NEWS ANALYSIS : Politics, Propositions: Is It Time for Change? : Elections: Far-reaching initiatives and the gender issue face the voters on Tuesday.

Behind the swirling campaign fog and the advertising claptrap, the 1990 California elections hold this piquant question: Is now time for change?

Candidates from the heated governor’s race on down dwell on the theme; ballot propositions promise it. And on Tuesday, in the first round of this year’s balloting, the choice goes to voters. They have the opportunity to significantly alter the state of the state, to put the strop to the legendary cutting edge of California.

Or, just as important, they hold the power to ratify the status quo, thank you.

Either way, the California elections seem destined to give definition to this new decade of the 1990s, here and across the nation.

As usual in a primary election, the most telling votes will come on ballot propositions.

Will voters accede to a big tax increase and a vast new highway building program and thereby signal the beginning of the end of the era of Ronald Reagan and Proposition 13? Or is the mood still anti-tax, anti-government and anti-growth?

Proposition 111 on the June 5 ballot, the gasoline tax and spending limit, will provide an answer.

Then, will voters toss out California’s elaborate and unique criminal court procedures in the belief that a Plain Jane system modeled after the federal courts will re-balance the scales of justice? Proposition 115, popularly known as the “crime victims’ initiative,” will tell.

Will voters finally strip the Legislature of its longstanding and perpetually controversial power to draw district lines and shape partisan control of the Assembly, the state Senate and California’s ever-growing delegation to the House of Representatives? Proposition 119, and to a lesser degree Proposition 118, will answer.

At the same time, will voters approve tough ethical standards for state officials--in return for an independent pay commission designed to boost their salaries? Proposition 112, the Legislature’s ethics-for-pay measure, will decide.

And then there are the candidates.

One of the most tantalizing questions this election is whether Democrats will make history and choose a woman as their nominee for governor. Dianne Feinstein comes down to the wire as the favorite over John K. Van de Kamp, after a long and lackluster campaign in which gender loomed large.

In fact, the whole question of the improving electoral prospects for women just may, in the end, emerge as the lasting story of the 1990 campaign.

Beginning with the primary Tuesday and then the general election Nov. 6, it is possible, for the first time, for Californians to elect women to more than half of the top jobs in state government. In addition to governor, there are strong contenders for the offices of lieutenant governor, treasurer and secretary of state.

In this primary, there are six credible women running for statewide constitutional office--representing both parties, all variety of ideology and divergent views on feminist issues such as abortion.

The Republicans fielded state Sen. Marion Bergeson in the race for lieutenant governor against fellow Orange County Sen. John Seymour.

Another Republican, former U.S. Treasurer Angela (Bay) Buchanan, seeks to replace incumbent Treasurer Tom Hayes as the party nominee in the fall. The winner will face one of the most talked-about women in the 1990 elections, Democrat Kathleen Brown, sister of former Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr. and the daughter of former Gov. Edmund G. (Pat) Brown Sr.

Finally, Democratic Secretary of State March Fong Eu, the ranking woman in California politics, seeks a fifth term. And among the Republicans seeking the nomination to oppose her is Los Angeles Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores.

“The winds of change are blowing,” Feinstein is fond of saying.

The former two-term mayor of San Francisco began her historic campaign rather ambivalently. A wealthy, active and fun-loving woman, she had plenty of doubters. Did she really have the stomach for the demands and knocks of the campaign trail? Even she wondered.

But step by step, she convinced herself and most everyone else of her determination. She and husband Richard Blum lavishly spent their own money on her campaign. She turned around the polls. And maybe most important, she proved that her personality fits television the way fur fits the mink.

She had to cut corners to do it, however. She had virtually no political organization. Her adviser on issues was a part-time loaner from Assembly Speaker Willie L. Brown Jr.

Her platform often made her sound like she was running for federal mediator, not for governor. Got a problem? Water allocation? Business development? Race relations? A state budget awash in red ink? Unaffordable insurance? She offered one universal bromide: She would get people around a table and make them negotiate.

Her real message was airier.

“What this race is all about is a change in values,” Feinstein said. “ . . . The ‘90s will be a decade of enormous change.”

