CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS / GOVERNOR : Prospect of 2nd TV Debate All but Dead

Last-ditch efforts to arrange a second and final televised gubernatorial debate between Republican Pete Wilson and Democrat Dianne Feinstein failed on Wednesday.

As a result, the candidates apparently will have to rely on their own television commercials and any news coverage they can attract between now and Election Day on Nov. 6 to get their final campaign messages across to a critical bloc of undecided voters.

Wilson early Wednesday accepted the offer of KNSD Channel 39 in San Diego to hold a debate tonight, with Wilson participating by satellite television feed from Washington, where he has been for more than a week for U.S. Senate sessions. Feinstein rejected the offer as not in keeping with the original agreement to have two face-to-face debates, one in Southern California and one in Northern California.

Feinstein then accepted the offer of KPIX to air such a debate from its San Francisco studios next Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday evenings. Wilson, through his campaign manager, George Gorton, declared the proposal unacceptable because of other campaign commitments.

By Wednesday evening, both sides acknowledged that the prospect of a second debate was dead unless one campaign or the other reconsidered its stance. That did not seem likely.

In a letter faxed to Wilson in Washington, Feinstein said: “A hastily planned exchange in San Diego is no substitute for a second debate in Northern California.

“With the election just around the corner, a face-to-face discussion between the two candidates for governor would give Californians one last opportunity to compare our views and goals for the state,” she said.

KPIX had offered broadcast times on Saturday and Sunday afternoons and Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday evenings. Acknowledging that Wilson would have difficulty returning from Washington for a weekend meeting, Feinstein opted for any of the weekday openings. But Gorton said that no longer was possible.

“Nope,” he said, “we’re not going to. We’ve had to compress two weeks’ events into one last week.”

Wilson was forced to return to Washington for overtime sessions of Congress on the budget and other matters, in part because of campaign pressure from Feinstein, who criticized him for missing Senate votes.

Gorton added: “We can’t give up three of the last seven days of the campaign. Dianne Feinstein knows that.”

He rejected Feinstein’s argument that the San Diego station could not have assembled a statewide network for a debate tonight on such short notice. He said KNSD could have taken over the linkup of other California stations that had already agreed to broadcast the KPIX debate.

The first hourlong debate originated in Burbank on Oct. 7. The second was to have been in San Francisco last Thursday.