Subject: New York Puts Clinton and Brown Through the Wringer 
Date: Published: 4/6/92 (138 lines)
Source: Wall Street Journal. Copyright Dow Jones & Co. Inc.

    Politics & Policy -- Campaign '92:
    New York, Living Up to Its Fearsome Reputation,
    Puts Clinton and Brown Through the Wringer
    ----
    By James M. Perry
    Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

    NEW YORK -- Gov. Bill Clinton of Arkansas had been warned
 about the Democratic Party's House of Pain -- the New York
 primary.  "You only get mugged here," a local supporter told
 him, "if you look scared."
    Maybe he didn't actually look scared when he arrived here
 10 days ago.  But he appeared to be out of place and out of
 sorts, and his stumbling campaign faced the prospect of a
 political mugging by former Gov. Jerry Brown of California in
 tomorrow's balloting.  But Mr. Clinton has managed in these
 final days of the campaign to inflict some pain on Mr. Brown,
 who hurt his own insurgent effort by making critical
 mistakes.
    Another factor is at work here -- the presence on the
 ballot of former Massachusetts Sen. Paul Tsongas, who
 suspended his campaign after losing badly in the Illinois and
 Michigan primaries last month.  Appearing yesterday on ABC's
 "This Week with David Brinkley," Mr. Tsongas hinted broadly
 that he might jump back in the race if he does well.  In a
 campaign as volatile as this, Mr. Tsongas is seeking to make
 himself an enticing alternative for voters who have serious
 doubts about both Mr. Brown and Mr. Clinton.
    "I'm letting it roll," he said, adding that he will make
 an announcement on Wednesday based not only on how he fares
 in tomorrow's voting, "but more particularly, how does Bill
 {Clinton} do."
    Gov. Mario Cuomo, appearing yesterday on NBC's "Meet the
 Press," predicted that Mr. Tsongas would do "astoundingly
 well" in New York.  "He'll get double digits at least," the
 governor said, and will "deteriorate the victory for whoever
 wins."  Mr. Tsongas, the non-candidate, was endorsed yesterday
 by the newspaper Newsday, which circulates in the Long Island
 suburbs and in New York City.  Mr. Clinton has been endorsed
 by the Daily News, the New York Times and the New York Post;
 Mr. Brown, by the weekly Village Voice.
    For what it's worth, Brown strategists have begun to turn
 pessimistic about their man's chances here, while
 still-nervous Clinton strategists think they're going to win,
 barring an improbably low turnout or serious fallout from the
 latest twist to the saga of the candidate's draft status 23
 years ago.  Private Clinton tracking polls give him a lead of
 about 10 percentage points.  But while that lead is beyond the
 poll's margin of error, support for Mr. Clinton is soft and
 there remains a large bloc of undecided voters.
    Voters also go to the polls tomorrow in Wisconsin and
 Kansas, but the candidates care most about New York and its
 fat prize of 244 pledged delegates.  A defeat for Mr. Clinton
 here, in a state that is classically Democratic, would derail
 his campaign and send shocked national Democratic leaders
 scurrying to find someone else to take his place.
    A victory for Mr. Brown, a political outsider, would send
 him triumphantly on to the next serious round of primaries,
 beginning later this month in Pennsylvania.  But because Mr. 
 Brown is so far behind Mr. Clinton in the number of delegates
 won, and because so many delegates have already been
 allocated, the odds are against Mr. Brown winning the
 nomination.
    For much of the New York campaign, Mr. Clinton's problems
 have been exacerbated by the fact that he is the kind of
 politician who seeks warmth and encouragement from voters.  He
 didn't find much here.  "This is the kind of place where
 out-of-towners get sympathy only if they're honeymooners or
 if they've lost their luggage," says Democratic consultant
 William Cunningham.
    Mr. Clinton, beset by hecklers and shouted down by an AIDS
 activist at Harlem Hospital, "started out very badly," says
 David Garth, a veteran New York Democratic consultant.  "First
 he attacked the press, then he cozied up to them.  He said he
 didn't want to debate Brown, and then he said he wanted lots
 of debates.  He allowed himself to be run into the ground."
 Says Mr. Cunningham:  "New Yorkers couldn't believe it.  Gov. 
 Cuomo sometimes gets 150 AIDS protesters at a time.  Most New
 Yorkers put up with hecklers in the subway every day, and
 they're not even running for office.  Clinton, in those early
 days, took on the look of a whiner."
    Slowly, though, Mr. Clinton -- who rather specializes in
 these sorts of recoveries -- began to pull himself together.
 He made fun of himself -- joking about his assertion that he
 hadn't inhaled the marijuana he acknowledged smoking while a
 student -- and launched a furious round of radio and TV ads
 attacking Mr. Brown's credibility generally, and specifically
 his 13% flat-tax proposal.  "It's working," says James
 Carville, Mr. Clinton's senior strategist.  Mr. Brown "doesn't
 want to talk about it {the flat tax} any more."
    Further buttressing the Clinton effort is its big edge in
 organization.  Clinton field managers boast that they have
 people working in neighborhoods the Brown campaign has never
 heard of.
    Ultimately, it was Mr. Brown who was put on the defensive.
 Now hecklers have begun to show up at his rallies.
    Though his old campaign manager, Tom Quinn, signed on last
 week to offer advice, Mr. Brown generally makes up his
 campaign as he goes along.  Most of the time, his political
 instincts are sharp.  Yet, the experts say, he stumbled badly
 last week (on April Fool's Day) by staging what his aides
 called "an historic encounter" with the Rev. Jesse Jackson
 during a chaotic rally in downtown Manhattan.  Mr. Brown, who
 normally draws back from human contact -- he declined to kiss
 a baby in Syracuse the other day -- warmly embraced Mr. 
 Jackson in front of dozens of TV cameras, and promised once
 again to choose him as his running mate.
    "Maybe it was OK to put an arm around Jesse, but he didn't
 have to kiss him on both cheeks," says Mr. Garth, the
 Democratic consultant.  "It was so painfully obvious."
    Jewish voters, who remember, among other things, Mr. 
 Jackson's 1988 comment about New York being "Hymietown," were
 displeased.  They began heckling Mr. Brown.  The Jewish vote in
 New York Democratic primaries is 30% or more.  By embracing
 Mr. Jackson, Mr. Brown lost more than he gained.
    All but lost in the tumult is any serious discussion of
 the issues, something that happened when the field was larger
 earlier this year.  Mr. Brown continues to hammer Mr. Clinton
 as a "puppet," a "pooh-bah" and a "mandarin," representing
 the special interests that parcel out fat checks to
 politicians who corrupt the system.
    It's an angry message that still finds a positive
 reception here in the city and in a number of enclaves in the
 rest of the state.  It is especially well-received in New
 York's Upper West Side, a neighborhood that abounds in stores
 selling futons, where Mr. Brown wowed an enthusiastic
 audience this weekend.  As he spoke, copies of the latest
 issue of the Upper West Side Resident, a free newspaper, were
 being distributed.  The front-page headline read:  "West Side
 to Clinton:  Drop Dead."

[This article is made available here by Dow Jones Co. for the
 personal and non-commercial use of callers to this bbs, in the
 hope that it will be of some help to those who are suffering
 from the disease and others who are seeking to help them.]