CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS / GOVERNOR : The Debate Takes On a Commercial Appeal

Maybe this is the debate the two Democratic candidates for governor promised. Not the old-fashioned, face-to-face stuff with live candidates in a spontaneous format--but television commercial vs. television commercial, each carefully scripted and produced by professionals.

Atty. Gen. John K. Van de Kamp took his turn in the war of the airwaves Wednesday, broadcasting a new, 30-second television spot that seeks to raise doubts in voters minds about whether rival candidate Dianne Feinstein is leveling with them.

The issue is San Francisco’s city budget and the question of whether Feinstein left behind a multimillion-dollar deficit when she finished two terms as mayor at the end of 1987.

Van de Kamp is saying she did. Feinstein says, no, her final budget closed after she left office with a surplus. As often is the case in politics, both are right.

The one-time front-runner Van de Kamp is hoping his new spot can persuade voters that he is closer to the truth--and that, in turn, this will wipe some of the luster from Feinstein’s upsurged campaign.

This is the second commercial Van de Kamp has used in less than a week to draw attention to the San Francisco budget issue, but the first devoted wholly to it. It was to hit the airwaves in the state’s major media markets at the same time Feinstein was to begin running a new ad in which she asks Van de Kamp to wage a “positive campaign.”

Here is the text of Van de Kamp’s new commercial, as read by an announcer:

“Amid growing controversy, Dianne Feinstein denies she left a deficit. But the (San Francisco) Chronicle reported a $180-million deficit left by Mayor Feinstein. The Sacramento Bee reported she left San Francisco in a financial mess. Current Mayor Art Agnos spoke of putting the blame where it belonged--squarely on Feinstein’s bad management.

“City Controller Sam Yockey said she robbed the bank and left us holding the bag.

“So the next time Feinstein denies it, remember the L.A. Times reported the budget she’d left behind had a deficit of $180 million.”

Viewers see a succession of newspaper clippings with dates to back up the Van de Kamp charge.

Already the San Francisco budget has generated much explanatory journalism. But the basic facts are these: In San Francisco, the budget runs from summer to summer. The mayor leaves office in winter. So Feinstein drew up her final budget in the summer of 1987, and by law, it projected no red ink.

After she left office, incoming Mayor Agnos was told that he faced a crisis: If spending continued at current levels, he would rack up a $180-million deficit. One San Francisco newspaper called the deficit the worst in history.

Agnos--who has since endorsed Van de Kamp--faulted Feinstein for poor management and reckless spending of city funds. He said he had to cut spending, raise taxes, impose a hiring freeze and lay off employees in order to balance the budget Feinstein left him.

But, in the end, a deficit was avoided. When the books closed June 30, 1988, there was actually a surplus of $16.4 million.

Feinstein acknowledges that drastic action had to be taken by her successor to make ends meet. “If I had been there I would have done what had to be done. That’s the job of a mayor,” she has said.

Against the charge of bad management, she said it was not wild spending on her part but unforeseen drops in revenues and increased costs that led to the fiscal trouble. Revenues declined, for instance, because of the drought that led to a decline in the available hydroelectric power for sale from city facilities. Costs increased, she explains, because of such things as a court ruling that required millions in back pay to city workers.

Meanwhile, Feinstein on Wednesday defended her own television spot that cites the brutal campaign Richard M. Nixon waged for the U.S. Senate in 1950 against Helen Gahagan Douglas.

Feinstein told reporters at a sidewalk press conference in Sacramento that the commercial “is not a comparison” between Van de Kamp and Nixon. She said recalling for viewers the Nixon-Gahagan Douglas fight merely displayed “an example” of smear campaigns of the past.

“Let’s go back and try to . . . learn from history and try to prevent” the repetition of negative campaigns, Feinstein said. “What I am trying to do is say, ‘Let’s take the high road.’ ”

Times staff writer Carl Ingram in Sacramento contributed to this report.