Democrats Nominate Clinton as ‘New Voice for a New America’ : Convention: The candidate departs from tradition and appears at the hall with his wife and daughter. ‘I will be the Comeback Kid,’ he tells cheering delegates.

Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, hailed as “the Comeback Kid, a new voice for a new America,” was formally nominated for President Wednesday night as delegates of a united and emboldened Democratic Party filled Madison Square Garden with their cheers.

In the bruising pre-convention campaign, he had been pushed to the edge of defeat by repeated attacks on his character. But Wednesday the gritty, 45-year-old governor was named his party’s standard-bearer by acclamation after a roll-call vote that was pure political celebration.

Then, in a departure from the time-honored political tradition that candidates do not appear in the convention hall until the next day, Clinton--accompanied by his wife, Hillary, and their 12-year-old daughter, Chelsea--came to the steps at the foot of the podium and summoned up the memory of John F. Kennedy at the 1960 Democratic Convention:

“The rules of this convention preclude my acceptance tonight, but 32 years ago another young candidate who wanted to get this country moving again came to the convention to say a simple thank you,” Clinton told his supporters.

“I want to thank you all for being here and loving your country and to tell you that tomorrow night I will be the Comeback Kid.”

Jubilant delegates cheered themselves hoarse as avalanches of artificial snow swirled down from the cavernous ceiling of the Garden.

Earlier, Clinton had said he expects the Republicans to wage “a burning and blistering negative campaign.”

But by the time the roll-call vote that certified his nomination had begun, Clinton had deftly maneuvered the Democratic Party toward the political middle ground in a calculated effort to win back moderate Democrats and independents who had shunned the party in recent presidential elections.

And he had won pledges of support for the party from all of his Democratic rivals, though former California Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr., the last grudging holdout, offered only the barest expression of loyalty to the Democratic cause and avoided mentioning the nominee by name.

In a nominating speech that combined glowing tributes to Clinton with scathing attacks on President Bush, New York Gov. Mario M. Cuomo--whose relations with Clinton had been strained throughout the primaries--called him a “new captain with a new course” for a nation alarmed by economic stagnation and the rising pathology of urban poverty.

Hammering home the themes Clinton hopes will carry him into the White House, Cuomo indicted Bush for placing middle-class workers “in terrible jeopardy” and driving the economy to the brink of disaster with a policy Cuomo called “free enterprise for the few.”

“Bill Clinton believes that the closest thing to a panacea that we have is described by a simple, four-letter word--work! He has been living that truth all his life,” Cuomo told cheering delegates.

“So, Bill Clinton believes that what we most need now is jobs, jobs, jobs--rejuvenating our private free-enterprise economy by investing in the rebuilding of our cities, shoring up our agricultural strength, laying the foundations for economic growth into the next century, pulling people off welfare, off unemployment, giving people back their dignity and their confidence,” the New York governor declared.

Although a leader of the liberal wing of the party, Cuomo credited Clinton with having “all the elements of our great Democratic tradition,” as well as “the fresh energy needed to deal with a rapidly changing world.”

Clinton, he said, has “an extraordinary strength of character” that has helped him meet many challenges. “And with each new challenge,” Cuomo said, “he has grown wiser and stronger--as he demonstrated with his remarkable resiliency and unflappability in the recent bruising primaries.”

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles), who four years ago seconded the nomination of the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Wednesday night followed Cuomo in placing Clinton’s name in nomination.

“Bill Clinton will throw open the doors of the White House and invite all Americans to join him in partnership to solve the problems of this nation,” she said. “Bill Clinton will indeed allow us and our problems to be heard.”

Waters praised Clinton’s empathy with the poor, citing his upbringing by an impoverished single mother. She said he was tough, understands what is happening in America and will “stand up to the divisive forces who pit us against each other.”

Already benefiting from the “bounce” in the polls that at least temporarily comes to most candidates as they receive their party’s nomination, Clinton surged far ahead of Bush and independent Ross Perot in public opinion surveys. An ABC/Washington Post poll showed the governor with the support of 45% of those interviewed, to 28% for Bush and 20% for Perot, who has yet to announce his candidacy.

Such surges have often proved fleeting and Clinton is mindful that Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis left the Democrats’ 1988 convention with a 17-point lead over Bush but went down to an overwhelming defeat in the general election.

