Brown Doubtful About Cranston Hopes : Politics: The Assembly Speaker said he believes that the senator will not survive politically without heroic measures.

California Assembly Speaker Willie Brown said Monday that Sen. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.) cannot win reelection in 1992 unless he is vindicated by Senate investigators and then dramatically restores his tarnished image.

In his most outspoken comments on Cranston’s travails, Brown, a San Francisco Democrat, also criticized Cranston for soliciting $850,000 from financier Charles H. Keating Jr. for voter registration drives. The Senate Ethics Committee is investigating the liberal senator’s dealings with Keating, the conservative owner of Lincoln Savings & Loan.

“If you ask me whether or not I would have taken $800,000 for a cause that I believed in from a political opponent philosophically and think that that was OK, no, I would not have done that,” Brown said at a luncheon he held for reporters.

“I don’t think you could, in your wildest imagination, increase the level of suspicion and doubt (a voter would have about) a politician who would do that.”

Brown was asked about Cranston during an annual 2 1/2-day visit to the Capitol by an Assembly and Senate delegation. Even as he insisted that it would be premature to write Cranston’s political obituary, the Speaker made it clear he believes that the senator needs heroic measures to survive.

With potential Democratic challengers already jostling for position, Brown said Cranston could win a four- or five-way primary with 18% to 25% of the vote.

But, Brown added, if circumstances in November, 1992, are similar to those today, “we’d lose that U.S. Senate seat (to a Republican). I don’t believe that Cranston at this stage of the game can win that U.S. Senate seat.”

The Senate Ethics Committee and the Justice Department are investigating allegations that Cranston and four other U.S. senators, all of whom received donations from Keating, improperly intervened on Lincoln’s behalf with federal regulators who were investigating the thrift. When Lincoln was eventually seized for mismanagement, it became the biggest thrift failure in U.S. history, costing taxpayers an estimated $2.5 billion.

Cranston has strongly denied any wrongdoing in the Lincoln matter. He maintains that the voter registration funds and $39,000 in campaign contributions he raised from Keating had nothing to do with his contacts with federal regulators on Lincoln’s behalf.

Rather, he said, he went to bat for the thrift because it employs hundreds of people in Southern California. Cranston has declared his intent to seek a fifth term in 1992.

Responding to Brown’s remarks, Cranston spokesman Kam Kuwata said: “The circumstances are ever-changing. We know there will be a full hearing by the (Ethics) committee, and we are confident that they are going to say he did nothing wrong. And then we start to rebuild.”

Kuwata called Brown’s criticism of Cranston for accepting large contributions from a political foe “a nonsense argument. . . . Is Willie Brown saying he has never raised any money from people who have not voted for him?”

Brown said Cranston had fallen so far because his integrity had been beyond reproach for so long. In addition to being cleared by the inquiries, Brown said Cranston now needs a flood of positive media exposure.

Brown said this might mean that Cranston would have to “stop crack from flowing in the streets,” provide child care for “every working parent in California,” increase affordable housing or reduce air pollution in the state’s smoggiest regions.

“So, it’s hopeless?” a reporter asked.

“Not really hopeless,” Brown said. “In that vein, if tomorrow they went out there to repair the (malfunctioning Hubble Space) Telescope and he went with them, he’d have a shot.”

During the recent Democratic state convention, Brown said he was seated beside Cranston on the podium. On the other side of the senator was the nameplate of Atty. Gen. John K. Van de Kamp, a Democratic candidate for governor.

Brown recalled, “Van de Kamp, as Cranston’s chatting with me, gets his sign and switches it over so he’s next to (Senate Democratic leader) Barry Keene. And he puts (State Democratic Chairman) Edmund G. Brown Jr. next to Cranston. Now, I interpret that as . . . the shot from the evening news and you don’t want to be in close proximity to a guy who might look like he’s wearing stripes.”

Brown supports Van de Kamp’s principal opponent--ex-San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein--in the June 5 gubernatorial primary.

Kuwata responded that overall, Cranston “got a very warm response at the convention.”

Brown has occasionally come under fire on ethics issues himself. On Monday, a reporter asked him about media allegations that he had in his private law practice represented clients who had business with the state.

“I represent nobody who has any business with the state of California,” the lawmaker responded.

“I just don’t do anything wrong,” he added. “I have a good time and I enjoy my life.”