Absentee Surge May Slow Count : Election: Officials say the very long ballot could also lead to a delay in determining outcomes. Feinstein and Wilson wrap up their campaigns for governor.

With up to 20% of voters casting their ballots by mail, Californians take charge of the 1990 election campaigns today by choosing either Democrat Dianne Feinstein or Republican Pete Wilson as governor to lead the nation’s most populous and wealthiest state into a new era of economic uncertainty and likely political turmoil.

The heavy absentee vote and a very long state ballot threaten to slow the vote-counting process tonight, election officials said. In a close contest, the outcome might not be known for days, Secretary of State March Fong Eu said.

In addition to governor, Californians will fill six other statewide offices, including the new post of insurance commissioner, 45 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, all 80 seats in the state Assembly, 21 of the 40 state Senate seats and four seats on the State Board of Equalization, and decide a bewildering array of 28 ballot propositions. In all, most voters will be asked to mark their ballots for at least 60 contests involving candidates and state and local measures.

While Republicans were battling to hold onto the governorship, Democrats were expected to maintain control of both houses of the state Legislature and the congressional delegation, barring a voter revolt that unexpectedly ousts incumbents from office.

The more than 26,000 polling places in California’s 58 counties are open from 7 a.m. until 8 p.m.

Feinstein, 57, the former mayor of San Francisco, and Wilson, also 57, the former mayor of San Diego and a onetime Assemblyman, made traditional statewide flying tours with members of their tickets Monday, primarily to energize the volunteers who will staff telephone banks and knock on doors today to get potential supporters to the polls.

Feinstein planned to vote this morning at St. Anne’s Home in San Francisco and await the results at the Fairmont Hotel on San Francisco’s Nob Hill.

Wilson was expected to vote at Barnard Street Elementary School in Point Loma and attend election night parties in Universal City and at the San Diego Convention and Performing Arts Center in downtown San Diego.

A Feinstein election would make California history: The state’s 36th governor would be the first female chief executive. If Wilson wins, he would be the first GOP chief executive elected since 1954 to succeed another Republican.

Between them, the campaigns have spent more than $40 million. Many political experts note that the winner will inherit a long list of financial problems, led by a projected budget deficit ranging from $500 million to $2 billion.

A business downturn and declining home values have shadowed California’s booming economy, threatening to make the state’s fiscal situation more precarious. The new governor also may have to deal with legislators made surly by voter adoption of strict limits on their terms in office, and cuts in pensions and staffs if Proposition 140 is approved.

The California governorship is considered the plum of the elections today in 50 states. The winner will become an instant national political figure and potential national candidate. A Wilson election would automatically make him a political kingmaker: He would be able to pick a successor to his U.S. Senate seat who would serve until the 1992 election.

For Feinstein, a campaign that got off to a shaky, long-shot beginning in February, 1989, ended aboard an aircraft that made stops in San Diego, Santa Monica, San Luis Obispo, Davis and, finally, her hometown by the bay.

At Santa Monica, she pursued the traditional Democratic economic theme she has sounded in the final week of the campaign, attempting to lump Wilson with former President Ronald Reagan and President Bush as representatives of the Republican power structure at a time when the national economy has begun crumbling.

While claiming Republicans are counting on a low turnout, Feinstein acknowledged that a Democratic victory hinged on a heavy vote. “Their side (is) counting on doing it by absentee ballots,” she said. “We’ve got to do it the hard way.”

On stage with Feinstein were Los Angeles politicians and three members of the statewide ticket: Lt. Gov. Leo T. McCarthy, Controller Gray Davis and Kathleen Brown, a candidate for treasurer. The other statewide Democratic candidates are Arlo Smith for attorney general, former state Sen. John Garamendi, seeking to become the state’s first elected insurance commissioner, and Eu, secretary of state.

A strong thread of feminism ran through Feinstein’s remarks and supporters guffawed at one of the candidate’s signature lines: “The blue suits have had their chance. Now it’s time to try a skirt.”

Feinstein hesitated to predict that her gender would be a net benefit, saying: “No woman has ever run for this job, so I’m the first. I think people sometimes look at the first more stringently than they do after it’s a well-established concept. So we’ll just have to see.”

