CAMPAIGN JOURNAL : Candidates Duel by Way of Fax Machines

Dianne Feinstein was resting at her beach house on the coast north of San Francisco. Pete Wilson was in Washington, occupied with U.S. Senate business.

But without ever setting foot on the same turf, the two gubernatorial candidates battled last week. Their weapons--dueling fax machines.

First, Wilson sent Feinstein a letter criticizing her absence from the campaign trail and challenging her, once again, to debate the issues before California voters.

Actually, Wilson didn’t simply mail the letter to Feinstein, a longtime friend of his. He faxed it to reporters, who then called the Feinstein campaign office for comment.

Hours later, Feinstein sent Wilson a return letter. Actually, she didn’t mail the letter either, but faxed it to reporters and to the Republican candidate.

The back-and-forth was the third fax conflict in a month for the gubernatorial opponents, indicative of a strategy that would get lost in the flurry of political events were it not for the continuing post-primary lull. Legislators in Sacramento may be bouncing off the Capitol’s marbled walls in frustration over the budget impasse, but the governor’s race has adopted a leisurely feel.

And that can be frustrating for a candidate like Wilson, who has repeatedly tried with little luck to hoist the campaign to a more combative level. His letter beginning the most recent exchange opened with the salutation “Dear Dianne”--but quickly lost its friendly tone.

“If in fact you are serious about addressing the real and important issues during this campaign, I believe you cannot do so credibly just by making a few token high-visibility appearances,” he said, noting Feinstein’s scant public appearances in the last month.

He challenged Feinstein to debate him, specifically on Oct. 7 and 17. “It is time to come out of hiding and to present yourself to the people of California,” he added.

While the letter indicated the Wilson camp had thought through its preferences for a debate, it turned out there was no such plan. According to a Wilson spokesman, neither the location nor the format has been discussed in any depth, nor had the Wilson campaign made any inquiries of the Feinstein campaign about debates before Wilson’s public letter was released.

Feinstein’s fax retaliation was, to say the least, angry.

“You seem to have deluded yourself into believing that I don’t want to debate you,” she said in her opening line, and it got more tense from there. She asked that Wilson’s campaign contact her campaign to discuss the debates.

She called Wilson’s charges that she had avoided what Wilson called joint appearances “bogus,” saying that they were never scheduled to appear on the same stage during any of the tentatively planned joint sessions. And then she blasted Wilson for missing votes in the Senate, referring to a recent Congressional Quarterly survey showing Wilson with the third worst record of Senate attendance in 1989.

But one of the specifics she cited was May 16, 1988, when Wilson missed a vote extending the federal death penalty to drug kingpins. And using a more utilitarian tool--the telephone--Wilson’s press spokesman Bill Livingstone pounced on that criticism. Wilson, he said in an interview, had missed the Senate vote because he was in San Francisco meeting with supporters of the effort to base the battleship Missouri in the Bay Area.

The Missouri home-basing was a pet project of Feinstein, the former San Francisco mayor. And in a post-primary campaign commercial, Wilson flaunted a copy of a letter Feinstein had written to him thanking him for his assistance in gaining home-port status for the Missouri.

“He hoped that this was not a deliberate attempt to misrepresent his voting record, but (was) sloppy staff work,” Livingstone said when asked about Wilson’s response.

Behind the prolific output of the fax machines is a more basic political pull-and-tug, with each candidate trying to control the momentum coming out of the June primary.

Wilson, on long weekend trips away from Washington, has traveled up and down the state and repeatedly called attention to Feinstein’s low profile. His campaign, as well, sought to compare the former mayor to then-Atty. Gen. Evelle Younger, who in 1978 left on a Hawaiian vacation immediately after winning the Republican nomination for governor. Democratic nominee Edmund G. Brown Jr. exploited his absence and won the election.

Feinstein’s absence from public notice has raised eyebrows among Democrats worried that she is not taking advantage of publicity derived from her trouncing of Atty. Gen. John K. Van de Kamp in the primary. But the nominee’s aides say this is an opportune time to rest for the rigors of the general election campaign and do the private work of raising much-needed money.

In any case, Dee Dee Myers, Feinstein’s spokeswoman, said the Democratic nominee will resume a regular campaign schedule this week, as Wilson is stranded in Washington while the Senate works on a flurry of bills before the August recess.

Both candidates are expected to be in the same place today--sort of. Both have accepted invitations to speak to the California Broadcasters Assn. Both will answer questions from the audience. And both will do it by satellite, another facet of technology beaming them into the Santa Barbara meeting room where the audience will sit.

At the other end of the camera, Feinstein will be in San Francisco. Wilson will be in Washington.