Wilson, Feinstein Hope to Harvest Farm-Rural Vote : Politics: Candidates find drugs, growth and immigration rival agriculture as issues in Central Valley.

The San Joaquin Valley barn scene could have come from a 1930s Broadway musical: The city gal decked out in boots and denim skirt primly perched on bales of hay and surrounded by country folk eager to ask questions of this stranger from the big town.

The stranger was Dianne Feinstein, the Democratic candidate for governor, the outsider looking for votes near Los Banos in California’s farming heartland. She declared: “I want to be a good governor for the agriculture industry of California.” But when the questions came to the former San Francisco mayor, most of them had little to do with cotton, grapes or almonds.

What will you do about school finance? they asked. Drugs? Growth? The school dropout rate? Immigration? Bilingual education? Sure, they wanted to know about her support of Proposition 128, the so-called “Big Green” environmental initiative and its effect on farmers’ use of pesticides. But on the whole, the concerns of these farm and farm-town folk were remarkably similar to those of people in Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego or Anaheim.

On the same weekend this fall, U.S. Sen. Pete Wilson, the Republican nominee for governor, also toured the San Joaquin Valley. He, too, dressed the part, in khaki pants and blue work shirt as he tossed trays of drying grapes outside of Fresno and climbed aboard a green-and-yellow cotton picker in Shafter. But unlike Feinstein, Wilson, a member of the Senate Agriculture Committee and long a point man for the farmer, was among old friends. “Agriculture is California’s No. 1 industry,” he declared during a stop in Salinas.

The visits of Feinstein and Wilson reflect the two sides of the San Joaquin Valley: On one is a changing population with a wide range of more urban concerns; on the other, the entrenched political foothold that agriculture is trying to maintain in Central California. The way the scales tip may be a key factor in the outcome of the gubernatorial contest, now considered dead even.

Running 250 miles up the middle of California--from Bakersfield to Stockton--the San Joaquin Valley is undergoing rapid economic, social and political change. The population of the eight counties soared from just more than 2 million in 1980 to 2.7 million in the preliminary 1990 census. Many of the newcomers are Asian refugees. Others are refugees from the prohibitive housing costs and all the other stresses and frustrations of life in metropolitan San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Bay Area commuters are spilling into places like Tracy, Stockton and the outskirts of Modesto in search of affordable housing and transforming these rural enclaves as never before. They are driving to work up twisting California 152 over Pacheco Pass from their new homes in Los Banos in western Merced County to jobs in the Santa Clara Valley. And many are following jobs to the Fresno area, where an almost-new three-bedroom house on 1.3 acres of land can be had for $141,500. “Horses OK!” the ad proclaims. Although Democratic by affiliation, the valley tends to be Ronald Reagan-conservative in the voting booth and is becoming more Republican in voter registration. But it remains a political paradox.

Valley voters have been avid ticket-splitters, voting Republican for national and statewide officials and Democratic in choosing their legislators in Washington and Sacramento. Republican Gov. George Deukmejian is a favorite of many in this ethnic melting pot, in part because of his Armenian heritage. Jerry Brown is as welcome as the Medfly.

“It is a strange and wonderful political climate here,” Eli Setencich, a longtime Fresno Bee political writer said in a recent article for The Times, “hot and cold, sprinkled with independence, cloudy with apathy and suspicion and as variable and threatening as the late summer sky in raisin-drying season.”

Setencich lamented the valley as the sleeping giant of California politics that candidates tend to bypass and others mock. But this could be the year the valley rumbles out of slumber.

Former Fresno Mayor Daniel K. Whitehurst, a Democrat, said: “This one will be a good test to determine how Republican the area is becoming. This may be a more partisan vote. People may have a tough time deciding between Feinstein and Wilson and end up voting on the basis of party.”

On the surface, Wilson would seem to have the advantage with valley voters, partly because he is Republican. But it is also because of his long affiliation with agriculture and his vocal opposition to Proposition 128.

Things, however, are not that simple. While the farm vote remains critical, it is not necessarily monolithic. The vast changes sweeping through the valley are bringing many whose concerns are more in line with Feinstein’s more urban brand of politics.

Up near Modesto, Tom Ciccarelli, a walnut farmer who has been president of the Stanislaus County Farm Bureau and now is president of the Modesto Chamber of Commerce, is a Feinstein supporter. He opposes Proposition 128. But he also knows that times are changing in the valley.

“We’re concerned about ‘Big Green,’ ” he said. “One of the things that agriculture fears the most is the unknown. We’re under a lot of pressure. We’re dealing with the world economy, with urban sprawl. There are a lot of things that are going to negatively impact agriculture.”

But Ciccarelli notes that the farm vote is losing its potency, “so we have to be proactive. We have to be part of the solution. We have to work with the environmental community.”

