Democrats Plan $8-Million ‘Unity’ Campaign

State and national Democratic leaders said Monday that as much as $8 million will be spent on a coordinated general election campaign effort that they consider crucial to the victory of a Democratic president and two U.S. senators from California in 1992.

Ron Brown, the Democratic national chairman, said that leaders of all levels of campaigns in California are being asked to sign an agreement to participate in the fully coordinated campaign focusing on research on Republican opponents, voter registration, getting out the vote on Election Day, and an absentee ballot campaign.

These are the types of tactics Republicans have used with success over Democrats, Brown said. Democrats often have gone into the fall campaigns exhausted from primary battles, out of money and with no plan for combatting the Republicans.

“It’s worked very well in other states,” Brown told political reporters during a breakfast interview. “It’s never worked well in California before. I’m determined to make it work well in California.”

Among those who signed off on the program during a meeting Saturday is Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco), Ron Brown said. (The Browns are not related.) Also involved in the discussions have been representatives of the six major campaigns for the two Senate seat nominations, Democratic leaders in the state Senate, organized labor and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

In 1990, Democratic gubernatorial nominee Dianne Feinstein was broke after the June 5 primary and had to spend the rest of the month raising money and making peace with Democrats who had supported her primary opponent, John K. Van de Kamp. Her campaign was virtually invisible through early July.

Republicans waged a $7-million get-out-the-vote and absentee voter program and Wilson won the governorship by 3.5%.

Democrats in part blamed former Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr., then the state Democratic Party chairman, for failing to mount a promised voter registration and get-out-the-vote drive. Speaker Brown also took heat because he and other legislative leaders spent an estimated $12 million during 1991 to oppose ballot measures dealing with legislative reapportionment and term limits.