Non-Candidate Tsongas Is Getting a Lift in N.Y. : Politics: He is still on the ballot. With the race a tossup, organizers of a draft movement seek to make him an alternative to Clinton, Brown.

With the New York Democratic presidential primary turning into a demolition derby for Bill Clinton and Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr., dropout Paul E. Tsongas is emerging as a force to be reckoned with.

“I think he (Tsongas) could do well here,” said New York state party Chairman John Marino, officially neutral in the campaign. “I talk to people who don’t like Clinton or Brown, and they talk about voting for Tsongas.”

Despite the suspension of his campaign, Tsongas is still on the Tuesday ballot--giving aid and comfort to those who hope to draft him for the nomination.

Tsongas, a former Massachusetts senator, disclaims any connection with the movement. But he made plain in an interview Tuesday that he would welcome any delegates his backers win. The more delegates, he said, the better to influence the Democratic Party to make his economic theories part of the platform.

“I showed the Democratic Party how to win,” he said, referring to his short-term pain for long-term gain approach to reviving the economy. “If we have more delegates and more influence” on the party’s 1992 economic message, “that’s all to the good.”

In the short run, the draft-Tsongas drive could spell trouble for Brown, the former California governor. Brown strategists worry that Tsongas will pull votes from the anti-Clinton pool from which Brown also draws and, thus, in a contest as close as recent polls show the New York race to be, could provide Clinton with a winning margin.

A Mason-Dixon poll taken over the weekend gave the Arkansas governor a 40%-34% edge over Brown, but the margin of error--5 1/2 percentage points--means the race is a tossup.

But over the longer run, a substantial Tsongas vote in New York, coming on top of his third-place finish in Connecticut on March 24, could be bad news for Clinton. Such a showing for Tsongas would help to give Democratic voters with misgivings about Clinton another and more acceptable alternative than Brown, whom many view as simply a convenient vehicle for carrying their protest message against Clinton.

For his part, Tsongas told The Times he still expects Clinton to be the nominee because of his huge delegate lead--1,015 to Tsongas’ 439 and Brown’s 153. But Tsongas conceded that it was at least “theoretically possible” for a deadlocked convention to turn to him.

Meanwhile, for all his disclaimers, Tsongas has done nothing to stop the draft movement. He certainly did not make things more difficult for his fans by parading along 5th Avenue on Sunday as grand marshal of a Greek-American parade. And Thursday night he is scheduled to keep a previous commitment to address a Democratic dinner on suburban Long Island, the heart of his strength when he was an active candidate.

Among those backing the draft-Tsongas drive is former New York City Mayor Edward I. Koch, who, like some others, argues that a vote for Tsongas is the best way to serve notice on the Democratic Party that, “rather than pick from the current ‘losers,’ they prefer to throw open the convention” and select someone else.

Koch mentions such names as Texas Sen. Lloyd Bentsen, New Jersey Sen. Bill Bradley, House Majority Leader Richard A. Gephardt and Tennessee Sen. Albert Gore Jr. Koch did not cite his old adversary, New York Gov. Mario M. Cuomo, but others would deem him as someone to be considered in the event of a deadlock.

The Tsongas supporters are wholeheartedly committed to his nomination and the resurrection of his message. They have even taken a cue from Brown and procured an 800 number to raise funds.

“It’s obvious that those two candidates are knocking each other out, and people are getting disgusted,” Lee Gounardes, New York campaign manager for the nationwide draft-Tsongas drive, said of Clinton and Brown.

“And we have the candidate who is viewed more favorably than the others.”

As a sign of the movement’s strength, Gounardes says it has raised enough funds to begin airing television commercials this week on a statewide cable TV network of ESPN, CNN, CNN Headline News and A&E.;

To get out the word that his name is still on the ballot, a small army of Tsongas volunteers--about 1,100 leftovers from the days of his active candidacy and about 400 add-ons since he suspended his campaign March 19--are knocking on doors, handing out leaflets and laying down a barrage of rhetoric extolling Tsongas’ prescription for the country’s economic ills.

Gounardes has set his sights on getting 20% to 25% of the vote, hoping to improve on Tsongas’ performance in Connecticut.

It was in that state that the draft-Tsongas movement was born after he suspended his campaign for the nomination after a string of losses in the Midwest and the South.

Underlying much of the interest in Tsongas are the negative feelings toward Clinton and Brown reflected in a recent poll taken in New York by WABC, the local ABC affiliate. Among all New Yorkers interviewed, only 31% held a favorable opinion of Bill Clinton, while 46% thought of him unfavorably. Brown does slightly better; his favorable-unfavorable ratio was 36% to 31%.

Compared to those bleak results, Tsongas shines. His favorable-unfavorable score is 40% to 25%.

And since that survey was taken, both Clinton and Brown have been involved in episodes generally presumed to make the public impression of both men even more negative than before.

Clinton made a belated admission that he had smoked marijuana after previously avoiding a direct answer on that issue. And Brown has been forced to explain his link to a biomedical company that had gotten in trouble with federal regulators about a purported anti-AIDS drug.

The non-charismatic Tsongas would have another advantage beyond what the poll results show. As he himself acknowledges: “I always do better when I don’t campaign.”