Clinton Tries for Focused Message Amid Distractions : Democrats: He wants to go on the attack with the issues, but finds himself defending against unfavorable press reports--and a golf game.

For a campaign that has been tortured by a steady drip of troubles, what happened here Friday to Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton was all too familiar.

Once again, the Democratic presidential candidate had a carefully scripted message he hoped to direct to voters. And once again, his lines were rewritten by events offstage.

As he campaigned for support from black and Jewish voters in New York’s crucial April 7 primary, he found himself issuing more mea culpas for having played golf last week at an all-white club in his home state. And in the wake of a New York Times article that raised questions about his conduct as governor, he interrupted his schedule and sent his staff scrambling to flush out his response.

Coming at a time when Clinton wants most to fend off the surprisingly strong challenge from former California Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr., his sole remaining rival in the nomination race, the emergence of more distractions presented his campaign with a dilemma.

Should Clinton maintain his focus on Brown and risk the prospect of suffering continuing damage from the swipes against him, which began about two months ago with unsubstantiated charges of adultery? Or was it time to train his guns on what aides regard as a feeding frenzy by the press and attack en masse what he has already rejected, one-by-one, as allegations without merit?

With Clinton’s campaign determined to rebound from its loss to Brown in the Connecticut primary last Tuesday, the questions lie at the heart of the battle to be fought in the days ahead in New York and Wisconsin, which also holds its primary April 7.

“The theme of the next 10 days is fight,” a senior Clinton campaign official said. “Fight for yourself, fight for the middle class, fight for education. The trick is making sure that all of them are connected.”

What Clinton must decide, however, is how best to balance his policy message with attacks on his attackers.

Despite a series of critical articles in major newspapers this week that the campaign regards as unfair--including one in the Los Angeles Times--the senior aide suggested that Clinton remained wary of launching an all-out broadside.

“There’s no percentage in just bashing the press for the sake of it,” the aide said, “but you must counter false impressions.”

The Times story reported Monday that in the mid-1980s Clinton had personally lobbied for a $750,000 Arkansas bond contract that benefited a wealthy supporter, Dan R. Lasater, who was known to be the target of a cocaine investigation. Lasater eventually pleaded guilty to federal charges of cocaine possession and distribution. Responding to the Times story, Clinton earlier this week disputed that he intervened to steer the contract to Lasater.

On Friday, Clinton called a morning news conference to respond to a New York Times article that reported he had helped revise an Arkansas state ethics proposal so that it excluded his own office and that of other public servants from financial disclosure requirements imposed on the state’s Legislature. Clinton called the article misleading, then did his best to put it behind him over a 17-hour campaign day.

At the news conference, Clinton acknowledged that he and his allies had “simplified” the proposal after it was rejected by the Legislature. He said they took the step to increase the plan’s chances of approval in a statewide referendum. And Clinton stressed that he was the one who had drafted the original legislation and convened a special session of the Legislature in an attempt to get it passed.

“If the import of the story is that this was some effort by me to reduce my coverage under the ethics laws, that’s just not true.”

Arkansas voters approved the ethics package in 1988, and Clinton aides conceded its effect was to subject state legislators to more stringent disclosure requirements than the governor and other office holders. But Clinton said his only motivation in narrowing the proposal was to enhance its appeal to local politicians who otherwise would have lobbied against the referendum.

“I can categorically tell you there was never any discussion about whether we should lessen the regulatory requirements on the governor,” he said.

His New York campaign stops included a meeting with black journalists and a tour of an exhibit at the Jewish Museum of the New York Historical Society. At each event, he repeated an apology he first issued last week after it was reported he played a round of golf at a segregated country club in Little Rock, Ark.

In his remarks at the museum, where he also delivered an impassioned plea for racial harmony, he said of the golfing episode: “I didn’t think about it, as I should have. I as a candidate and as a public official should not have been there.”

Later in the day, Clinton traveled to Madison, Wis., where he addressed the state Legislature, and to Indianapolis, where he collected the endorsement of Gov. Evan Bayh and appeared by satellite hookup in a debate with Brown.

His campaign, meanwhile, began airing two ads in New York, one in which Clinton describes himself as a fighter against the Establishment and another in which he says Brown’s flat-tax plan would hurt working people.

In the latter ad, a narrator cites two newspaper stories, an advocacy group and Democratic New York Sen. Patrick Daniel Patrick Moynihan criticizing Brown’s proposal for a simplified tax of 13% on income and a 13% value-added tax on goods and services. “Only Bill Clinton,” it concludes, “is fighting for a better deal for all of us. He’ll put people first.”

Times staff writer Thomas B. Rosenstiel contributed to this story.