CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS / GOVERNOR : Wilson Fund-Raiser Headlined by Bush

Invoking the name of Pete Wilson’s policeman grandfather, killed in a gunfight with Chicago drug runners 82 years ago, President Bush on Tuesday praised the senator as a candidate who shares Bush’s “sense of mission” in continuing the often-bleak war against drugs.

Bush, in Los Angeles for the first of two fund-raisers expected to add some $2 million to Wilson’s campaign bank account, spent much of his Tuesday night address defending his anti-Iraq strategy.

But in a boost to Wilson he also emphasized drugs--a theme the Republican gubernatorial candidate has depended upon in his march to election day--and praised Wilson’s support of federal anti-crime legislation.

“So when your senator says we need to protect the public and the police from cop killers and kingpins, when he says that those who deal in death should reap what they sow, you can be sure, Pete Wilson means business,” Bush told hundreds of Republican donors, who paid $1,000 a plate to attend the gathering at the Westin Bonaventure Hotel downtown.

Bush told the guests the story of Michael Callahan, Wilson’s grandfather, who was slain at 30, when Wilson’s mother was just a toddler. Wilson himself frequently uses the story in speeches to law enforcement officials.

Bush also borrowed Wilson’s self-descriptions in calling the senator both a “conservative” and a would-be “activist” governor.

In introducing Bush, Wilson drew an indirect comparison between the President’s 1988 promises and Wilson’s similar pledges this year to increase preschool education, oppose offshore oil drilling and talk tough about drug abuse.

As guests lingered over tables decorated with small American flags, Wilson tried out a joke that compared the actions of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein to the antics of actor Warren Beatty in the Hollywood bomb, “Ishtar.”

Wilson, however, issued Hussein a new given name, “‘Haddam.”

Three protesters were arrested after they allegedly intervened when police tried to arrest a demonstrator outside the hotel.

About 15 demonstrators were spray painting limousines and hotel walls while shouting “anti-American slogans,” said Police Sgt. Frank Hancock.

As police were they arresting one man, Hancock said, two men and a woman scuffled with the officers, allowing the suspect to escape.

The three demonstrators, who were not identified, were placed under arrest. The Republican Party and the President have invested substantial time in California this political season. The state is due to add seven congressional seats to its delegation in the next reapportionment, and the governor will have the authority to approve or veto any redistricting plan.

Bush is expected to raise another $1 million for Wilson in San Francisco today.

Wilson’s Democratic opponent, Dianne Feinstein, Tuesday received the endorsement of the 200,000-member Sierra Club.

“It was a choice between someone who is good and someone who is significantly better on the environment,” the club’s political director, Claudia Elliott, said during an endorsement ceremony in Baldwin Hills.

Later, the former San Francisco mayor spoke to several hundred members of a Los Angeles business group, the Headquarters Assn.

She promised that if she wins she will convene a bipartisan summit meeting the day after the election to begin reforming the state budget process.

Sounding somewhat like Gov. George Deukmejian, Feinstein complained that ballot initiatives and court decisions have severely limited the governor’s flexibility in setting fiscal priorities.

Times staff writer Nieson Himmel contributed to this story.