CAMPAIGN JOURNAL : Feinstein’s Star Quality Getting Tested With Some Trying Times

As Dianne Feinstein sat attentively in the front row of a Huntington Park elementary school auditorium, it seemed fitting that 100 tiny voices would be belting out Ronald Reagan’s 1984 campaign theme song, “God Bless the U.S.A.”

Fitting not because of ideological similarities between Feinstein and Reagan, although there are some, most notably on crime issues. Fitting, rather, because Feinstein could be the first major California politician since Reagan to possess the magical, intangible asset that goes by many names--excitement, charisma, pizazz--but means star quality.

The question being asked by politicians of both parties is whether Feinstein is a real star or a shooting star destined to flame out, as did another Californian with a magic personality, Edmund G. Brown Jr., “Gov. Moonbeam” to his critics.

“I see a lot about her that reminds me of Reagan,” said Stephen A. Merksamer, Gov. George Deukmejian’s former chief of staff and an occasional adviser to Sen. Pete Wilson, Feinstein’s rival in the gubernatorial race. “She has flair, style. When Reagan walked into a room, you knew he was in the room. When Dianne Feinstein walks in a room, heads turn. And in one-on-one situations, both are charming.”

But then Merksamer demurred a bit: “The excitement hasn’t been there since the primary. She’s come across as a more conventional politician, less Reaganesque. The question is, how is she going to be during the last month of the campaign? Which Dianne Feinstein are we going to see? The Feinstein of the primary or the Feinstein of summer?”

Arleen Peta, the young fifth-grade teacher at the Miles Avenue School who selected “God Bless the U.S.A.” for Feinstein to hear at a made-for-television campaign stop Wednesday, is not so sure about the Democratic candidate herself. Peta told a reporter she believes that Feinstein “has solid footing” on many issues, especially education. But she is wavering and could vote for Wilson. Peta indicated she will decide based on the two candidates’ positions on crime (which are virtually the same). She wants more policemen on the streets and more criminals behind bars.

Yes, Peta said, she did vote to reelect Reagan President in 1984. But that is not why she chose “God Bless the U.S.A.” for her students to sing to Feinstein. She just believes that Lee Greenwood’s popular song with its patriotic lyrics--”I’m proud to be an American . . . ain’t no doubt I love this land”--is “especially appropriate now with what’s going on in the Middle East.”

These are trying times for Feinstein, the former San Francisco mayor who is in her first statewide race and is seeking to become California’s first woman governor. She trounced Atty. Gen. John K. Van de Kamp in the Democratic gubernatorial primary and has been holding her own against Wilson in most polls. But there is a sense, as one national political writer put it at a San Francisco press conference on Wednesday, that Feinstein “has frittered away the momentum” she had built up during the primary.

“You have to realize this,” Feinstein replied. “California is a huge state. When we’re on television (with commercials) our (poll) numbers go up. When we’re off television, our numbers drop . . . I am running against a man who has run statewide four times . . . outspent us on television 2 1/2 to 3 to 1 . . . I think we’ve done remarkably well. And that’s what gives me, frankly, the adrenaline to continue on because I believe we can win this race.”

But one Feinstein aide acknowledged that the candidate is tired, largely from fund raising. While President Bush was raising $2 million for Wilson this week at just two events--a dinner in Los Angeles and a lunch in San Francisco--Feinstein was scurrying around to 20 smaller fund-raising events and picking up a lot less money.

As a result, Feinstein’s one major public speech this week--on Tuesday to the Los Angeles Headquarters Assn., a business group--”definitely was not one of her best efforts,” the aide conceded.

Feinstein plowed through her written text in a series of staccato spurts, each sentence seemingly rising to its own crescendo, often for no apparent reason. And she blew one old line that Reagan likely would have paused around, pounced on and turned into a belly roar: “Some cynics speculate that the real loser in the governor’s race will be the one who wins the election.”

Like Reagan, however, Feinstein raised a lot of questions about tough issues and offered few specific answers. For example, she announced she would call “a summit” with legislative leaders the day after the election to consider how to give the new governor more discretion over state spending. But she also has said she would not allow any reduction in allotments for the two biggest categories of untouchable funding programs: education, and health and welfare.

Nevertheless, two leaders of the organization praised Feinstein after the lunch for at least addressing issues--”in contrast to the ads on TV,” said lawyer Jay Davis, immediate past president of the group. Said architect Chet Widom, the current president: “I was impressed with her ability to handle herself and take questions. She pretty well kept everybody’s attention.”

Dee Dee Myers, Feinstein’s press secretary who is a veteran of campaigns with Michael Dukakis, Tom Bradley and Walter Mondale, said that the former mayor is at her best when she abandons the written text and “just let’s it rip.”

“She still has the ability to knock folks’ socks off, inspire them” Myers said. “No one I’ve ever worked for has been able to do that . . . She walks into an airport, a restaurant and people automatically sit up and notice. I don’t recall anybody ever wanting to know what Dukakis had for breakfast. They do Dianne.”

As for the loss of excitement, Myers said confidently: “Voters tuned in for the end of the primary. Now they’re starting to tune back in. It’ll come back.”