symbolism could appeal to more affluent, suburban white voters who worry about rising racial division in the country and might be turned against the Republicans if Bush becomes identified as the candidate of divisiveness, Greenberg said.