A Tug of War to Wear the Mantle of ‘Candidate of Change’ : Feinstein: Sen. Kennedy joins her campaign in East Los Angeles. He attacks Wilson’s vote to sustain Bush’s veto of the Civil Rights Act of 1990.

Thirty years after he first came to East Los Angeles to campaign for his late brother John, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) stumped the Latino community Sunday for gubernatorial candidate Dianne Feinstein, declaring, “I think I have been to East Los Angeles more than Pete Wilson has.”

Kennedy lashed U.S. Sen. Pete Wilson, Feinstein’s Republican opponent, for his vote to uphold President Bush’s veto of the Civil Rights Act of 1990 and commended Feinstein as “a caring and compassionate individual” who deserves the same support Latinos have provided the Kennedys for years.

Feinstein then spoke briefly in her second appearance of the day in the same East Los Angeles neighborhood and issued a most Kennedyesque appeal for help “to see that we get this state moving again.” In campaigning for the presidency in 1960, John F. Kennedy often talked of the need to get the country moving again.

Ted Kennedy originally was scheduled to address the first rally at noon Sunday, but his trip to California was delayed by Saturday’s late Senate session. The second rally was quickly organized, basically to get Feinstein on television news with Kennedy at her side.

Only about 100 people attended. But it was an enthusiastic crowd, particularly at the end, when Kennedy broke into a spontaneous voice-cracking and somewhat untuneful version of “Guadalajara” with a mariachi band. But the senator managed to get the Spanish language words right.

As expected, Kennedy aimed his campaign salvo at Wilson’s stand on the civil rights bill, on which supporters led by Kennedy could muster only 66 votes to override. It took 67 to nullify Bush’s veto.

“It was one vote . . . Pete Wilson’s vote. . . . If he didn’t even show up, under our rules of the United States Senate, we would have overridden the veto. But he made sure he was there to vote no,” Kennedy said.

The senator ridiculed Wilson’s argument that he opposed the measure only because it would have established quotas for the hiring of women and minorities.

“Quota, schmota,” Kennedy said. “All we were doing was returning to what the law was for 17 years. But Pete Wilson voted no . . . I say we ought to veto Pete Wilson.”

Earlier Sunday, Feinstein took her “tough-but-caring” campaign theme into the poor minority areas of Los Angeles, saying the time has come to “stop killing and to put away the guns.” She promised to mount a war on drugs and gang violence if elected governor a week from Tuesday.

As a symbol of “peace and change,” she pinned a white orchid she had received earlier from a woman at an African-American church in South-Central Los Angeles onto the dress lapel of Francisca Villegas, whose 18-year-old son was killed in a drive-by shooting 13 years ago.

“This was just a small gesture,” Feinstein told the crowd of about 200 Latinos at an East Los Angeles community center, “because in South-Central there are mothers and fathers who have lost children, too. In East Los Angeles, there are mothers and fathers who have lost children; in San Francisco, in San Jose, in Oakland and Sacramento, in Fresno and Tulare--all up and down this great state.”

Feinstein repeated her contention that she is the only candidate who can mount an effective war on drugs because she has endorsed Proposition 133, the “Safe Streets Act” initiative sponsored by Lt. Gov. Leo T. McCarthy. It would raise the state sales tax by one-half cent on the dollar for four years to finance a variety of programs.

“If you vote yes on 133, these mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers can perhaps say, Never again. Never again in East Los Angeles. Never again in South-Central. Never again in Watts and Bayview-Hunters Point, in East Oakland, in East Palo Alto, never again in Fresno and Tulare and Lodi.

“What we need to do is say there are too many parents who have lost too many kids.”

Wilson, once said he might support Proposition 133, but then decided to oppose it.

The legislative analyst has reported that the tax would produce an estimated $7.5 billion over the four-year period. Forty-two percent of the funds would go to drug education programs, 40% for anti-drug law enforcement, 10% to prisons and jails and 8% for drug treatment programs.

Her audience cheered as Feinstein declared: “I want to push every drug pusher right out into the deepest part of the Pacific Ocean and let them worry about whether they can swim or not.”

Both Feinstein and Wilson have promised to get tougher on crime and drugs, although incumbent Gov. George Deukmejian has expressed pride in his anti-crime record over the last 7 1/2 years.

A cornerstone of Wilson’s campaign has been his contention that the necessary tough-on-crime bills have been bottled up by liberal Democrats in the Assembly Public Safety Committee.

Feinstein has said she will persuade Assembly Speaker Willie L. Brown Jr. (D-San Francisco), her close political ally, to change the committee’s composition so it is more receptive to anti-crime and anti-drug legislation.