Clinton Expert on State Expects Slow Recovery, Plans Strategy : Federal aid: Commerce Secretary Ronald Brown is charged with helping to revive economy and rebuild riot areas.

WASHINGTON —  As the Clinton Administration’s newly appointed czar on California, Commerce Secretary Ronald H. Brown is developing a federal strategy to stimulate the state’s depressed economy and revive charred neighborhoods of Los Angeles amid tense anticipation of verdicts in the Rodney G. King civil rights trial.

No Cabinet official, including Brown, volunteered for the task. President Clinton assigned the responsibility to Brown last month as part of the Administration’s effort to focus attention on California and cultivate a political base in the state.

Brown said he plans to visit Los Angeles next week for the second of many trips to the state. Last weekend, Brown was appointed to head an emergency advisory team to coordinate the Administration’s response if violence erupts after the verdicts.

Administration officials said the President considers Brown ideally suited to direct the California rescue operation because the chief of the Commerce Department is among the nation’s most influential policy-makers in many key areas affecting the state. These include international and domestic trade, technology, tourism and minority business development.

Brown said he looks forward to the challenge but stresses that it will take years to make an impact, particularly in areas devastated by last year’s riots.

“This is not about the 29th of April, 1992. This is about August, 1965,” he said, referring to the Watts riots. “This just didn’t happen. There was no response or an inadequate response 30 years ago. Until we start taking a long-term, non-crisis-oriented point of view, we are not going to be effective with these problems.

“We’ve got to have a federal government that doesn’t just parachute in and run out. That is the usual response. You either get chased out or run out because you give up. The attitude of this Administration is we can make a difference, we can help and we intend to.”

To underscore the many obstacles confronting Brown, consider his stated objective of harmonizing relations between two volunteer organizations--Peter Ueberroth’s Rebuild L.A. and Rep. Maxine Waters’ Community Build.

Rebuild L.A. officials said there is no dispute between the two agencies for Brown to resolve, only vitriolic attacks by Waters. “Maxine has kept up a drumfire of inaccurate, unfair criticism of our organization and Peter Ueberroth,” said Barry A. Sanders, Rebuild L.A. co-chairman.

Waters portrayed any attempt by Brown to broker peace as a waste of time. “They can’t get me together with Peter Ueberroth. Peter Ueberroth doesn’t have anything to offer,” Waters said.

Brown sought to avoid such verbal warfare during his fact-finding trip to Los Angeles on March 27 and 28 by barring the media from his meetings with dozens of political, business and community leaders. His visit sparked hope among some that, under Brown’s guidance, the federal government will provide much-needed assistance to impoverished inner-city areas.

“I was impressed with him,” said Sweet Alice Harris, executive director and founder of Parents of Watts. “I found him to be sensitive to our needs. So often, people will tell us what they want us to do, but they don’t ask us what we want them to do. He kept asking.”

So far, Brown said, he has received an earful of suggestions on how to help Los Angeles. They include focusing attention on unemployed inner-city men between the ages of 17 to 30 who often are untouched by government programs; altering the Administration’s summer jobs package to help Los Angeles youths who attend school year-round; making Small Business Administration loans under $50,000 available to entrepreneurs, and overhauling the oft-criticized bureaucracy within the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Brown is no stranger to long-shot missions. Shortly after Brown was named chairman of the Democratic National Committee, President George Bush enjoyed record high popularity and few gave Brown any chance of getting a Democrat elected as President. But Brown raised millions of dollars, helped unite the fractious Democratic Party and staged a successful national convention in New York last summer that helped put Clinton on the road to the White House.

“If he brings that same kind of wisdom and perspective to the problems here, which are almost insoluble . . . there’s no question he is the best guy in the Administration to do it,” said attorney Johnnie L. Cochran Jr., a longtime acquaintance who hosted a luncheon for Brown during last month’s visit to Los Angeles. “It’s a herculean task, even for him.”

Brown, 51, approaches his California assignment with a strong background as a civil rights advocate and successful attorney.

In 1973, he moved to Washington to serve as chief spokesman of the National Urban League. He later worked on Capitol Hill and ran Sen. Edward M. Kennedy’s successful 1980 California primary campaign against President Jimmy Carter.

Brown’s reputation as a consensus builder and a keen political strategist is expected to serve him well in trying to turn around the California economy and keep the state devoted to Clinton.

“I think we can play a significant role in pulling various groups and forces and sectors of the community together,” Brown said.