It is not unusual for her to mention “change” six or eight or 10 times in a single speech. And audiences looked at this regal woman and found it just about impossible to argue--she embodied change just by being there.

Van de Kamp ceded nothing on the issue of change, except the most obvious, his sex.

His campaign slogan was: “Changing California.” And in virtually every speech he, too, promised a new epoch for the Golden State--more environmentalist, more consumerist and more activist.

Making the case that he is the candidate for change has not been easy, however.

As attorney general and former Los Angeles County district attorney, he lacked a record of reform, or a personality with much voltage to communicate his ideas, so Van de Kamp took a gamble that he could define his vision of change with a threesome of ballot initiatives.

He helped write the “Big Green” environmental proposal. He kicked over the political anthill in Sacramento with his initiative to limit terms of office. He proposed an anti-crime, anti-drug initiative.

Trouble was, these were to position him for a general election race against the Republicans in November. He had discounted Feinstein in the primary.

And so bold was his move that it raised questions of authenticity that hound Van de Kamp to this day.

Was he really the quiet, principled administrator, the political insider his friends and associates knew? Or was he the trouble-maker, outsider populist that his campaign depicted? In a cruel cut, some said they looked at him and saw through him.

As for the Republicans, they had it easy this primary race for governor. U.S. Sen. Pete Wilson is without significant opposition. But he is not without the breezes of change at his back.

He decided to run just three months after his 1988 reelection to the Senate, and he broke sharply with the lame duck Administration of Republican Gov. George Deukmejian. Wilson promised to get moving with better transportation, better schools, better health care. He reached out to minorities, stuck up for a woman’s right to obtain an abortion and talked the language of the environmentalists.

Almost without a fight, the once mighty and fearsome GOP right wing fell victim to change, its bite defanged and its ideas oddly ignored. A moderate Republican came to be head of the California GOP with little more than a whimper from the right.

But anti-government conservatives are not giving up on the whole election.

One of their hopes this June is Proposition 111, the $15-billion doubling of the gasoline tax.

A defeat of this measure would ratify the view that taxes are high enough and government big enough. As for change, no thanks.

Conversely, all three candidates for governor are counting on passage of Proposition 111. Not only will it raise money for transportation, it will loosen the state’s annual spending limit and give the incoming governor a little more freedom at budget time.

And perhaps just as important to the candidates, Proposition 111’s passage would demonstrate that the “winds of change” blowing across the globe still stir the imagination of Californians.

One change cannot be denied in 1990--the election of the state insurance commissioner.

Once the job of an appointed bureaucrat, the insurance commissioner was elevated to be the eighth statewide constitutional office as a result of the Proposition 103 insurance reform of 1988.

For the chance to be the first to hold such a high-visibility consumer post, seven Democrats and five Republicans crowded onto the ballot.

But then, too, there are game politicians who refuse to yield to change, no matter how sweeping.

Arlo Smith and Ira Reiner, the two Democrats running for attorney general, have come forth with an old-fashioned, name-calling, mudslinging brouhaha of the variety sure to brighten the lives of anyone who misses those days of bear baiting or dueling with ball peen hammers.

And then there is Paul Carpenter, a member of the five-seat State Board of Equalization.

He’s hell-bent for reelection to yet another term despite a profound big change in his political status. Not just the incumbent, he’s the only candidate running under a four-count federal corruption indictment.

THE RACE FOR GOVERNOR

Primary elections tend to be about personalities and records of achievement, not arguments about issues--if for no other reason than candidates from the same party tend to think alike and appeal to the same constituencies. Still, campaigns are rooted in the soil of issues and promises. Here is a reprise of the issues and priorities of this campaign, as advanced by the Democratic candidates for governor:

JOHN K. VAN DE KAMP

Environment: Along with the state’s major environmentalist groups, Van de Kamp is the co-author of the November ballot proposition known as “Big Green.” It is perhaps the most sweeping conservation initiative ever advanced, and seeks to phase out harmful chemicals, preserve old-growth forests and prepare the state for an oil spill in the ocean.