Asked earlier Wednesday whether he thinks he can defeat Bush in November, Clinton said in a PBS/NBC interview: “I’ve always believed that I could win and I’ve always felt that I would, but the polls will change a hundred times between now and then.

“We live in a time where the fragile confidence of people in their political leaders can easily be frayed,” Clinton said. “And I expect to be the brunt of a burning and blistering negative campaign.

“That’s what the Republicans are very good at. They can’t run on their record and they don’t have a vision for the next four years, so the options before them are to try to destroy the opposition. I understand that, but I’m going to try to run a positive, aggressive campaign.”

Clinton spent most of Wednesday working on his acceptance speech, which he described as an important opportunity to tell voters who are trying to make up their minds “who I am, what I believe in, what I would do as President and what I want them to do.”

The four-day convention concludes tonight after nominating Sen. Al Gore of Tennessee as the vice presidential running mate and listening to his and Clinton’s acceptance speeches.

The two candidates, hoping to maintain the momentum built by the convention, plan to leave here on a bus Friday for a whirlwind, five-day campaign trip that will take them through New York and eight other states in which a total of 43% of the electoral votes will be at stake in November. After the 1988 convention in Atlanta, Dukakis returned to Massachusetts for an extended stay, a move that many analysts said was partially responsible for the rapid erosion of his lead in the polls.

In one of the most emotional speeches of the convention, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts Wednesday night invoked the names of his assassinated brothers--President John F. Kennedy and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy--in urging the election of Clinton, who he said “understands that government should enlarge, not diminish the hopes and expectations of an entire generation.”

“My brothers had every gift but length of years,” declared Kennedy, who brought tears to the eyes and cheers from the throats of the more than 4,000 delegates and other partisans jammed into the Garden.

“The years have been left to us--to use them with all the inevitable setbacks, to accomplish the works of peace and justice,” he said.

Blasting the tactics used by Republicans in 1988, Kennedy said that “with Clinton, it is time to reject the politics of slash and burn--the evil politics that makes the face of Willie Horton more important in a national campaign than the face of a hungry child.”

The GOP used Willie Horton, a black man who raped and beat a white woman, as a way to raise the racial issue and to portray Dukakis as soft on crime.

Clinton also heard ringing praise from two of his fiercest rivals in the primaries--Sen. Bob Kerrey of Nebraska and former Sen. Paul E. Tsongas of Massachusetts.

Kerrey, who once said Republicans would open up Clinton “like a soft peanut” in the fall, promised to work for his election and declared, “In the primaries, I watched him take the heat--and stand up to it, again and again. I saw his strength as he weathered the storms. I can tell you that he is genuine. And he has a vision for America.”

Tsongas, calling Clinton the best hope for protecting the rights of Americans, said, “With reverence for that mission, let us unite. Let us choose the path of generational responsibility and then let us work to elect Bill Clinton and Al Gore to the White House.”

Said Rep. Vic Fazio of West Sacramento as the pledges of support echoed from the red-white-and-blue podium, “I’ve been attending these things since the ‘70s, and this is the most unified convention I’ve ever seen.”

“From New York, I think we’re going to be able to go straight into retail politics, propelled by the momentum we’re developing here. These guys have really learned the lessons of the past.”

In one more sign of how the deteriorating economy and Bush’s response to it have driven traditional Democrats back into the fold, the 1.4-million-member Teamsters Union, which has backed the Republicans in the last three elections, said in a statement issued Wednesday that it was endorsing Clinton.

“Bill Clinton is our best hope for getting this country moving again,” Teamster President Ron Carey said in a statement.

The only less-than-enthusiastic element in Clinton’s night of triumph was the appearance on the podium of Brown, who had insisted to the end that he would continue to proclaim his more liberal message despite pressure to acquiesce in the moderate stand Clinton has adopted.

Pro-Brown delegates waved signs saying, “The Brownies will be back” and “Jerry in ‘96” as he spoke.

“I intend to fight for this party, its ideals, tonight, this year and every year,” he said, but never mentioned Clinton or Gore by name. And, instead of pledging to join them, he declared, “I want you to join me” in an effort to root out “unchecked power and privilege” among the rich.

“However long it takes, we will create the power for the powerless, for there is no other reason for a Democratic Party to exist,” he said.

