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Governor’s Race Close at the Wire : Election: The Feinstein-Wilson battle sets a spending record. On the last weekend before voters make up their minds, many contests struggle for attention.

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TIMES POLITICAL WRITER

The 1990 race for governor enters the record books Tuesday as the most expensive contest for chief executive in the history of the state, potentially cashing out at nearly double the cost of the previous record in 1982.

And it will be up to voters to decide whether history of another sort is made with the election of Democrat Dianne Feinstein as the first woman governor of the state.

To command victory, Feinstein--one of five women vying for state constitutional offices--will have to set back Republican Pete Wilson, the incumbent U.S. senator and former mayor trying for a political hat trick.

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As candidates made their last-ditch efforts to impress voters, both Feinstein and Wilson appeared to be within striking distance of success. Other statewide races were close, too, particularly the bitterly fought contest for attorney general and the expensive duel for state treasurer.

Through the weekend, campaigns were sending slate mailers, candidates were pushing for precious seconds before overdosed television viewers and money was flying fast and furiously.

Between Jan. 1 and Oct. 20--before the final two weeks of television time had been bought--Feinstein and Wilson together had spent $30.5 million in pursuit of the governorship. That figure does not count millions more, including nearly $4 million by Wilson alone, that was spent in 1989.

Together with the $5 million spent by Atty. Gen. John K. Van de Kamp in the Democratic primary, the major candidates thus had spent more than $35 million in 1990 before the final pre-election crunch.

Until this contest, the most expensive race for California governor was in 1982, when George Deukmejian and Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley fought in a race that cost $25.4 million, including spending by minor candidates.

“If the country is entering a recession, you would never know it by the amounts of money that are being spent,” said Herbert Alexander, a USC political science professor who studies political financing.

The current race apparently is the most expensive gubernatorial election in the nation in the last few decades, surpassing the $33.5 million spent in 1986 in Texas. The only races that might have exceeded that total, when inflation is counted in, were the New York governor’s contests in which Nelson Rockefeller spent millions of dollars, Alexander said.

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All through a long and contentious summer and fall, the Wilson-Feinstein battle has shaped up as the closest duel since the last change of power in the governor’s office in 1982.

That year, too, the Democratic candidate was aiming at history. But Bradley failed in his attempt to become the first elected black governor of the state.

During much of this general election campaign, Feinstein, the 57-year-old former mayor of San Francisco, played down the historic nature of her candidacy. But as Election Day approached, she authored pointed reminders.

“Are you ready to elect the first woman governor in the state?” Feinstein asked cheering senior citizens last week at Laguna Hills’ Leisure World.

Feinstein’s fond hope was that her gender would personify “change,” that illusive image that both she and Wilson tried to corral. But Wilson also pressed a case that he represented change, if not by gender at least by design.

He alternated not-too-subtle suggestions that he would be a different sort of Republican than conservative George Deukmejian with outright assertions that Feinstein would be one of the incumbent capitol crowd.

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“Change is desperately needed,” said Wilson, who also is 57. “But you can’t bring it if you’re wedded to the status quo.”

Wilson made heavy use of the status quo in his campaign, benefiting financially from repeated campaign visits by President Bush, former President Ronald Reagan and Vice President Dan Quayle.

Both Feinstein and Wilson have presented themselves as more activist than Deukmejian, more willing to balance the needs of the state’s unfortunates with the fiscal imperatives of cost-cutting. She describes herself as “tough and caring,” while he calls himself the “compassionate conservative.”

Neither, however, has addressed in depth how they would handle a more than billion-dollar deficit expected in the next state budget. Feinstein has vowed to call a budget summit of interested parties the day after the election, and said she would raise taxes on wealthy Californians if need be.

Wilson opposes any increase in income taxes and demands wholesale budget reform. That means all items would be on the table, including education funding now guaranteed by 1988’s Proposition 98. Feinstein calls the proposition, which gives education at least 41% of the state’s general fund revenues each year, “inviolate.”

Bowing to reality, neither has taken a “no new taxes” vow. While that breaks with the past, the other issues in the race have come from the traditional campaign playbook.

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The most consistent issue has been crime, and throughout the long campaign the candidates have battled back and forth to see which can claim to be toughest. Both support the death penalty and both have proposed stiffer sentences for drug users and traffickers.

