GOVERNOR : Feinstein Picks Up Tempo on Civil Rights, Abortion

Playing to her strengths, Dianne Feinstein exhorted women, minorities and disaffected Democrats to rally to her side Tuesday in a sun-splashed Santa Monica gathering that drew more than 1,000 enthusiastic students and most of the Democratic ticket.

Feinstein specifically targeted civil rights and abortion as important issues to voters who will go to the polls next week, and asked Democrats to confound Republican hopes that voter turnout will be low.

The Democratic candidate for governor continued to try to undercut Republican opponent Pete Wilson with references to his Senate vote against the 1990 Civil Rights bill, which would have countered recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions and given women and minorities more power to press discrimination cases. Wilson opposed the bill on the grounds that it set up a quota system.

“Because of Pete Wilson’s vote, the 1990 Civil Rights Act is dead and the same civil rights protections that applied today to people of color were not, by his vote, extended to women,” she told the crowd at Santa Monica College’s outdoor amphitheater. “I say a state that is 51% female can’t afford Pete Wilson as governor.

“I also say that a state that’s 42% people of color can’t afford a governor who would vote no on civil rights legislation,” she added.

The midday Santa Monica rally was the 57-year-old candidate’s only public event Tuesday. Afterward, aides said, she attended private fund-raisers.

As she stumps for votes, Feinstein is trying to target traditional Democratic constituencies without offending so-called “Reagan Democrats,” who have voted Republican recently because of their objections to the party’s liberal leanings. She is also trying to woo women without being so assertive about it that she turns off men.

Feinstein’s speech brings her full circle from the day eight months ago when, espousing similar themes, she launched an underdog bid for the governorship. From this point on, apart from any unforeseen bombshells, Feinstein is concentrating on what she perceives as flash point issues--crime, abortion rights, civil rights, education.

As she has almost every day recently, Feinstein said she would be the candidate to “change” California for the better--a claim Wilson also makes.

“I’m not in this race to serve the powerful special interests or to protect the status quo,” she said, in a gibe at Wilson. “I’m in this race to protect and serve the people of California.”

Recent polls have had the candidates in a near dead heat, but Wilson has had a consistent and ever-so-slight edge. Feinstein, trying to break away from Wilson, is mounting a twofold effort--to press visceral issues in the minds of the voters, and to persuade them to turn out on Election Day.

To that end, she is casting the race in as emotional terms as possible.

“I need you on my side,” she told the students. “This race is neck-and-neck. We’re seven days from the finish line.

“They’re counting on a low turnout because they believe that their people will turn out and our people will not turn out. So I need you to talk to your friends, your family, other students, and mobilize that vote.”

Crime has been a constant issue with Feinstein. In addition to her support of the death penalty, she has espoused a host of other reforms to tighten criminal penalties. But Wilson, too, has advocated stronger sentencing, and he has benefited from the visual support of law enforcement organizations and crime victims’ groups.

On Monday, Feinstein flew around the state with more than a dozen police officers representing groups that have endorsed her candidacy.

“We can bring safety back to the streets of California,” she said Tuesday.

Abortion rights have been an emphasis of Feinstein’s since the primary, and as Election Day nears she is stressing its importance. The former San Francisco mayor, in her speech Tuesday, said that abortion rights are “under siege all across this country” and pledged to veto any measure that would limit abortion rights.

Feinstein has received a hefty boost from abortion rights advocates. CARAL, the California Abortion Rights Action League, endorsed Feinstein and has used its lobbying efforts to help her. It sent 300,000 abortion rights advocates absentee ballots, and has followed up those initial contacts with “persuasion letters” and phone calls, CARAL spokesman Peter Scranton said. Many in the Santa Monica crowd carried signs advocating abortion rights.

Wilson describes himself as an abortion rights advocate--a description that angers activists because of his votes against their position on several matters, including federal funding for abortions and the appointment of abortion opponents to the U.S. Supreme Court.

CARAL spokesman Peter Scranton said Wilson has been successful in convincing voters that he would not threaten abortion rights.

“He’s been able to in some degree keep his name out there as a pro-choice candidate, and to that extent there may be some confusion,” he said. “Our effort is separating the candidate we can trust with the candidate who is not as trustworthy.”

Feinstein’s move to simplify her themes in the last few days of the campaign has been accompanied by a reassertion of the historic implications of her election. Feinstein would be the first woman governor of California.