CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS GOVERNOR : Van de Kamp Is Target in TV Counterattack

The TV ad opens with California gubernatorial candidate Dianne Feinstein in a bold red suit, looking directly into the camera and challenging her Democratic opponent, John K. Van de Kamp, to run a positive campaign.

But just in case he doesn’t get the point, Feinstein’s image is suddenly replaced by a 1950 photograph of Richard M. Nixon, who Feinstein says “smeared” his U.S. Senate opponent, Helen Gahagan Douglas.

As the battle of the TV ads continues to push the California governor’s race away from a discussion of the issues, Feinstein’s advisers have come up with a surprising--and maybe risky--answer to a commercial Van de Kamp is running that attacks her record as mayor of San Francisco from 1978 to 1988.

Her campaign advisers William Carrick and Hank Morris offered Feinstein possible avenues of counterattack. But they said she rejected this tactic for now and chose to capitalize on her front-runner status and try to focus attention on the tone of the Democratic gubernatorial primary election.

The result is the 30-second remember-Nixon spot that the campaign started producing Monday by filming Feinstein in Los Angeles and finished Tuesday in a New York studio.

“I remember when Richard Nixon smeared Helen Gahagan Douglas and distorted (the) record. And we all remember the 1988 (presidential) campaign,” Feinstein says in her commercial challenge. The first reference was to a very nasty California U.S. Senate race in 1950, in which Nixon won his only statewide election in part by accusing Douglas of being a communist sympathizer.

Copies of the new commercial were shipped to TV stations throughout California on Tuesday night and will begin airing in various markets tonight.

“This is a high-risk strategy because the usual response to an attack like Van de Kamp’s is a counterattack,” Carrick said.

Morris added: “We all know the public is tired of negative ads, but the fact is they almost always work.”

The consultants admit that Feinstein may be uniquely positioned to try to pull off this latest tactic because she is a woman candidate who was sometimes called “Goody Two Shoes” when she was mayor.

She sought to back up that approach Tuesday with a speech to business and civic leaders in Los Angeles. She declared, “Let’s make 1990 the year when we break with the past and put negative politics behind us. Unfortunately, it takes two to make a positive campaign.”

But the Van de Kamp campaign said the linking of Van de Kamp to the memory of Nixon was as down and dirty as anything seen so far in this campaign. And more, Van de Kamp aides said this was not the first time she had tried to link an opponent to a reviled politician. They produced a San Francisco Examiner news clipping from her 1979 race for mayor of San Francisco in which she likened an opponent to a racist politician.

The opponent was Quentin Kopp, now a state senator. The article said that brochures Feinstein sent out contained testimonials from black leaders and this headline: “The Real Quentin Kopp-George Wallace Returns.” (Wallace was governor of Alabama and one of the foremost segregationists of the 1950s and 1960s).

Meanwhile, Van de Kamp has his own problems with his latest TV ad. Lawyers for the San Francisco Chronicle Publishing Co. said they sued him in federal court Tuesday for trademark infringement because the spot Van de Kamp is now running uses the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper’s name four times as it cites articles to back up its charges that Feinstein left the city in debt and dumped sewage in San Francisco Bay.

Officials of the Chronicle Publishing Co. saw their trademark in a photograph taken from the Van de Kamp ad that was published in the Los Angeles Times last week along with an analysis of some of the Van de Kamp charges against Feinstein.

The Van de Kamp campaign agreed to remove the Chronicle Page 1 nameplate from its ad, but Chronicle general counsel Ron Ingram said Tuesday that the type used in the remake of the Van de Kamp ad still infringed on the Chronicle trademark.

“It still makes it appear that we are sponsoring the attack on Dianne Feinstein,” Ingram said.

Despite the independent challenges to Van de Kamp’s ad, Carrick and Morris believe that the attacks have hurt Feinstein, who soared ahead of Van de Kamp and the presumptive Republican gubernatorial nominee, U.S. Sen. Pete Wilson, in a Los Angeles Times poll taken last month.

The new Feinstein commercial begins with Feinstein citing a Van de Kamp quotation from some months ago in which he said he thought the public was tired of negative campaigns. “Weeks ago, John Van de Kamp said people are tired of negative campaigns,” Feinstein says as she looks into the camera. “I don’t know about John, but I really believe that. I still remember when Richard Nixon smeared Helen Gahagan Douglas and distorted her record. And we all remember the 1988 campaign. We Californians are trend-setters. So let’s make 1990 the year we put negative politics behind us.”

But does this strategy mean that Feinstein can go through the entire Democratic primary without running a harsh ad about Van de Kamp?

“That’s what Dianne would like, but we aren’t making any promises,” Carrick said.

CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS: THE TV CAMPAIGN

The race: Governor. Whose ad? Democratic candidate and former San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein. Target of ad: Her opponent in the primary election, current Atty. Gen. John K. Van de Kamp.

What the ad says, with an analysis by Times political writer Keith Love .

Ad: “Weeks ago John Van de Kamp said people are tired of negative campaigns. I don’t know about John, but I really believe that.”

Analysis: Feinstein is referring to a statement Van de Kamp made last year at a fund raiser: “People are tired of negative campaigns, tired of negative candidates.”

Ad: “I still remember when Richard Nixon smeared Helen Gahagan Douglas and distorted her record. And we all remember the 1988 campaign. “

Analysis: Feinstein is referring to a particularly nasty U.S. Senate race in 1950 in California, in which Nixon won his only statewide campaign in part by accusing Douglas of being soft on communism. The reference to the 1988 presidential campaign derives from widespread criticism of President George Bush and, later, Democratic nominee Michael S. Dukakis for some of their harsh TV commercials.

Ad: “. . . let’s make 1990 the year we put negative politics behind us. . . . Mr. Van de Kamp, it takes two to make a positive campaign.”

Analysis: Feinstein is sure to face criticism for, in effect, comparing Atty. Gen. Van de Kamp to Richard M. Nixon, who resigned his presidency in August, 1974, during the Watergate scandal.

Times political writer John Balzar in Los Angeles contributed to this story.