Battle With Wilson Left Feinstein Tougher, Quicker : Politics: She is aggressively pushing women’s issues. But allegations arising from governor’s race may hurt.

The first thing they do after an election is yank the phones, but Dianne Feinstein’s 1990 campaign for governor flowed so continuously into Feinstein’s 1992 campaign for the U.S. Senate, even the telephone number is the same. So, too, is much of the campaign staff.

The candidate is different, however: tempered by defeat, tougher, better-prepped on most subjects and much better known in vote-rich Southern California. Feinstein is pushing women’s issues more aggressively than in her losing race for governor two years ago, believing that they work more to her advantage in a Senate contest.

Going into 1990, the challenge facing Democrat Feinstein was the newness of running statewide after years of winning local elections in compact San Francisco. The experience was “new, novel and somewhat intimidating to Dianne,” said former campaign manager Bill Carrick during a 1991 post-election seminar.

To run that gantlet statewide is “an incredible learning experience,” Mervin Field, founder of the California Poll, said in an interview. “It really tests your mettle.” Now, entering the stretch of 1992, “she has so many things going for her,” he said.

Yet, more tests lie ahead for Feinstein, 58, the former San Francisco supervisor who became mayor in 1978 after the assassination of George Moscone. That event became translated into the memorable “forged-from-tragedy” television campaign ad that salvaged Feinstein’s moribund campaign in January, 1990, and propelled her to victory in the June primary.

Feinstein’s 1990 comeback gave her candidacy an aura of drama and freshness that is missing now. Her tough fight with Republican Pete Wilson brought her down, in the eyes of some, to the level of another politician willing to duke it out, and to be a little nasty if necessary.

Her commanding early lead for the Democratic nomination for the Senate seat held by Republican John Seymour is threatened by the taint of allegations stemming from her 1990 campaign finances. The state Fair Political Practices Commission filed a civil suit April 1 saying that the campaign failed to properly report about $8 million worth of receipts and expenditures.

Kam Kuwata, Feinstein’s Senate campaign manager, has dismissed the reporting errors as sloppy bookkeeping--admittedly very sloppy bookkeeping. But the Republican chairman of the commission has called the deception “outrageous” and suggested that it may be more than bookkeeping.

Even though many of the issues raised by the commission’s complaint were debated during the 1990 campaign, Feinstein no longer can hope to breeze through the June 2 primary campaign without a major fight.

Although some insiders were quick to proclaim it a grave blow, Darry Sragow, Feinstein’s 1990 campaign manager, said insiders often rush to judgment when a candidate seems to be tarred.

“But the voters tend to be a lot smarter than they are given credit for,” said Sragow, who is not involved in a Senate campaign this year. “They tend to look at the overall picture. If this fits into some kind of pattern, it could turn out to be a very serious problem.”

For Feinstein, it seemed that 1990 was a long string of problems, including extensive investigation of the role of her investment-banker husband’s money in her campaign. The FPPC litigation could raise the question of Richard C. Blum’s money again because one of the allegations is that the campaign failed to properly report that he was a co-signer of Feinstein’s nearly $3 million in loans.

One thing Feinstein did not do after the Nov. 6, 1990, election was to spend much time second-guessing the outcome, she said. She rested in Hawaii for 10 days after losing to Wilson by 266,707 votes out of 7.7 million cast--a margin of 10 votes per California precinct, or fewer than three per precinct outside the Feinstein disaster area of Orange County.

The calendar had barely turned to 1991 before Feinstein became an all-but-announced Senate contender. Wilson’s victory had produced something of a silver lining for Feinstein by creating a second U.S. Senate contest in California this year. Before he could be sworn in as governor, Wilson had to resign the Senate term he won in 1988. He appointed Seymour, a state senator from Anaheim, to the vacancy through this year’s election.

After Hawaii, Feinstein traveled about the state to thank supporters for their 1990 help. They told her: “Don’t stop,” Feinstein said.

“It really wasn’t a tough decision to make,” she said in an interview in a San Bernardino hotel before addressing a luncheon meeting of union members and local Democratic leaders in late March. “I guess my psyche, too, was prepared not to stop.”