He also has said he would not build the long-debated Peripheral Canal in the San Joaquin Delta to transport additional Northern California water to the south.

Ethics: Van de Kamp wrote and then qualified for the November ballot a second initiative--this one on state government ethics. Among other things, it would limit terms of office for politicians--12 years for legislators and eight years for other officials. Additionally, it would outlaw honorariums and tighten rules on gifts.

It also would provide partial public financing for election campaigns for state offices, and impose spending limits.

Crime: A third Van de Kamp initiative--the third plank in his November general election platform--is on crime. Among other things, it would increase taxes on business $1.7 billion for a stepped-up war on drugs, and $740 million for construction of prisons in the desert.

Although personally opposed to the death penalty, Van de Kamp has taken pains to voice his willingness--indeed, his eagerness--to see it enforced.

Abortion: Throughout, Van de Kamp has pledged to protect a woman’s right to obtain an abortion. He has called for the state to use its independent powers to study and approve the French abortion/birth-control pill RU 486 for use in California. He is, however, personally opposed to abortion.

Education: He has proposed extending the state sales tax to candy as a way to finance a new, $85-million-a-year state teacher corps. The idea is to assist about 4,000 college students each year with the costs of their education in exchange for a pledge to teach in public schools upon graduation.

Budget: With the state facing a $3.6-billion shortfall next year, Van de Kamp has made fiscal management one of his high priorities. He has vowed to protect the poor and elderly from cuts in the annual cost-of-living increases in their benefits.

He has proposed a variety of measures to bring the budget into balance, including an increase in the income tax rate on people earning more than $100,000, or $200,000 per couple. Instead of paying 9.3% in state taxes, they would pay 11%.

Housing: Van de Kamp wants the state to provide emergency loans to families in need so they can pay the mortgage or the rent. Today, a family is typically ineligible for shelter assistance until they are evicted. His pilot program would cost $5 million a year and help perhaps 3,000 families at the start.

DIANNE FEINSTEIN

Gender: Perhaps she didn’t start out with this specifically in mind, but her gender--and “empowerment” for women and minorities--have become major issues of her campaign.

Feinstein has pledged to appoint women to half the jobs in her Administration, and to allot jobs to minorities in “parity” with their share of the population.

She has made strong appeals to women voters on the single issue of sisterhood. She has vowed to veto any bill that would infringe on a woman’s right to obtain an abortion, and, moreover, has said that abortion rights are best protected by a woman.

Mediation: Feinstein has made her executive style a major issue in this campaign. And her style relies heavily on commissions and negotiation to solve entrenched problems.

On a long list of issues facing the state, from housing to economic development to water allocation to the budget shortfall in Sacramento, Feinstein prefers stating broad progressive themes and little more.

She wants commissions of experts, or maybe just informal groups of interested Californians, to gather together in the governor’s office and negotiate.

Values: Again, perhaps an unorthodox issue, but one at the very core of Feinstein’s campaign.

Sometimes it is the value of “mothering.” The state of California could use a little of that, she says. Or maybe it’s the value of society protecting itself by “increasing the risk for crime.”

She has been criticized for the vaporous nature of such statements, but Feinstein argues that leaders should stand for nothing so strongly as a set of values.

“What this election is all about is a change in values . . . it’s about turning things around,” Feinstein said.

Education: She has proposed a $750 million “jump start” program to give every child a preschool education. Part of the money would come from a larger bite out of lottery proceeds. She also seeks state intervention to end “social” promotions of students with bad grades.

Crime: Her support for the death penalty has been a frequently mentioned plank in her platform. She has also called for a return to the “indeterminate” prison sentence. Currently, criminals are given a “determinate” sentence--that is, they know when they will be released, with time off for good behavior. Under her plan, criminals are locked up for an indeterminate period, say five to 10 years. Release is made by a parole board based on a review of the inmate’s record.

Growth Management: She has proposed a plan designed to control growth in California. The idea is for each of several regional commissions to oversee the drafting of urban growth plans. All future zoning and development would have to comply.

On related issues, she supports “Big Green” and opposes offshore oil drilling.