California Elections : Wilson Widens His Big Cash Lead Over McCarthy

In the struggle for campaign dollars, Republican Sen. Pete Wilson continues to pad his substantial lead over his Democratic challenger, Lt. Gov. Leo McCarthy, and enhance his budding reputation as one of the more formidable money-raisers in Congress.

At least in the early going, McCarthy is not financially competitive with Wilson, who has collected $1.1 million to McCarthy’s $380,000, according to the latest campaign financial reports, which cover a six-week period ending May 18.

While Wilson, with outlays of more than $5 million, has outspent every other U.S. Senate candidate in the country, he still has more than three times as much cash on hand as McCarthy. The latest reports show Wilson with close to $2.5 million and McCarthy with $706,000.

In all, Wilson has raised about $5.7 million over the last 16 months and McCarthy about $2.8 million. Wilson’s stated fund-raising goal for the election is $15 million. McCarthy’s is $9 million, a goal that will be hard to reach at his current pace of raising just $300,000 to $400,000 a month.

The McCarthy camp shrugs off the financial drubbing.

“So what?” said McCarthy aide Kam Kuwata when he was asked to comment on Wilson’s growing financial advantage.

“The bottom line is that he (Wilson) has spent several million and no one is paying any attention,” Kuwata said.

Kuwata points to a recent Los Angeles Times Poll that concluded that, while Wilson is leading McCarthy by 12 points, most people in the state have not started to pay much attention to the race. The poll was conducted during a period when Wilson was spending more than $1 million on television advertising. But McCarthy’s campaign director, Darry Sragow, conceded that the pace of McCarthy’s fund-raising will have to quicken.

“It has to pick up. There has to be a significant increase by the time the next reports come out, June 30,” Sragow said. “You have to project a certain amount of strength, and you do that in a variety of ways. Fund-raising, obviously, is one of the ways.”

But Sragow and Kuwata predicted that the McCarthy campaign will have $1.5 million on hand by June 30, $2.5 by mid-July and enough by September to meet the campaign’s $4.5-million fall television advertising budget.

Optimism Told

“We will get $9 million, including $4.5 for television,” Sragow said. “We are very comfortable that the campaign is proceeding on schedule.”

Sragow and Kuwata said the money will be generated on several fronts, including $1.5 million set aside for him by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee in Washington and a direct-mail donor base developed by the McCarthy campaign. McCarthy is also counting on significant help from Democratic Sen. Alan Cranston, one of the Senate’s most effective political fund-raisers, from the influential political organization of Los Angeles Congressmen Howard Berman and Henry Waxman and from the Hollywood Women’s Political Committee.

Wilson’s financial strength is partly a result of his ability to capture the support of people who traditionally have given to Democrats. He has won Democratic converts in the Jewish community and among movie business executives as a consequence of his record on Israel and of his advocacy of legislation helpful to Hollywood.

Wilson also enjoys broad support from the state’s huge defense industry and from agricultural interests.