Clinton, Brown Hit Voter Doldrums in Pennsylvania : Primary: They charted separate courses but sailed into the same dead calm. Turnout at polls today is likely to reflect the low turnout for campaign stops.

The presidential primary campaign in this state closed out Monday as it began, with a whimper more than a bang, the Democratic candidates pursuing vastly different courses and neither seeming to break through a brick wall of voter indifference.

The symbol of this strangely disjointed campaign occurred last week in Pittsburgh, when Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton and former California Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr. walked within three feet of each other at a dinner. They passed on by, unspeaking. Here there were no debates, few commercials, little controversy.

Prospective voters have, symbolically at least, given the same cold shoulder to the candidates. Both Brown and Clinton were greeted by small and lackluster crowds Monday as they crisscrossed the state in search of votes.

Only about a third of registered voters are expected to cast ballots today, many of them drawn not by Brown or Clinton but an increasingly heated Senate primary that has resurrected the controversy over the confirmation hearings of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

“This has almost been a non-campaign,” said G. Terry Madonna, director of the Center for Politics and Public Affairs at Millersville State College in Lancaster.

In reality, there have been two very disparate presidential campaigns, conducted well below the decibel levels reached in the last contested state, riotous New York.

Clinton, whose April 7 victory in New York made him the presumptive nominee, set about detailing his positions on issues--including the economy and the environment--that he believes will prove potent in November. Clinton is expected to win comfortably here, where analysts said he has succeeded in turning voters’ attention from the controversies that have beset his campaign.

At a dusk rally in front of City Hall, the Arkansas governor appealed to voters to confound the projections of low turnout.

“Scrap your cynicism. Throw your pessimism in the garbage can,” said Clinton, flanked by Sen. Harris Wofford (D-Pa.) and Philadelphia Mayor Ed Rendell.

“Get out tomorrow and get your friends and neighbors to vote and take your country back,” he added, swiping Brown’s signature line.

While Clinton virtually ignored Brown in Pennsylvania, the former California governor struggled to be seen and heard, insisting throughout that he will remain in the race until the July Democratic convention, no matter what.

Surrounded by signs demanding that voters “Take America back,” Brown closed out his Pennsylvania campaign where his presidential bid officially began last October, in the shadow of Philadelphia’s Independence Hall. As he did then, he cast himself in the mold of a Revolutionary patriot. Yet he also seemed to underscore his dim chances of success.

“Whatever happens in this campaign, whatever my own fortunes, I have seen enough of popular discontent to know that our movement, our cause, will continue,” Brown said.

Below the public blandness of the Pennsylvania presidential race, however, turbulent emotions still seem to be emanating from the state that ushered in the political cache of change by electing Wofford, a massive underdog, to the Senate last year.

As the election neared, a 50-year-old woman running for office for the first time had drawn even with the state’s lieutenant governor in a bid for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate.

Lynn Yeakel, who runs an organization that raises money for women’s charities, was nowhere in the polls only three weeks ago but surged to catch the early favorite, Lt. Gov. Mark Singel, who was endorsed by the state Democratic Party. Three other candidates also were running.

Yeakel moved up in pre-election surveys on the strength of her argument that the Senate Judiciary hearings into the Thomas nomination had betrayed a disconnection between voters and the senators.

In doing so, Yeakel was positioning herself for a fall run against the expected Republican nominee, incumbent Sen. Arlen Specter, a Judiciary Committee member who was roundly criticized by women for his insistent questioning of law professor Anita Hill during the hearings.

At one point, Specter accused Hill of committing perjury in her recitation of harassment she said Thomas had directed at her.

Yeakel’s most prominent commercial opened with film of Specter questioning Hill, after which Yeakel asked voters: “Did this make you as angry as it did me?”

She also argued that she would run stronger against Specter than would Singel, a declaration seconded by the state’s political analysts.

“She’s going to be a very tough opponent” if she wins today, said Penn State-Harrisburg political scientist Michael L. Young. “She’s really shown that she can walk the tightrope--talk about change, and still project herself as a mainstream candidate.”

Specter was facing primary opposition as well, but he held a massive lead over state Rep. Stephen Freind.

If she wins today, Yeakel would be the second woman in two months to sweep aside convention and beat better-known political veterans. In the April 19 Illinois primary, county official Carol Moseley Braun defeated two men, including incumbent Alan J. Dixon, to win the Democratic nomination for Senate there.

Braun, too, powered her campaign on anger over the Thomas hearings.

While the Democratic presidential campaign has been fairly docile, the most silent of the campaigns has been on the Republican side, where President Bush is expected to coast to yet another primary victory over challenger Patrick J. Buchanan.