CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS GOVERNOR : The Promise of a Dream, a Show of Concern for Latino Residents : Wilson: The GOP gubernatorial nominee dishes up an afternoon of fun in a visit to the Grand Central Market.

Pete Wilson’s search for voters took him Thursday to the din of Grand Central Market, where, as television cameras jostled for position, the Republican candidate for governor donned a white apron over his suit pants and served up a little fun.

Actually, he served up pig hearts, almost 2 1/2 pounds of pig hearts, wrapped them in white butcher paper and presented them to a middle-aged woman who looked somewhat confounded by the fuss over her order.

“Senora,” Wilson nodded politely, before accepting $2.65 in payment.

Wilson’s gubernatorial campaign was dedicated Thursday to a public show of concern for the Latino community, an effort that led the U.S. senator from a meeting with Latino corporate leaders in a glitzy downtown hotel to a raucous pep rally by high school students in Bell and, after another business-oriented meeting, back downtown to the marketplace.

Usually known for a more reserved persona, Wilson took to the day with a showman’s flair. At the market, as his aides looked on in glee, he spooned up some campechano-- a seafood mix--and pronounced it “very good.” He cooed over a baby, shook hands with a beer-drinking man and accepted the best wishes of an assortment of shoppers.

Throughout the day, Wilson virtually ignored his Democratic counterpart, former San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein. He referred to her by inference only once, and even then did not use her name.

On the way, Wilson waded into some serious waters as well as photogenic ones. He repeated his campaign pledges to draft volunteer teacher aides to help struggling California students and provide prenatal care to pregnant women, and took a hard line against drug use.

As he has before, Wilson said that new drivers should be subject to random drug testing.

“I think we need to put into the law a requirement that first-time license applicants--within a year after their receipt of a license--will be subject to mandatory random testing,” he told students at Bell High School. “If they fail, they lose the license.”

Wilson also promised to approve mandatory instruction about AIDS--the lethal Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome--in state high schools.

“We’ve seen in the experience of AIDS quite specifically that education has worked to check what has been the expected rise,” he said in a press conference in Montebello, adding: “I think it’s essential we reach the high school audience.”

Wilson and his fellow Republicans have increasingly been looking to bridge the gap between themselves and traditionally Democratic Latinos, who currently constitute 25% of the state’s population and are expected to increase that by half by the year 2000. But audience response to Wilson Thursday indicated he has some distance to travel.

In a morning breakfast with business leaders, he was criticized for opposing the recent Civil Rights Restoration Bill. He and other Republicans objected to the measure because, they contended, its language would force employers to use quotas for hiring and promotion.

Antonia Hernandez, the president of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and a guest at Wilson’s breakfast, expressed disappointment in his vote. The senator, however, did not budge from his opposition.

“Quotas are not fair. They are not fair to the more qualified applicant; they are not fair to the people of this state. They are insulting,” he said. “Whether you intend it or not, quotas result in reverse discrimination.”

Later in the day, Wilson said he would likely have Latino members on his transition team, in his Cabinet and among his judicial appointments--but not because of their ethnicity, he said.

“They will be the best,” Wilson said.

Wilson took pains, particularly before Latino business leaders, to emphasize conservative credentials. “I am a lifelong conservative Republican,” he told one group. “I’m tight with your tax dollars.”

Repeatedly, he tried to demonstrate kinship with entrepreneurs and specifically small business owners, who he said could not cope if California became an “island of mounting costs.”

But, in an argument that is not generally forwarded by conservatives, he said that government did need to take the initiative in areas like prenatal care. Under Wilson’s plan, money from the state’s tobacco tax would be shifted from current health care spending to pay for prenatal care for women who do not receive such treatment from private insurers or through Medi-Cal.

“We owe it to every child to see to it the child begins with every decent break,” he said.