Brown Makes Appeal for Social Justice : Election: He and Clinton seek to reach out to elements of former Democratic coalition in Pennsylvania campaign.

Campaigning hard for an upset victory in Pennsylvania’s April 28 Democratic presidential primary, former California Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr. on Friday underscored his Roman Catholic roots in a state where an estimated 30% of his party’s voters share his religion.

Addressing about 100 supporters at a Scranton community center, Brown referred to Catholic teachings on social justice to condemn corporate “greed” that he said has led to environmental destruction.

“St. Paul talked about . . . how the love of money is the root of all evil,” said Brown, a onetime Jesuit seminarian. “If you go to a corporation and say, ‘What about morality?’ they say, ‘Well, that’s not our business.’ ”

Said Brown: “There has to be another principle, and that principle is social justice.” He added that one of the roles of government should be to restrain excesses that occur under the free-market economic system.

The front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, swung through black and white working-class neighborhoods in Philadelphia in his bid to reunite segments of the coalition that once allowed his party to dominate presidential elections.

Throughout much of the primary season, Clinton has sought to woo middle-class and lower-middle-class white voters back to the Democratic banner that they have largely deserted since the late 1960s. He has based his effort on an appeal to their economic self-interest.

He continued that approach during a stop Friday at Philadelphia’s open-air Ninth Street Market in a predominantly Italian-American section of the city.

“We need a President that represents real people and will turn this economy around, who will work with the people and make sure they come first, not some foreign country,” he told market customers.

Later, Clinton visited a low-income housing rehabilitation project to demonstrate his support for programs designed to reward the working poor.

“To bring people from entitlement to empowerment, we have to start with home ownership,” Clinton said as he stood outside the two-story brick townhouse in a predominantly black southwest Philadelphia neighborhood. Clinton said that as President, he would expand such redevelopment efforts.

George Stephanopoulos, Clinton’s deputy campaign manager, said one of the candidate’s goals in the Pennsylvania campaign is to persuade white and black working-class voters that his economic proposals bridge their interests.

“Today was a perfect example of what we’re going to stress in this campaign,” Stephanopoulos said.

In his third day of campaigning since a six-day layoff to recover from chronic laryngitis, Clinton was having trouble with his voice again. He canceled several interviews and spoke mostly in closed sessions to small groups.

Brown, in his campaign appearances, continued his recent strategy of refraining from attacks on Clinton. Advisers say Brown has decided such an approach is necessary to more clearly communicate his central message of ordinary Americans recapturing political power from “arrogant elites.”

Said Brown spokesman Mark Nykanen: “The idea is to keep focusing on his campaign and him, rather than the foibles of Bill Clinton.”

Toward that end, Brown focused his fire on powerful special interests that finance the campaigns of most politicians and, he said, help create gridlock in Congress.

He said one reason the nation has failed to effectively grapple with its environmenntal problems is that “oil companies have a lot of power, nuclear companies have a lot of power. There are a lot of people getting rich. Who goes to the black-tie dinners? Who’s paying for all the politicians?”

The influence of special interest groups is “kind of the dirty little secret of politics,” he said. “You think that there’s a big fight here between Democrats and Republicans. What’s really going on is that the people with the money can get whatever they want, even when it hurts families and small children and neighborhoods.”

Clinton, during his stop at the open-air market, posed with sea bass, kid goats and a luxuriant stalk of broccoli--a vegetable that President Bush repeatedly has noted he does not like. In the market stalls, a handful of aproned greengrocers clapped lustily as Clinton waved the stalk.

Referring to the market’s predominantly white working class clientele, Clinton said, “A lot of these people . . . used to vote Democratic--we want to bring them back.”