Senate Candidates Start Early on TV Ad Drives

In case anybody is watching, California’s U.S. Senate race will flicker across TV screens next week, fully nine months before the election, as the leading candidates, Republican Sen. Pete Wilson and Democratic challenger Lt. Gov. Leo T. McCarthy, scramble to make the first, formative imprint on the voters.

Their rush to television is a sign of the image problems two unglamorous campaigners anticipate in a year when voters will be thinking about a presidential race.

For McCarthy, who will get in the first lick, the early TV spot is an attempt to define the enemy before the enemy can define himself. The 30-second commercial says that Wilson is more interested in raising campaign funds than in taking a stand on the nuclear arms treaty recently signed with the Soviet Union. Spokesmen for McCarthy described the ad as a modest trial run, costing $20,000 to $25,000, aimed at small audiences in Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco and Sacramento.

Sunday Audiences

McCarthy’s aides said Thursday that the ad is timed mainly for Sunday news show audiences--in other words, for journalists, politicians and others whose opinions can influence public attitudes about the candidates.

Otto Bos, who is heading Wilson’s campaign, said the senator’s ads will highlight his efforts on behalf of the coastal environment and his record of frugality, pointing out that he has donated his Senate pay raise to charity. Bos said Wilson has invested more than $100,000 in the ads, which are to start Tuesday and run for at least a week in seven cities around the state.

McCarthy’s ad is the beginning of an effort to portray Wilson as the “invisible senator” who has left “no footprints in Washington” during his five years in office. McCarthy, who was not present at any of three press conferences previewing his new ads Thursday, is himself the target of similar criticism from his rival for the Democratic nomination, former television commentator Bill Press.

‘Bland Leading Bland’

In speeches, Press refers to Wilson and McCarthy as “a case of the bland leading the bland” but, so far, Press has raised considerably less money than either Wilson or McCarthy and has said he is not ready to pay for television advertising.

Darry Sragow, McCarthy’s campaign director, said Thursday that McCarthy has decided to take the fight directly to Wilson because he does not regard Press as “competitive.” Both parties’ primaries are in June. Wilson does not face a Republican challenger.

McCarthy’s ad is the work of Robert Shrum and David Doak, the professional image makers whose television ads put new life into the presidential campaign of Missouri Congressman Richard Gephardt.

Going on television early is a specialty of Shrum and Doak, who demonstrated the effectiveness of that strategy in California during the 1986 Senate campaign. Their ads attacking Republican challenger Ed Zschau were among the most potent weapons in Sen. Alan Cranston’s campaign arsenal.

Called ‘Notorious’

“Doak and Shrum are notorious for trying to get out a negative message on a candidate before the candidate has a chance to give his own message,” Bos said.

The ad attacking Wilson suggests that the senator has avoided taking a stand on the nuclear arms treaty, in part, because he received $15,000 from a defense industry political action committee that could be hurt by the treaty.

The contribution, from a committee representing General Dynamics, came to light in newspaper reports last December.

Bos said that Wilson has voted to do away with political action committees and that the senator expects to vote for the nuclear arms treaty.