But talk to old-line farmers like J. A. Yates of Kerman in Fresno County, and a visitor comes away convinced there is only one issue in this election, pesticides, and one candidate for governor, Pete Wilson.

Agriculture is doing all it can to kill Proposition 128. One of its many sweeping provisions would phase out the use of about 20 popular pesticides that have been labeled carcinogens. Agriculture is fighting back with its own competing initiative, Proposition 135, to write friendly-to-farmers pesticide rules into law.

Try to steer the conversation to the agricultural economy or urbanization and Yates keeps coming back to Proposition 128, his speech peppered with varying shades of invective about environmentalists.

“We don’t want Dr. Meryl Streep and the NRDC (to) determine how we’re going to make a living,” Yates said, referring to the actress who appears in ads for the campaign and the Natural Resources Defense Council, which angered agricultural interests by raising concerns about the use of the pesticide Alar used on apples.

Wilson has been an unequivocal opponent of Proposition 28, but he also has been competing with Feinstein for the important statewide environmental vote. As a result, he has not made his old farm friends entirely happy this year.

First, he said he would remain neutral on agriculture’s answer to “Big Green,” Proposition 135. Finally, he decided to oppose it. In addition, Wilson already had proposed to move most regulation of pesticides from the state Department of Food and Agriculture, which critics claim is too friendly to the farmers, and put it in a new state Environmental Protection Agency he proposes to create.

For her part, Feinstein did not shy away from proclaiming her endorsement of Proposition 128. What she tried to do was convince people like Ciccarelli that “Big Green” could very well win whether they supported her or not. And if it passed on Nov. 6, and she was elected governor, she would work hard to implement the initiative fairly so as to cause as little disruption of agriculture as possible.

Despite the farmers’ vigorous opposition to the measure, it may not be that much of a handicap for Feinstein in the valley, some observers said.

Bill Carrick, Feinstein’s campaign director, said he thought Wilson’s failure to back Proposition 135 may have neutralized criticism over her support for the environmental initiative. Carrick said Feinstein supporters believe she can carry Fresno County, where there is growing concern over urbanization, the pollution of water wells and the air pollution that hangs over the valley and obscures the Sierra foothills, much as the Los Angeles smog cloaks the San Gabriels on many days.

The first rumblings of a possible slow-growth initiative are emanating from the city of Fresno, which supported Walter Mondale for President in 1984 and Michael Dukakis in 1988, only to be offset by votes for Reagan and George Bush in rural portions of the county.

“We’re beginning to get some of the same kinds of problems you’ve got in Los Angeles,” said David H. Provost, a political science professor at Cal State Fresno. “There is increasing concern about the quality of life here. We even have a helicopter for traffic reports on the radio.”

Fresno County’s population grew from 515,000 to 658,500 during the 1980s. But the city grew even faster. At 351,000, it accounts for more than half the county population, compared to 42% a decade ago. Growth was even more dramatic in the northern part of the valley, which is being suburbanized by emigres from Contra Costa and Alameda counties. Stanislaus County grew by nearly 40% and the city of Modesto by more than 50%.

Still unclear is whether the new voters will feel any loyalty to the agricultural economy, and by association, to Pete Wilson. Or will they be attracted by Feinstein’s promise to develop regional growth controls that might stave off the same sort of urban ills they sought to escape?

The valley is in the vanguard of the sort of regional government Feinstein is talking about. Just to the north, Sacramento city and county voters will decide on Nov. 6 whether to merge their two governments.

In 1990, the candidates have not exactly become frequent visitors to the valley, but they have not ignored it, either. Each has made several visits to the region and Wilson, as Republicans usually do, has picked up considerable financial support from the agricultural community.

Former Fresno Mayor Whitehurst said candidates are coming to the valley more often than they used to, but not staying as long. This, he added, is more a reflection of the changing nature of campaigns than the political importance of the region.

And quietly, the valley is becoming a diversified sophisticated area no longer deserving of so many jokes involving raisins, pickup trucks and gun racks.

On a mild sunny Saturday in October, Fresnans browsed through the bookstore and boutiques in the fashionable Fig Garden Village on Shaw Avenue west of the Fresno State campus. They sat at umbrella-shaded sidewalk tables sipping expresso and munching flaky, fresh croissants from the boulangerie , which boasts a certificate of membership in the local Franco-American society.

A light breeze rustled through the trees in the brickwork plaza of Fig Garden Village, providing a bucolic scene far from the noise, brawn, dust and sweat of giant tractors, automated harvesters and dusk-to-dawn toil that symbolize the world’s richest farming domain.

Both scenes are part of valley life now.

Times political writer Cathleen Decker contributed to this article.