Advice to Zschau After Campaign’s Rocky Beginning: Be Yourself

After a rocky start in his general election campaign, Republican U.S. Senate nominee Ed Zschau has decided to fundamentally change his strategy for defeating Democratic Sen. Alan Cranston in November, aides said Saturday.

Instead of responding to Cranston’s attacks, the Zschau aides said their candidate will stress a few main issues, including Zschau’s opposition to the reconfirmation of California Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird.

“We told him to just be Ed Zschau and the voters will feel very comfortable with him by Election Day,” said Stuart K. Spencer, one of President Reagan’s political consultants and one of the Republican strategists who met with Zschau on Saturday at a Los Angeles airport hotel.

Advice to Reagan

“Be yourself” is the basic advice that Spencer gave Reagan after he was brought on board the Reagan plane in the 1980 presidential campaign to help smooth out some rough spots.

Another Zschau strategist, who requested anonymity, said Saturday: “We now think it has been a big waste of time responding to everything Cranston says about us. We are going back to what we followed in the (Republican) primary. Ed will win if people find out who he is and what he stands for.”

Zschau, a two-term congressman from Los Altos, has never run a statewide campaign before, and there have been times in the past eight weeks when it has shown.

Instead of capitalizing on his feat of coming from virtual obscurity in California politics to win the GOP Senate nomination in June, Zschau has spent much of his time on the defensive as Cranston attacked his positions on such issues as aid for Israel, arms sales to Arab countries and the U.S. stance on South Africa.

“We are aware that the campaign has had problems,” Zschau said Saturday during a press conference in which he announced that Sen. Pete Wilson (R-Calif.) will be his honorary chairman.

“This is the first time that I have ever run in a campaign of this magnitude with this much attention,” Zschau said in explaining what has happened.

One source in the Zschau camp said the candidate’s advisers told him Saturday to emphasize three main points between now and November--fiscal austerity, “leadership for the future” and opposition to Bird, who is on the November ballot.

“We have found the smoking gun on linking Cranston to Rose Bird,” the source boasted, “and we will reveal it soon. Contrary to what he says, Cranston supports Bird. We found something that proves it.”

Cranston has refused to take a position on Bird. He is a longtime opponent of the death penalty, which Zschau supports.

Reviewing Poll

Zschau and his advisers spent much of Saturday going over a recent poll that they commissioned statewide on a variety of issues.

One Zschau adviser said that there is some concern in the campaign that Cranston may be much better positioned on the issue of South Africa than is Zschau and that the Republican candidate was told Saturday he had to step up his denunciation of the South African government’s policy of apartheid and its recent crackdown on protests by blacks.

“Ed got the message on this one,” said the adviser, who spoke on condition that his name not be used. “We said, ‘Look, Ronald Reagan may come out for sanctions before this is all over. You have got to act.’ ”

Cranston, a longtime critic of the South African government, is pushing legislation in the Senate that would require all American subsidiaries to pull out of the country in six months and ban imports from and exports to South Africa.

Zschau Criticized

On Saturday, Cranston called a press conference in Los Angeles to blast Zschau for not taking a stronger position on South Africa.

At his own press conference, Zschau said he was disappointed in President Reagan’s speech on South Africa last week because it did not “increase the pressure on the South African government.” Zschau said he believes that Reagan should call a summit of America’s major allies and coordinate pressure on South Africa’s white leaders.

But Zschau refused to join Cranston’s call for stronger sanctions, saying he opposed them because they would harm the companies that have attempted to help blacks in South Africa. Zschau supports sanctions against the South African government itself and against companies that practice discriminatory employment practices.