Why Jerry Keeps Running

By MARGARET CARLSON

As the collection basket passes through the crowd, Jerry Brown delivers a 45- minute homily on reclaiming the soul of the Democratic Party and bringing an end to "the whole stinking mess in Washington." His audience is 1,500 students, professors and supporters gathered at the college in Kalamazoo, Mich., where the student center is attached to a shopping mall. He blasts those at the top for prospering at the expense of those at the bottom, and condemns those he claims would send American jobs to low-wage Mexico. He says, "Thomas Jefferson said we need a revolution every 20 years. Well, it's been 200 years and it's time."

There are whoops of support and moments of pin-drop silence among these voters who did not make it onto the '80s gravy train. Although Michigan voters have almost nothing in common with this walking Experiment in Living, the antinuclear former seminarian who has washed lepers with Mother Teresa in India and studied Zen with Buddhists in Japan is showing surprising appeal. As the campaign enters mid-stretch, rank-and-file union members, independents, rainbow-coalition minorities and educated, maverick Democrats are giving the former two-term California Governor a chance to build on his victories in Colorado and Nevada and a virtual tie in Maine.

That Brown is still around to pick up this support confounds the experts who pronounced his candidacy dead on arrival due to terminal flightiness. In the first televised debate Dec. 15, he took out after moneygrubbing politicians, some of whom he said were onstage with him. He dared to step out of line and recite his now famous 800 number, angering debate master Tom Brokaw, who behaved as if anchorpersons deserved more respect than presidential candidates.

That behavior -- along with other instances of refusing to play by the rules -- assured that Brown would be thrown into a media black hole. The networks ignored Brown, who turned to the radio talk shows, filling the air with jeremiads against the confederacy of corruption, careerism and $1,000 campaign contributions. While his competitors travel in chartered jets and stay in hotels, he flies coach on scheduled airlines, sleeps on foldout couches, and is driven around by volunteers who mean well but have no sense of direction. Late for an important event two weeks ago, he broke into the motorcade of one of his rivals, oblivious to Secret Service agents wildly waving at him to get out. One reporter described the seat-of-the-pants Brown campaign as "a drive- by shooting."

Despite the chaos, many voters are identifying with Brown as the only candidate as disaffected as they are. His 13% flat-tax proposal with deductions only for mortgage interest, rent and charitable deductions, though deeply flawed, has found an audience among those who feel like chumps every April 15. His plan has the advantage of taking Congress out of the tax-break / business, and demolishing the industry of accountants and lawyers who guide the wealthy through 4,000 pages of loopholes, by reducing the average tax return to the size of a postcard.

These days, the 800 number is often busy, swamped by 110,000 callers who have pledged $2 million in bites of $100 or less. In Michigan, next to the pro-business Tsongas and right-to-work-state Governor Clinton, Brown looked like Samuel Gompers in Earth shoes. In a televised debate last Friday, Brown chided Clinton for luring employers to low-wage Arkansas, joking that the state's motto is, "Come on over, we have slave labor here." Brown has won the unofficial support of the new president of the cleaned-up Teamsters, Ron Carey, and United Mine Workers president Richard Trumka. Last week powerful California assembly speaker Willie Brown warned Tsongas and Clinton to stay out of the primary there "to avoid a potentially embarrassing loss."

Brown has been able to convey an authentic outsider mentality despite the fact that two years ago he was the head procurer for the Sacramento branch of the professional political class. The chairmanship of the California Democratic Party was an odd job for someone who had never slapped a back and who once vowed to limit state lobbyists to "two hamburgers and a Coke." His tenure there is now held up by party regulars as an example of unprincipled ambition. But Brown looks back at the two-year stint as party chairman like an alcoholic at his last binge; he will never touch the stuff again, and neither should anybody else.

In the 1970s Brown the thinker was often so far ahead of the curve that he was in danger of hurtling into orbit. But in many ways the times have caught up with his fear for the planet and the people on it. Still, like Republican Pat Buchanan, he may have turned into the candidate for people who are sick of politicians-as-usual. If that's the case, it's a wonder Brown doesn't get more votes than he does.

With reporting by Jordan Bonfante/Los Angeles and Sylvester Monroe with Brown