Clinton Takes Big Pennsylvania Lead : Primary: Early returns show the Arkansas governor ahead of Brown by a 2-1 margin. The President is seen as effectively clinching the Republican nomination.

PHILADELPHIA —  Pennsylvania Democrats nudged Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton ever closer to his party’s presidential nomination Tuesday, while President Bush was heading to a victory that would effectively clinch his renomination in the Republican race.

Clinton took a strong early lead over former California Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr., and exit polling of voters conducted for the major television networks projected an easy victory for the Arkansas governor.

The early returns showed Clinton leading Brown by a near 2-1 margin, 54% to 28%. Former Massachusetts Sen. Paul E. Tsongas, who suspended his Democratic presidential campaign in late March but remains on the ballot in many states, had 13%.

Among Republicans, Bush held a 76%-24% lead over his Republican challenger, former television commentator Patrick J. Buchanan, and the exit polls projected that he would score an overwhelming victory.

Clinton, campaigning in Newark, N.J., before the polls closed, said Tuesday’s vote proved he could do well when he can get his message out.

“I talked about real people in Pennsylvania, real gripping concerns . . . “ said Clinton. “And every time this election gets given back to the people of the country it comes out all right. I’ve got to keep doing that.”

Brown, who took his campaign to Indiana where voters go to the polls next Tuesday, insisted that he would stay in the race.

“We intend to fight all the way,” he declared. “We have real tough decisions to make in this country and they’re not going to be made by shutting the primary door.”

Turnout in Pennsylvania was described by state officials as low. And much of the credit for attracting those voters who did show up was given to the heated battle for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate.

In early returns, Lynn Yeakel, a Philadelphia woman making her first bid for political office and a virtual unknown just weeks ago, was running ahead of Mark S. Singel, the state’s lieutenant governor.

With close to 20% of the vote counted, Yeakel held a 46%-32% edge over Singel, with three other candidates splitting the rest of the vote.

Yeakel’s campaign was played out against the backdrop of last fall’s controversial Senate judiciary hearings into the Supreme Court nomination of Clarence Thomas.

Yeakel, co-founder of a nonprofit organization that raises money for women’s charities, ran advertisements showing Republican incumbent Arlen Specter questioning law professor Anita Faye Hill, who had accused Thomas of sexual harassment. “Did this make you as angry as it did me?” she asked in the ad.

On the Republican side, Specter was rebuffing a challenge by state Rep. Stephen Freind, best known as the author of the state’s restrictive abortion law.

The Pennsylvania vote may have been a turning point for Clinton on the trust issue--nearly two-thirds of his party’s voters questioned in the exit polls gave him a positive rating on honesty.

Past exit polls had showed the honesty issue to be Clinton’s big liability. In the April 7 New York primary, for example, 49% of those surveyed doubted Clinton’s integrity.

Despite the good news for Clinton, 53% of the Democrats said they would like to see someone else enter the race. And nearly a quarter in both parties said they would vote for Ross Perot if the Texas billionaire were on the ballot in November, according to a poll taken for four television networks.

Based on the early returns, Bush will win the bulk of the 91 Pennsylvania delegates, enough to assure him the nomination when other delegates legally promised but not yet formally delivered to him are counted shortly.

As of Tuesday morning, Bush had 1,020 delegates awarded and another 34 legally pledged. According to GOP rules, 1,105 delegates are needed for the nomination.

“We’ll have that magic number of 1,105 and that is a very good one,” Bush told supporters during a visit to his Washington campaign headquarters Tuesday.

Buchanan, who essentially conceded the nomination to Bush following the President’s big victories in the March 17 Michigan and Illinois primaries, spent only one day in Pennsylvania. He instead is focusing on North Carolina, which holds its primary next Tuesday, and California, where voters will cast ballots on June 2.

Buchanan is expected to use the rest of the primary campaign to hammer away at Bush for straying from the conservative agenda and, in the process, lay the groundwork for a 1996 presidential campaign.

Clinton was poised to capture most of the 169 Democratic delegates to add to the 1,388 he has won in earlier contests. He needs 2,145 to win the nomination. Brown had 271 delegates before Tuesday.

The election capped a low-key bout of Democratic campaigning here, as Clinton sought to ignore Brown and turn his attention to an anticipated fall campaign against Bush. Brown initially adopted a somewhat parallel strategy, concentrating on his call for massive reforms of a political system that he charges is complacent and corrupt. But his message seemed to generate little attention, and he resuscitated his attacks on Clinton as a flawed candidate who he said would prove unelectable in November.

Clinton used the Pennsylvania campaign as a forum for two major addresses--one on the economy, the other on the environment. He pushed for a more activist government role on both fronts, stressing the need for a detailed national strategy to revive the economy and aggressive efforts to protect the environment. In these speeches and on a host of other topics, he continued to sharpen distinctions between himself and Bush.

The absence of controversy in Pennsylvania--a startling contrast to the heated atmosphere that surrounded New York’s April 7 primary--may have allowed Clinton to begin to repair some of the damage done to his reputation during the grueling primary season, political analysts said.

But Clinton also leaves behind a lingering feud with Democratic Gov. Robert P. Casey, who during the week before Tuesday’s vote repeatedly suggested that the party consider other candidates at its July convention.

Casey, whose opposition to abortion rights puts him at odds with Clinton, said the presumptive nominee had only a “flyspeck” of support among voters. Among Clinton supporters, there were worries that Casey’s remarks could feed continuing national concerns about the Arkansas governor’s long-range chances against Bush.

It was indicative of Brown’s invisible status in the state that Casey did not feel compelled to address him.

Brown visited nearly every corner of Pennsylvania, but his campaign failed to catch fire even in the depressed former steel towns where his anger would have seemed to have its most incendiary potential.

“Brown’s campaign just simply fell through the floorboards,” said G. Terry Madonna, director of the Center for Politics and Public Affairs at Millersville State College in Lancaster.

Repeated polling by the center before Tuesday’s vote showed Brown’s favorability rating among voters dropping even as Clinton ignored him, suggesting that the problem lay with Brown’s message. For instance, the former California governor rarely detailed how he would go about rectifying any of the nation’s problems.

Before the returns were counted, Brown reiterated his intention to stay in the race until the convention.

“It doesn’t matter what the margins are,” he said.

Pennsylvania’s Democratic Senate race burned with all of the heat that the presidential contest lacked. Polls taken only three weeks ago showed Yeakel with single-digit support. But with a strong last-minute advertising campaign that focused on Specter’s role in the Thomas hearings and urged voters to do something about an unrepresentative Senate, her support surged.

If her lead holds, Yeakel would become the second woman in as many months to surprise a better-known Democratic male to win a Senate nomination. In Illinois’ March 17 primary, Carol Moseley Braun beat two men, including two-term incumbent Alan J. Dixon, to emerge as that state’s Democratic Senate nominee.

“This is a year when the voters are very angry with the political Establishment and politics as usual,” Yeakel said Tuesday. “Women represent change.”