Brown-Clinton Rivalry Takes to Airwaves for All-Out Brawl : Democrats: Each launches nasty attack ads. But the spots are scuttled by the end of the day as both camps cry foul.

The already riotous battle between Democratic presidential aspirants broke into full-scale warfare Friday, with combatants Bill Clinton and Jerry Brown swinging wildly at each other in public and on the airwaves.

By the end of the day, both had unleashed harshly negative advertisements, drawn cries of outrage from the opposition and then withdrawn the offending commercials.

Clinton first ran and then dropped a radio advertisement that questioned Brown’s commitment to abortion rights--using past Brown quotations taken out of context.

Brown launched--apparently only once, on a Buffalo, N.Y., station--a “man in the street” commercial reciting past Clinton controversies and quoting purported New Yorkers expressing concerns about Clinton’s believability. By Friday evening, Brown campaign officials were still denying that the commercial ran, but Clinton supporters were loudly crying foul.

Brown spent the day not only ducking Clinton’s blows but also defending the integrity of his oft-cited pledge to accept only $100 contributions. That came after reports that a Brown campaign operative had suggested to a prospective donor ways of getting around the limitation.

The clash between the men came as the crucial Tuesday primaries in New York, Wisconsin and Kansas approached, leaving each candidate’s candidacy ever more on the line. Nastiness was the order of the day.

Clinton, at a Buffalo campaign stop, cited a purported remark made by Brown during his tenure as California’s governor.

Brown, Clinton alleged, “said the real solution to racial problems was for white boys to teach black boys how to read, and for black boys to teach white boys how to fight.”

“Now, I could run an ad like that, and make him look like a bigot,” said Clinton, who has been angered by Brown’s repeated commercial criticisms.

Clinton made plain that he was not leveling that accusation--despite repeating the story for the third time in two days--but a student in his audience begged to differ.

“You’ll do it here,” the student remarked in an aside.

To bolster the governor’s comments, the Clinton campaign released a page from a 1978 book on Brown by J. D. Lorenz called “Man on a White Horse.” In it, Lorenz quotes Brown as saying in an meeting held to discuss troubled youths that “the black kids can teach the white kids how to fight and the white kids can teach the black kids how to read.”

Brown, campaigning like a whirling dervish in New York and Wisconsin on Friday, repeatedly castigated Clinton as “a Humpty Dumpty candidate who has fallen down into 1,000 little pieces.”

“And all the king’s men and all the lobbyists and all the $1,000 donors who invented him can’t put him back together again,” Brown declared.

If the candidates were nasty in person, that was nothing compared to the broadsides they were launching into the airwaves.

Clinton, who has complained for days that Brown in commercials is intentionally misrepresenting the Arkansas governor’s record, unleashed a flurry of new attempts to discredit Brown.

The Clinton abortion ad, which was broadcast only over radio, made prominent mention of a statement Brown made to the San Francisco Chronicle in which he said: “I’m against abortion.” It went on to cite a Los Angeles Times report that Brown sought to win the release from jail of Joan Andrews, a leader in the Operation Rescue anti-abortion organization.

In its use of Brown’s quote, the Clinton campaign was misleading. While Brown has said that he personally opposes abortion, he has not wavered from supporting the right to abortion as public policy.

Campaigning Friday, Brown said the letter he wrote four years ago to Florida prison authorities came at the request of Mother Teresa, with whom Brown was then serving in Calcutta.

Brown said he sent the appeal for Andrews’ early release because she had been held in solitary confinement for a long period. Andrews had spent more than two years, overall, in jail for blocking women from entering an abortion clinic.

Clinton, speaking to reporters Friday, cited as evidence of Brown’s opposition to abortion what he called his opponent’s “slow-walking” of a 1989 California Democratic party resolution expressing support for the Supreme Court’s Roe vs. Wade abortion rights decision.

At the time, Brown was the chairman of the state party. Democratic Party officials could not be reached immediately to verify the accuracy of Clinton’s statement.

“We’re not talking about personal conviction here,” Clinton said. “We’re talking about whether he does or does not believe in the constitutional right to choose.”

Clinton declined to answer a question about his own personal feelings about abortion.

“The issue is, are you going to be steadfastly pro-choice in your appointments? I think there is every reason to question whether he is. . . . “

Ironically, the Arkansas governor himself has been doubted by some abortion rights advocates because of his support for a state law that requires the notification of a parent when a minor asks for an abortion. And Clinton has often said he looks forward to the day when abortion will not be an issue in political campaigns.

Despite Clinton’s aggressive questioning of Brown, his campaign opted late in the day Friday to pull the abortion ad from New York radio stations.

“The governor felt it was subject to misinterpretation,” his deputy campaign manager, George Stephanopoulos, told reporters.

Brown’s controversial advertisement struck at what party officials and Clinton campaign operatives alike believe is the single largest problem for the Arkansas governor--a perception by the public that he lacks credibility.

According to a transcript of the ad, made by the Clinton campaign, one young man says: “In terms of Bill Clinton, I’m not concerned about his extramarital affairs or the fact that he tried smoking marijuana. That stuff doesn’t concern me.

“I just think that he’s not being as honest as he could be, and that concerns me,” the young man concludes.

A woman says flatly: “Him, I don’t trust.”

Brown campaign officials throughout the day Friday denied that any such ad had run. Some also denied that any such ad had been prepared, although Tom Quinn, a longtime Brown campaign aide who is traveling with the former governor, said late Friday that a volunteer group had made the ad.

Despite the Brown campaign’s statements, Buffalo television station WKVW, the ABC affiliate, said the commercial had run there Friday during the noon news.

Times political writer Cathleen Decker contributed to this story from New York.