Assembly Speaker Sees End for Clinton, Praises Cuomo

Assembly Speaker Willie Brown predicted Tuesday that Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton would be “dead in the water” after the April 7 primaries and suggested that New York Gov. Mario M. Cuomo would make an “excellent candidate” for President.

Brown, who has not endorsed a candidate in the Democratic presidential race, said he thinks former California Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr. will win the primaries in Wisconsin and New York next Tuesday and so damage Clinton’s credibility that he will have to drop out of the race.

“If Jerry Brown does what I think he’s going to do, I think the whole thing is open, wide open,” Brown said. “I think (Clinton) is dead in the water. I think he’s stopped.”

Clinton, Brown said, “is on his way back to Arkansas to play golf full time on any course of his choice.”

This chain of events would make California’s June 2 primary relevant once again, Brown said. New candidates might try somehow to win support, and the former governor would be looking to rack up delegates in his home state to bolster his insurgent campaign for the nomination.

Cuomo toyed for months with the idea of running for President but finally backed out because, he said, he could not run and manage his state’s fiscal affairs at the same time. Now that New York has a budget agreement, Cuomo still says he is not interested in pursuing the nomination.

Clinton’s problem, Brown said, is that “the (poll) numbers about his credibility are pretty close to where mine are. I think that is a problem for a candidate running for President. I don’t know how you undo that in a limited period of time.”

But if Clinton hangs on and wins the nomination, Brown said, he would support him in the fall, just as he has supported every Democratic candidate since he has been eligible to vote.