Democratic Chief Calls Brown Destructive : Campaign: Ronald Brown says ex-governor’s personal attacks on Clinton damage both candidacies, as well as the party itself.

Democratic Party Chairman Ronald H. Brown accused former California Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr. Wednesday of waging a “scorched earth” campaign of personal attacks, adding that he is damaging his own candidacy, as well as Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, and the party itself.

And in answer to a question, Brown said that if the press raises the adultery issue against Clinton in the general election campaign, it should be raised about the President, too. “If that’s the standard for Bill Clinton, it ought to be the standard for George Bush,” he said.

The chairman said he told Jerry Brown he felt strongly about how he was waging his campaign, and the former governor responded that he would run “aggressively” against Clinton, who remains far out front in the Democratic presidential race, although he lost the Connecticut primary to Brown on Tuesday, 37% to 36%.

“Running aggressively on the issues is absolutely appropriate,” the party chief said. “Personal attacks are absolutely inappropriate. He diminishes his own candidacy if it is skewed towards a personal attack kind of strategy and not towards a real issue discussion.”

Ronald Brown said Jerry Brown and others, including Patrick Caddell, an adviser, “want to tear down the temple, so to speak. It’s a scorched earth kind of approach to politics. In a time of economic dislocation and cynicism and frustration and anger, it has some appeal.”

The former California governor, hammering away at Clinton nonstop, has attacked his character, called him unelectable and referred to reports raising questions of adultery and financial irregularities as “a scandal a week.”

Ronald Brown, interviewed at a breakfast session with The Times Washington Bureau, called Clinton’s Connecticut loss “a glitch in the road” in his drive toward the nomination, and said he expects the governor’s campaign to be boosted by Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin’s endorsement and by an endorsement he expects later from another former candidate, Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey.

The chairman tempered his only criticism of Clinton--that he did “an awfully dumb thing” and made “a terrible mistake” by playing golf at an all-white Arkansas county club--by adding: “I’d like to know how many segregated golf courses Dan Quayle and George Bush have played on. I would suspect a good deal more than Bill Clinton has played on.”

For the first time in the campaign, the Democratic chairman acknowledged the possibility of an open Democratic convention. While he expects no other candidate to enter the race before the convention, “that is not to say if Clinton’s campaign falters somehow that we don’t have a situation at the convention where others express interest,” he said.

By “falters,” he meant “a major blowout loss” in the April 7 New York primary or “some shocking revelations--and I mean way beyond the types of things that have been rumored or spoken about over the last several months.”

Regarding the adultery question, Brown said, “Bill Clinton has been raked over the coals for months in many ways that I think have been very unfair, with little or no information, with charges from non-credible sources that end up in print or on televison,” he said.

If such questions persist into the general election, “I would certainly hope that George Bush is going to be asked some hard and tough questions,” he said.

Rumors that Bush had an affair with a female staffer were widely circulated in 1987 when he was vice president and launching his presidential campaign, but his son and campaign adviser, George Jr., denied them. While most publications never mentioned the rumors, Newsweek and at least two other publications published short stories saying George Jr. asked his father point-blank about the rumors and he replied that they were “just not true.”

The rumors surfaced again in the final weeks of the 1988 campaign in a long article in the LA Weekly, an alternative paper in Los Angeles. At the time, Bush and Democratic nominee Michael S. Dukakis, as well as hundreds of reporters covering the campaign, were in Los Angeles for the final presidential debate. Although the British press published stories about the rumors, most of the American press ignored them.

President Bush himself has never been asked about the adultery issue. On one occasion, a reporter asked his wife, Barbara, about the rumors and she refused to answer.

Most of the stories about Clinton’s alleged infidelity have been based on a story in the Star, a tabloid that paid an undisclosed fee to Gennifer Flowers for her account of what she contended was a 12-year affair with the governor. Clinton has denied the account.

Times staff writer Douglas Jehl contributed to this story.