News Analysis : CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS / GOVERNOR : Feinstein Painting Wilson as Just Another ‘Blue Shirt’

Four weeks from Election Day, Dianne Feinstein is powering her campaign on a split message--that Pete Wilson is an old-hat politician who cares little for the duties of governing, and that she is an invigorated new presence who can steer California into the 1990s.

To accomplish the first, Feinstein is placing unrelenting pressure on Wilson to explain his absences from Washington, demanding on Wednesday that he return part of his salary as punishment for declining to return to Congress for votes.

In pursuit of the latter, Democrat Feinstein also is returning to the lofty, implicitly historical rhetoric she effectively used in the primary. Tuesday night in San Francisco, before several hundred supporters, Feinstein reworked the slogan of a running-shoe company to emphasize the momentum she hopes will come her way: “Just do it.”

“The message of our campaign is to end the drift of the last eight years and restore leadership,” Feinstein declared.

”. . .No longer should the mentally ill find their beds in doorways and under freeways. In the era of Republican budgets, billions of dollars have trickled not down but up to the very rich, and there has been little trickle-down to all the rest of America.

“The safety nets to catch those most in need have been shredded, and now men and women fall through to wander homeless in our streets. We say we must address these problems. . . . We must do it.”

Feinstein could be the first woman governor of California, which plays nicely into her assertion that she, not Wilson, would be the “candidate of change.” It is a notion touched upon increasingly as she moves toward Election Day.

“Change is more than replacing one gray pin-stripe suit with another in Sacramento,” Feinstein says, in a line that could be struck down as sexist were it uttered by a man about women. “Change is more than substituting collar sizes of blue shirts in the gubernatorial wardrobe.”

More and more, Feinstein’s rhetoric is resembling that which fueled her in the primary, when her gender and issue positions fused to turn the election her way. On Wednesday morning in Oakland, before a meeting of ministers, she even returned to the dicey political promise that her Republican opponent Wilson has labeled as a “quota.”

As she did in the primary, Feinstein vowed to appoint an administration that is representative of the state--by gender and race.

“My opponent has criticized me because I said that I believe the administration of the next governor of the state should make appointments so that the administration reflects the breadth and depth and diversity of the state. . . . And he says, ‘Oh, you mean quotas!’ ” she said.

“Why is it, when you talk about appointing people of quality who may also be of color--(that) is a quota? I’m not talking quotas!” she added.

But Feinstein’s appeals are by no means totally liberal; indeed, she has taken a thematic lead from two Republican presidents. Tuesday night in San Francisco, Feinstein asked several hundred supporters what she called her “one fundamental question” of the campaign. “Does anyone here feel safer today than he or she did eight years ago?” It was a takeoff on Ronald Reagan’s famous “Are you better off today . . .?” line.

Later, she added another line: “The winds of change are sweeping through California”--a takeoff on a theme in President Bush’s inaugural address.

While pressing ahead on that front, Feinstein is escalating with equal aggressiveness her assaults on Wilson, most specifically on his decision not to return to Congress this term. Feinstein’s campaign hopes that the tactic undermines one of the Republican’s political strengths, his image as a solid and competent legislator who would be an acceptable alternative to voters.

At a Century City news conference Wednesday, Feinstein surrounded herself with graphics illustrating Wilson’s absence during recent Senate votes on the nomination of Supreme Court Justice David Souter and on the continuing budget resolution.

“Pete Wilson is indicating by his absence that in fact he’s not a leader,” she said. “There are other U.S. senators who are back there sitting up all night trying to craft a (budget) compromise. Wilson is not one of them.”

The Democrat took special care to personalize her criticism with references to two often-troubled industries.

“Who’s going to represent Californians in this process?” she asked. “Who will be working on these committees to see that California’s defense workers and the farmers in the Central Valley get a fair shake? Apparently not Pete Wilson.”