Signs Abounded That Brown Was on Slippery Slope in N.Y. : Politics: His problems with the Jewish community, his flat tax and his inexperienced campaign team helped lead to his poor showing.

NEW YORK —  The signs had been everywhere that Jerry Brown’s star was falling and his quixotic quest for the hearts of no-nonsense New Yorkers was doomed.

The clearest signal--and the telling moment of the primary campaign--was when a state legislator stood up at a meeting of Jewish leaders and lectured the Californian that he had “disqualified” himself by selecting the Rev. Jesse Jackson as his running mate.

Newspaper photos and TV footage of Brooklyn Assemblyman Dov Hikind, wearing a yarmulke and angrily jabbing his finger at the candidate, were seen by voters everywhere and quickly became a dramatic symbol of Jewish hostility toward Brown.

There were many other signs that Brown’s campaign was headed downhill toward an embarrassing third place finish in a primary he once flatly had predicted he would win:

* Black college students in Brooklyn booed his selection of Jackson as too cynical. Unemployed blacks in Harlem scoffed at it in talking with reporters.

* He persistently was hounded by TV audiences and on the streets about his proposed flat tax and never was able to answer the questions succinctly.

* As Election Day approached, crowds thinned and lacked the exuberance of previous rallies. On Monday, an outdoor crowd on a warm day at the state Capitol in Albany was one-third the size of a rally two weeks earlier in bitter cold.

* His inexperienced, volunteer-dominated organization short-circuited in this high-voltage media market. Commercials ran, leaflets were distributed and schedules changed without the approval or knowledge of key advisers. Press buses carrying network TV crews and national political writers became lost and didn’t make events.

But these were merely the symptoms of a politically split personality who routinely shifted from priestly philosopher to pit bull attacker.

Brown always has been an “in your face” politician rebelling against the Establishment, making attention-getting moves that sometimes backfire, while seldom focusing on details. In other words, he has always done it to himself and did it again in New York--with Jackson, the flat tax and general chaos and confusion.

As Tuesday’s voting indicated, Bill Clinton had no great strength in New York and was potentially beatable. Indeed, in the week after Brown’s March 24 upset victory in Connecticut, several senior Clinton aides--watching their own daily polls--believed the Arkansas governor would lose in New York.

But apparently that was the peak of Brown’s third presidential candidacy. New York became a turning point downward.

And the former California governor now reportedly is prepared to consider withdrawing from the race if he runs poorly in the April 28 Pennsylvania primary.

Brown does not want to repeat his mistake of 1980, when he stayed in the presidential race far too long, damaged his reputation and finally was humiliated in Wisconsin, associates say. On Tuesday, Brown finished a close runner-up to Clinton in that state.

Brown is said to be enjoying his political “rehabilitation”--after failed campaigns for the presidency in 1980 and the U.S. Senate in 1982 and a controversial stint as state Democratic chairman--and does not want to lose his re-earned respectability.

“He’s realistic,” an insider said.

For the record, however, Brown continued to insist Wednesday that “I’m going all the way to the convention.” But he added: “I’m counting on Pennsylvania to make a significant statement.”

Interviewed on morning TV shows before flying to Virginia to stump for support in Saturday’s caucuses, he indicated he would significantly soften his attacks on Clinton. Brown acknowledged that negative campaigning aimed at his opponent had tarnished his own image and muted his message of political reform.

“I did not articulate the message in a way I needed to,” Brown said. “I’m thinking through how we can deliver this message more effectively. . . . That kind of meat grinder (in New York), the only result, in addition to letting (Clinton) win, was it turned off people. . . . “

Network exit polls found that a majority of New Yorkers thought Brown was “not level headed.”

But beyond that, Clinton had a better strategy and a better organization than Brown. Clinton “made a calculation about who would turn out to vote,” said Joe Trippi, a part-time Brown adviser on TV commercials. “That’s just not the style of this campaign.” And even if Brown had developed a strategy, the structure of the campaign “wouldn’t allow implementing it,” he said. “It’s motivated much more by the moment.”