Feinstein worked the Los Angeles Police Department’s slogan--”to protect and to serve”--into almost all of her campaign speeches, and has proposed a return to the indeterminate sentencing system for violent criminals, a move that she said would keep dangerous convicts in prison indefinitely.

She also has been plugging Prop. 133, the ballot initiative sponsored by her running mate, Lt. Gov. Leo T. McCarthy, that would pump $7.5 billion into anti-drug programs over four years by raising the state sales tax a half-cent.

Wilson at first said he might vote for the measure, but has since come out against it. Like Feinstein, he has called for tougher sentencing laws and said California should no longer give inmates time off for good behavior.

Although he denied he was using it to appeal to women, Wilson emphasized the crime of rape throughout the campaign, to the exclusion of other crimes such as murder and drive-by shootings.

Beyond crime and taxes, the campaign also saw a resurgence of candidate interest in other basic needs.

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Feinstein rarely appeared in public without fanning support for her “early childhood education” program, which would offer schooling to 4-year-olds by shifting some of the receipts of the California Lottery.

Wilson talked regularly of a California with “much longer graduation lines and much shorter unemployment lines,” although his plans for improving education rest largely on voluntary efforts by private citizens. He also touted a prenatal care plan that would help provide aid to women not covered by insurance.

Voter initiatives did their part to commandeer the governor’s race. In key areas, the candidates adopted differing positions on initiatives, which then came to eclipse their own programs.

The furor over term limits is the most recent chasm to divide the candidates. Wilson announced his support for Proposition 140, which would limit state senators and constitutional officers to eight years of service and assembly members to six years.

Feinstein castigated the initiative, saying its success would leave a neophyte Legislature to fend off the assaults of veteran lobbyists and bureaucrats. But Wilson contended that it was certainly a way to shake up the Sacramento Establishment. The fact that Wilson himself is a career politician did not seem to rattle voters.

Another proposition, the sweeping environmental initiative known to its proponents as “Big Green,” split the candidates from the primary onward. Throughout the campaign, Feinstein, whose loyalties were at first suspect among environmentalists, tried to use the initiative to batter a senator who prided himself on environmental moderation.

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Both candidates also approached California’s burgeoning growth as an environmental issue. Feinstein proposed a state growth management commission and a series of regional commissions that would regulate growth. She suggested that future growth in California could be channeled to less populated areas, lured by an enhanced “rail spine” down the center of the state and by tax incentives for businesses.

Wilson blasted Feinstein’s plan as unworkable and unwise. Instead, he said, the governor’s Office of Planning and Research should help plan a concerted attack on unbridled growth--but decisions should rest with the localities. Wilson, too, pointed with pride to his role in crafting a growth management plan for the swelling city of San Diego.

Some traditionally important issues merited little note during this campaign cycle, at least at the governor’s level, because the candidates were in sync. Both opposed offshore oil drilling, and that issue was rarely discussed. Both supported the death penalty and both said they were advocates of abortion rights--and disputes over who was the stronger advocate of each measure seemed not to sway many voters.

Ultimately, both candidates were speaking of a California whose golden allure has been tarnished. However sublimely the message was sent, its focus was clear--that the state is no longer the cutting-edge, visionary place it likes to think it is.

“It’s time we turned California around and made it what it can be,” Wilson said frequently.

If the candidates for governor were often miffed that their message was lost amid national concerns over Mideast tensions and the faltering U.S. economy, their complaints were meager compared to those of other statewide candidates. For them, campaign 1990 was an exercise in scratching for money and begging for attention.

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That was true even in the bitterest of the races--for state attorney general--where Democrat Arlo Smith and Republican Dan Lungren hold diametrically different views on major issues.

Smith, the 11-year San Francisco district attorney, favors abortion rights and said he would go so far as to refuse to defend in court any abortion-limiting bills approved by the Legislature. Lungren, a former five-term congressman, staunchly opposed abortion and in 1987 co-sponsored a proposed federal constitutional amendment which would have outlawed all abortions except when the mother’s life was threatened.

Smith also said he would fight offshore oil drilling in court, while Lungren said he would support oil drilling on a case-by-case basis. Each vowed to be tough on crime, but argued the other’s qualifications.