Turning his guns on the Republicans, Brown said, “Instead of government by the people, for the people and of the people, President Bush gives us government of, by and for the privileged.”

On Perot, he said, “Outside of advertising, there is no such thing as a billion-dollar populist. Mr. Perot, we can afford to pay for our own democracy; we don’t need you to lend it to us.”

Word that former Ronald Reagan campaign manager Edward J. Rollins had resigned as co-chairman of the Perot campaign Wednesday spread quickly among the delegates, who since the convention began have been talking about his undeclared candidacy and what its possible collapse might mean for Clinton.

Rep. Dan Glickman of Kansas called the latest bad news for Perot “very profound” and said it signals that Perot “has lost his momentum.”

But Las Vegas Mayor Jan Laverty Jones acknowledged that Clinton’s allies were also concerned that Perot’s plunge could hurt them by helping Bush more than the Democratic nominee. He said Democrats will have to work hard after the convention to capture the “Perot support factor.”

“We’re watching what’s happening to the Perot campaign very closely because it’s going to affect our strategy,” Jones said. Perot’s supporters may be more conservative than most Democrats, but “what they really want is change and that’s what we have to focus on . . . the theme of change,” she added.

Another former Clinton rival, Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa, spoke of change Tuesday night. Although he is no longer running, Harkin said, “I’m not out of the fight to put a Democrat in the White House in 1992.” Harkin has campaigned for Clinton ever since dropping out of the race in March.

Atlanta Mayor Maynard Jackson opened the convention Wednesday with a call to America to “wake up” to the poverty and suffering in the nation’s cities. But he quickly lost the attention of the crowd when several giant beach balls, emblazoned with Clinton’s name, appeared in the hall.

Delegates tossed the balls from delegation to delegation, from the Virgin Islands to California to Vermont and back to California, where Brown supporters caught them and scribbled Brown’s name over Clinton’s.

Amid the raucous protests by Brown’s California delegates, some of his supporters indicated they were tired of the way the demonstrations flared out of control, at times drowning out the convention proceedings.

“I am so angry,” declared Millicent Safran, a party official and Brown delegate from Winnetka, Calif., who had separated herself from her screaming, placard-waving colleagues on the convention floor. “There is a place for a demonstration. But they have been so inconsiderate. They are uncontrollable. Last night when Jimmy Carter spoke, they did not give him the honor he deserved.”

Another Brown delegate, Rickie Santelli, vice chair of the Los Angeles County Democratic Committee, said “name-calling” by the delegates was inexcusable. She said that the demonstrations were not under total control but that Clinton’s forces were partially responsible for not giving Brown delegates more of a say in the convention.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Gloria Molina was one of the early speakers at the convention Wednesday night. Acting in her role as co-chairwoman of the party’s Rules Committee, Molina moderated a group of speakers debating a series of proposals by supporters of Brown. The report was rejected.

The list of speakers included Brown delegates Oliver Stone, Academy Award-winning movie director, and Tim Carpenter of Santa Ana, who issued one of the only criticisms of the party from the podium by charging that Democratic leaders have been “unfair” and “disrespectful” to Brown.

Clinton’s visit to the convention was arranged a couple of days ago in a repetition of a convention hall visit by Kennedy in 1960, a top aide said.

As the roll call progressed, Clinton, his wife and daughter waited at a reception in the original Macy’s department store just up the street from the Garden. As his tally went over the top with votes from the Ohio delegation, a beaming Clinton briefly pumped his fist in the air and hugged Chelsea and kissed his wife on the forehead.

Then the three, surrounded by a crowd of supporters waving signs and banners, marched across 7th Avenue to the convention hall.

“It was a classy thing to do--a real class act,” said delegate Cora Wilder of South Nyack, N.Y.

“It was a terrific idea,” agreed Les Mendelsohn, a Clinton delegate from San Antonio, Tex. “It shows he’s going to be unorthodox and not take traditional approaches to solving problems.”

An Arkansas delegate, Darlene Woodall, watched Clinton greet his mother and other delegates from his home state before taking the podium.

“He gets down in the crowd with the people,” she said. “That’s why I think he’ll be President. He doesn’t insulate himself.”

Times staff writers Michael Ross, Bill Eaton, and Dave Lesher contributed to this story.