Brown never stuck to a strategy that might have brought together a winning coalition. Only on the last weekend did the former seminarian begin repeatedly emphasizing his Roman Catholic roots--”the son of an Irish politician, like the Kennedys.”

The result was that Brown was supported by less than three in 10 of his natural constituency, white Catholics, according to a Los Angeles Times exit poll.

And in a state where a quarter of the Democratic electorate is Jewish, Brown alienated this crucial constituency by choosing a potential vice president many regarded as anti-Semitic. Brown got only one in 10 Jewish votes, The Times survey found.

Among Brown’s full-time and volunteer advisers--some of the latter go back many years--it is difficult to find anyone except French-born aide-de-camp Jacques Barzaghi who supported the candidate’s politically disastrous choice of Jackson. Some privately were outright offended.

Publicly, Brown has said he wanted to bring together disaffected blacks and Jews, Anglos and Latinos into a new coalition for political change. Barzaghi also points out that Brown long has had a high regard for Jackson, who suggested that the then-governor vacation in Africa in 1979. The trip became a media event when Brown invited singer Linda Ronstadt to accompany him.

But others compare Brown’s choice of Jackson for the vice presidency with his selection of Rose Bird--a state agency head with no judicial experience--as chief justice of the California Supreme Court. In both cases, they say, Brown was thumbing his nose at the Establishment.

Having once embraced Jackson, Brown probably could not have backed away from him in New York. But he did not have to emphasize his support as strongly as he did, joining the civil rights leader at a widely publicized outdoor voter registration rally in Manhattan. It was on the next day that Brown visited the Jewish leaders and was heckled.

Some Brown associates tried to talk the candidate out of campaigning with Jackson.

“Jesse is only going to help Jesse,” said Sam Riddle, a Michigan black labor activist who has helped Brown with the black community. “He may come out and do a picture with you, but Jesse’s baggage is more than you can bear.”

On Tuesday, Brown fared better among blacks in New York than he had previously in other states. But blacks here still supported Clinton over Brown by roughly 5 to 4.

Another turning point in New York came on the day of the Connecticut primary, when Clinton strategists met and decided to focus attention on one issue: Brown’s tax plan.

“In focus groups, when you explain it to people, they all hate it,” one Clinton adviser said. “We thought if we could turn this into a referendum on the flat tax, we’d win.”

There is little real doubt among Brown associates that their candidate jumped on the flat tax idea to get attention. Now, he is backing away slightly, saying if there is anything wrong with the plan--if it hurts lower- and middle-income people--he’ll fix it.

But on Tuesday, according to network exit polls, voters thought by 2 to 1 that the flat tax was unfair.

On Wednesday, Brown was back before friendly audiences on college campuses. “I’m fighting for the soul of the party,” Brown told a rally at the Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. “I want to get the party back into touch. Now they don’t like that--they say, ‘please, quiet down, go away, just let us do our thing.’ ”

By drawing in voters whose distrust of the electoral system might otherwise keep them from going to the polls, Brown said that he still could win the Democratic nomination. At the University of Virginia Law School, Brown invited his audience to “use my campaign as a vehicle to wake ‘em up,” even if they disagreed with some of his policy positions.

“The essence of this campaign . . . is saying we can constitute ourselves a political movement that will keep rolling forward till we shake that citadel of indifference and complacency called Washington,” Brown said, to cheers. Brown also campaigned at Virginia Dominion University, where both his appeal and problems were apparent.

Buddy Ludwig, a 31-year-old student at Virginia Dominion, agreed that Brown should go on campaigning. But after hearing him, he said he remains unsure he would vote either for Brown or Clinton. “I like what he has to say,” Ludwig said. “It all sounded real good but I don’t know how real it could be if he got elected,” he added, citing Brown’s flat-tax proposal.

Times staff writer Melissa Healy in Richmond, Va., contributed to this story.