The race for lieutenant governor also hinged largely on crime, with incumbent Democrat McCarthy making his bid for a third term while touting Proposition 133, the drug-war initiative that he sponsored. McCarthy also tried to separate himself from his Republican opponent, state Sen. Marian Bergeson of Newport Beach, by stressing his support of abortion rights.

But Bergeson, an abortion opponent, countered by jabbing McCarthy for his past support of abortion restrictions and emphasizing her conservative positions on crime. Behind in fund raising and in the polls, however, Bergeson was hoping for big coattails from Pete Wilson to help her into office.

The race for treasurer featured a little-known Republican incumbent and a well-known Democrat with the liabilities and assets of a family political dynasty.

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Kathleen Brown, the daughter and sister of former governors, skated through the Democratic primary, while incumbent Thomas W. Hayes fought off a spirited challenge by GOP activist Angela M. (Bay) Buchanan. His campaign treasury was left dry, giving Brown the decided edge in late campaign spending.

The contentious race turned up a surprisingly deep list of differences between Brown and Hayes. Brown wanted to speed up the sale of bonds, while Hayes urged caution. Brown promised to press for social responsibility in corporations in which the state invests; Hayes said government has no place in corporate boardrooms.

While that contest was neck-and-neck in the polls, the race for state controller threatened to be an easy ride for Democratic incumbent Gray Davis, challenged by Republican Matthew Fong, a first-time office seeker and son of four-term Democratic Secretary of State March Fong Eu.

While mother and son represented different parties and were officially neutral in each other’s races, attorney Fong took advantage of his lineage. One Fong television spot showed what appears to be a family portrait, over which an announcer intoned: “A tradition of honesty, competence and commitment.”

Incumbent Davis seized on such issues as protecting the environment and abortion rights to depict himself as an activist controller not satisfied with merely tending ledgers. A former assemblyman and chief of staff to Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr., the 47-year-old Davis is also a champion campaign fund-raiser and easily outdistanced Fong in money raised.

Fong’s mother, incumbent March Fong Eu, spent most of the campaign for secretary of state ignoring Republican challenger Joan Milke Flores, but a hard-hitting television campaign by Flores has apparently caught Eu’s attention.

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Flores last month began running a series of ads accusing Eu of waiving thousands of dollars in fines against her own campaign committees and against some powerful political players. Although independent statewide polls show Flores trailing by a large margin, Eu last week began running television ads that her campaign consultants a week earlier said would not be necessary.

In the state’s first race for an elected insurance commissioner, Democrat John Garamendi, a veteran legislator who recently resigned his state Senate seat, was a heavy favorite to defeat Republican Wes Bannister, a Huntington Beach insurance agent and former city councilman.

Garamendi raised 10 times more than Bannister in contributions and dominated advertising in the race. The candidates differed on a wide range of issues, particularly no-fault insurance, with Bannister favoring it and Garamendi, who once sponsored no-fault legislation, against it.

Less noticed--though not lacking in controversy--were the races for seats on the State Board of Equalization. Two focused more on criminal allegations than the tax issues the board oversees.

The Democratic candidate in Los Angeles’ District 4, Paul Carpenter, has been convicted on federal racketeering, extortion and conspiracy charges and is awaiting sentencing. The Democratic candidate in Northern California’s District 1, William Bennett, is being investigated by the Sacramento district attorney for allegedly cheating on his state travel claims.

In any other contest the legal issues would probably mean certain victory for a challenger. But so little-noticed are these races that Republican candidates Joe Adams and Jeff Wallack were struggling just to get the word out about their opponents’ legal difficulties.

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In District 2, which includes a corner of Los Angeles County, Democrat Brad Sherman and Republican Claude Parrish were sending out a flurry of campaign materials as they vie for a seat vacated by board Chairman Conway Collis. But in District 3, encompassing eight Southern California counties, Republican incumbent Ernest J. Dronenburg Jr. is so confident of victory that he is spending most of his time campaigning for the other Republican candidates for the board. Dronenburg’s Democratic opponent is Floyd L. Morrow, a businessman, attorney and educator from San Diego.

Contributing to this story were Times staff writers Virginia Ellis, Paul Feldman, Carl Ingram, Dean Murphy, Kenneth Reich and Douglas P. Shuit.

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