Wilson started the day in Sacramento and went to Long Beach, Mission Viejo and San Diego after scrubbing a planned rally in Santa Clara because fog had closed the San Jose airport.

Gov. George Deukmejian greeted Wilson in the governor’s hometown of Long Beach, reminding local Republicans that he won his first term by fewer than 100,000 votes and stressing the importance of the turnout. “I remember that and I hope you remember that,” he said.

Wilson noted that Feinstein has been asking Californians if they are better off than they were eight years ago, and responded, “Mr. and Mrs. California, let me tell you we’re a lot better off.” He said the period covering Deukmejian’s two terms was the most prosperous in California history.

In Mission Viejo, where Reagan joined the troupe, Wilson scoffed at the Feinstein image of pulling an upset a la Harry Truman in 1948. “You can’t sell yourself as Harry Truman when you’re record is pure Michael Dukakis,” Wilson said, referring to the losing Democratic presidential candidate in 1988. As he did on Saturday, Reagan called on Wilson to “go out there and win one for the Gipper.”

Ticket members traveling with Wilson during his final tours this weekend and Monday included Marian Bergeson, candidate for lieutenant governor; appointed Treasurer Thomas W. Hayes, seeking a full term; Dan Lungren, running for attorney general; Joan Milke Flores for secretary of state, Matt Fong for controller and Wes Bannister for insurance commissioner.

Wilson called for a Republican sweep. While the latest Times Poll indicated that the races for attorney general and treasurer were neck and neck, Democrats held substantial leads in other contests.

Insiders with both campaigns said the get-out-the-vote effort was critical to the hopes of Feinstein and Wilson. A Times Poll published Thursday found registered voters split almost evenly in the contest for governor, although Wilson’s prospects were enhanced when a Times computer simulation weighted the results to reflect a $7-million GOP voter-turnout and vote-by-mail drive.

Eu predicted a turnout of 62.1% of California’s 13.5 registered voters, or about 8.3 million. That would be the second-lowest turnout since World War II. But the voter registration total was a record for a gubernatorial election in California. Democrats outnumber Republicans on the voter rolls by 49.5% to 38.3%, a net gain of about 2% for Republicans since the last gubernatorial contest in 1986.

The combination of a long ballot and heavy absentee vote has the potential of clogging the vote-counting operation, Eu said. Absentee ballots can be processed up to midday today, but as many as 500,000 not counted by then will not be tallied until after the unofficial Election Day vote is complete.

“Obviously, so many uncounted ballots could make a difference in very close races or measures,” said Eu, who is running for a third term as a Democrat while her son, Matt Fong, is seeking election as state controller on the Republican ticket.

Normally, those ballots would not be reported until the secretary of state’s semiofficial canvass on Dec. 15, but Eu said she was prepared to issue a vote count update a week from today because of the potential for uncertainty.

John Perkins, chief of the Wilson get-out-the-vote drive, said more than 1.2 million Republican voters were contacted by volunteers going door to door over the weekend. Another 600,000 GOP voters would be reached today in behalf of the Republican ticket, he said.

The focus of both efforts was on “low propensity” voters, those who do not have a history of voting every election, or who have recently moved into their precincts. For example, Perkins said canvassers hit 50 precincts in Temecula, a growing Riverside County city, and about 200 precincts in Riverside.

Perkins guessed that 70% to 75% of the estimated 1.5 million absentee ballots cast would be Republican.

Bill Carrick, Feinstein’s campaign director, said Democrats are spending only a fraction of the GOP’s $7 million, but said, “It’s been pretty good. I think we’re going to get our people there.”

Democratic efforts are concentrating on Los Angeles, San Bernardino and Orange counties, the San Francisco Bay Area, and traditional black and Latino constituencies and women.

The Democratic Party has spent about $2 million to court voters this year, with a goal of motivating 250,000 to the polls. Larry Tramutola, director of the effort, said Monday that 126,000 people contacted had cast absentee ballots.

“If Dianne can get us within 250,000 votes, we think we can put her over the top,” he said.

Contributing to this story were Times Sacramento bureau chief George Skelton and Times staff writers Daniel Weintraub, Paul Feldman, Carl Ingram and Dan Morain.