‘92 DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION : Bush Acts to Halt Clinton Foe’s TV Ad : GOP: The President’s aides fear a backlash from ‘sleazy’ spot that features allegations that the governor had an affair with ex-nightclub singer.

With campaign aides saying they feared a backlash, President Bush moved Tuesday to stop a conservative activist from running a TV ad that features Gennifer Flowers’ allegation of an affair with Democratic challenger Bill Clinton.

Bush had his reelection committee urge the Federal Election Commission to shut down all fund raising by the Presidential Victory Committee, an avowedly independent group headed by Floyd G. Brown.

White House Chief of Staff Samuel K. Skinner also told reporters aboard Air Force One, as Bush flew from here to California, that the President has asked aides to look into the possibility of a lawsuit against Brown.

“We’ll do everything we can to stop any filthy campaign tactics,” Bush told the press in Salinas.

Brown, 31, whose baby face belies his hard-slugging tactics, helped another conservative group produce the controversial Willie Horton TV spot credited with assisting Bush’s election in 1988.

Democrats accused Republicans of pushing a racist theme with the Horton commercial, which attacked Democrat Michael S. Dukakis’ administration of his state’s prison furlough system.

In the FEC complaint, Brown was charged with deceiving hundreds of contributors into believing that his group is affiliated with the Bush campaign. Bush aides said their objective was to halt “sleazy” anti-Clinton ads they fear will hurt rather than help the President.

“We consider this guy a political leper who is much more damaging to us than to our opposition,” Bobby R. Burchfield, general counsel of Bush-Quayle 92, said.

Brown’s TV ad invites viewers to call a phone number to hear bits of a taped phone conversation between Clinton and Flowers.

Bush acted after Clinton officials protested that, although the President was denouncing Brown’s efforts, he was not taking legal action, such as making an FEC complaint. The Clinton camp suggested that the situation was a repeat of 1988, when Bush aides publicly condemned the Horton ad but did little legally to stop it.

However, Brown got a boost in a Dallas courtroom Tuesday. District Judge David Cave lifted a temporary ban against the ad that was imposed Friday at Flowers’ request. The former nightclub singer had complained that she was being victimized by Brown’s use of the tapes.

Clinton has denied there was anything more than a casual friendship with Flowers, and news organizations have determined that the tapes were edited.

Brown said he hoped to get the ad on the air immediately.

The Bush complaint also followed a CBS report Monday night that accused Brown of using “police state tactics” in seeking to develop material for another possible ad against Clinton.

The report concerned two investigators who were paid by Brown’s committee to look into an alleged affair between Clinton and a woman who committed suicide 15 years ago. In the report, the sister of the woman called Brown and his aides “tricksters.” She said the investigators had burst into the hospital room of a man being treated for a stroke to question the dead woman’s mother.

Reporters have been unable to substantiate any part of the allegation--contained in a letter from an anonymous source--that Clinton had had an affair with the suicide victim. In an interview Tuesday, Brown admitted that his own investigation had determined the rumor to be groundless.

Houston reported from Washington, Ostrow from New York.