CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS / GOVERNOR : Recount Gives Van de Kamp Democrats’ Endorsement

After a recount of votes, John K. Van de Kamp on Sunday belatedly--and by the skin of his teeth--won the endorsement of the California Democratic Party in his campaign for the governorship.

At the same time, he prepared to wrap up his costly, time-consuming and elaborate ballot initiative preparations for the general election in November, freeing him to concentrate on his neck-and-neck June primary election race with Dianne Feinstein.

The effect of these two events, combined with polls showing that he has pulled virtually even with Feinstein, is a welcome turn for a candidate whose lackluster campaigning this spring threatened to cast him as an inevitable loser.

California Democrats held their first endorsing convention of modern times the first weekend of April, and Van de Kamp left disappointed after coming up two votes short of the 60% support from delegates needed to win the party’s endorsement. He had hoped that his many years of attention to party affairs would be rewarded with a vote of confidence by the grass-roots activists.

A recount was undertaken Saturday at Van de Kamp’s request and was held under the supervision of representatives from both gubernatorial campaigns. This time, Van de Kamp surpassed the 60% threshold by five votes. The final tally was Van de Kamp 60.3%, and Feinstein 33.3%, with the remaining votes for minor candidates or no endorsement.

“Delighted . . . I’m proud to be endorsed by the people who make up my party,” said Van de Kamp, the state’s attorney general.

His campaign said the recount found registered Republicans had cast ballots at the convention for Feinstein, and that one pro-Feinstein district from the Central Valley had cast twice as many votes as it was allotted.

Feinstein, the former mayor of San Francisco, has never been a party insider. Her appearance in Los Angeles was only the second time she had attended a state party convention.

Her campaign manager, Bill Carrick, raised questions about the fairness of the recount and the “highly selective” method of challenging the credentials of certain delegates.

“I don’t think we’ll ever know what really happened,” he said. He added that Feinstein was reviewing her options of either dropping the subject or challenging the recount.

The value of the party’s endorsement is unknown and will probably depend on Van de Kamp’s skill in using it to try and regain the confidence of Democratic voters. At one point last year, he was considered a shoo-in for the nomination, and this air of inevitability had been one of his strongest assets. But his support dissipated in the face of a Feinstein surge early this year.

In past years, state law barred political parties from making pre-primary endorsements. A court overturned that law, and the April 8 vote by Democrats was the first use of the new privilege. Republicans have decided not to attempt endorsements in the 1990 primary.

The party’s recount follows two other endorsements Van de Kamp recently received--from the state Labor Federation AFL-CIO and from the liberal-leaning California Democratic Council.

On the ballot initiative front, Van de Kamp announced Sunday that his campaign had collected more than 1 million signatures on behalf of a proposition he drafted that deals with crime and drugs. Pending a check of the signatures, that would be more than enough to place it on the November ballot, when Van de Kamp hopes to be the party’s nominee against Republican U.S. Sen. Pete Wilson and when crime is likely to be a pivotal issue.

Wilson, along with a small army of crime victims, is sponsoring his own anti-crime measure for the June ballot that contains a pledge to speed up trials. It would recast California criminal procedures in the mold of the federal court system.

Van de Kamp’s proposal incorporates the Wilson measure verbatim--with one addition, a specific statement affirming California’s “privacy” protection of abortion rights. Van de Kamp has raised the concern that Wilson’s measure, by not asserting the privacy protection, could jeopardize abortion rights.

Van de Kamp’s proposal then goes further and would raise $1.7 billion over the next eight years for an anti-drug superfund, with 60% of the money going to law enforcement and 40% to social agencies for prevention, treatment and education.

He sought to emphasize the education portion of the package Sunday in an appearance at the headquarters of the Los Angeles Conservation Corps. Wearing tennis shoes and a casual shirt, Van de Kamp sat with a group of school-age youngsters, listening to their stories about random shootings in the inner city, the easy availability of drugs and the predominance of gangs.

“There’s no question that our children want to just say no. But we have to give them realistic alternatives that they can use. The only question is, are we ready to do what it takes to help them do it?”

Money to pay for the expanded anti-drug effort would come from a broad rewriting of corporate tax laws, eliminating some arcane tax deferrals and shelters. Mainly, these changes would restrict the ability of corporations to claim expenses early and income late for tax purposes.

For example, it would prevent the practice of corporations deducting the cost of vacation pay for workers far in advance of actually granting vacations.

A final element of the ballot proposition authorizes $740 million in bonds to build 36,000 prison and jail cells for drug offenders.

Announcement of the turning in of the signatures follows a similar declaration last week on behalf of the so-called “Big Green” environmental ballot initiative sponsored by Van de Kamp and conservationist groups. And today, Van de Kamp is scheduled to submit 1 million qualifying signatures for his third ballot proposition--an ethics measure to limit terms of office in state government and impose restrictions on the business activities of officeholders.

The three initiatives were devised by Van de Kamp and his advisers as a general election stratagem--”Vote for me, vote for my platform.” The strategy, however, did not account for a rough-and-tumble primary race with Feinstein.

Pursuing the strategy has meant that Van de Kamp has had to spend large chunks of his time and campaign resources qualifying the measures for the ballot--time and money he might have spent responding to Feinstein’s challenge. He said Sunday that his campaign spent about $600,000 directly on the signature-gathering drives.

“The question is, ‘Was it a good idea?’ ” Van de Kamp said. “I think so. This is good policy . . . (and) these are going to pass overwhelmingly no matter what happens to me.”