“Basically, my life is government,” added Feinstein, who entered the Coro Foundation’s government internship program after receiving her history degree from Stanford University in 1955. “It’s what I chose to do. I believe in it as an honorable process for effecting change. . . . It’s where I want to practice what I preach in terms of doing.”

There was some head-scratching over why Feinstein decided so quickly to run for the two-year Senate term instead of the six-year seat that also is at stake this year. The winner of the two-year seat will have to begin fund-raising and campaigning almost immediately for the full term in 1994. For Feinstein, that would add up to six years of almost nonstop campaigning.

Feinstein leaped into the contest early in hopes of preempting the Democratic field and cruising into the runoff against presumptive Republican nominee Seymour without a primary challenge. The unspoken implication was that she deserved a free ride in the Democratic primary by waging a strong contest for governor.

Feinstein knew firsthand how thoroughly a tough primary could drain an organization of money and energy. She defeated then-state Atty. Gen. John K. Van de Kamp decisively in the June, 1990, primary. But her campaign was so sapped of resources that it was helpless to respond to the early summer jabs from a rested, well-financed Wilson, who had no Republican primary opponent. That was the low point of the campaign, she said.

Political observers thought the idea that she could escape a Democratic primary challenge was naive. Events proved them right when state Controller Gray Davis entered the contest with a substantial bankroll stockpiled from his two campaigns for controller.

At the end of March--before the FPPC lawsuit was brought--the California Poll showed Feinstein with the support of 55% of potential Democratic primary voters sampled to 26% for Davis. Joseph M. Alioto, a lawyer with a famous San Francisco political name but who has never won office, got 6%.

Even before the FPPC lawsuit, no one was forecasting a Feinstein runaway. San Francisco political consultant Clint Reilly, who ran Feinstein’s campaign for governor briefly in 1989, said: “Dianne has a healthy lead, but I expect it to be a lot closer.”

Reilly added that Davis needs to begin running television commercials soon if he is to become well known enough to be a major factor in the race.

If Feinstein suffers some political naivete, she has shown early signs of overcoming another campaign handicap perceived by observers and campaign workers in 1990: the lack of a quick, sharp response when attacked.

“She’s not a street fighter,” said one who knows Feinstein well. “She’s hesitant. She freezes until she figures it out.”

She was ready, however, when Davis attacked her during a joint appearance in Los Angeles in March on an issue that presumably is a Feinstein strength--women’s concerns. Davis criticized her for vetoing a comparable-worth measure while mayor of San Francisco, a charge raised by Van de Kamp and Wilson in 1990.

Feinstein said she rejected the legislation because it merely offered a meal allowance and did not give female workers true equity with men in terms of total job compensation. Then she cited her support for a city ballot initiative that, she claimed, provided a $30-million package of real comparable worth.

Addressing the audience, she said deliberately: “I want you to witness my handing to the controller of the great state of California the truth about my position on comparable worth.”

Then fixing Davis with a stare, she said in precise, clipped tones:

“Mr. Controller, you will see that the first argument in favor of this is (written by) Dianne Feinstein, mayor of the city and county of San Francisco. So if I can hand this to you, let me correct the record.

“Now, Mr. Controller . . . “ Feinstein continued to lecture Davis in the fashion of a fearsome English teacher chastising a wayward eighth-grader caught cheating on an exam.

Davis gamely attempted to protest and cut in, but Feinstein had stolen the stage and made it clear she believed that this was her turf.

Feinstein’s sex should be a benefit in the Democratic primary, analysts have said, because women outnumber men in Democratic voter registration by more than 700,000.

Her emphasis on women’s issues is one of the major differences from her 1990 campaign.

“I think in the governor’s race my being a woman was a disadvantage, not an advantage,” Feinstein said in the interview. “In the Senate race, I believe it is an advantage.

“I think people have doubts, still, about women in high executive offices, whether they can be the kind of managers that a man can be,” she said. “They don’t doubt women in terms of their ability to advocate program change or public policy, which is, after all, the role of a legislator.”

Feinstein’s campaign started to go flat in 1990 when two things happened: War loomed in the Middle East, and the recession deepened, giving California’s new governor a massive budget deficit to manage.

Today, Feinstein’s stump speech is heavy on topics such as family leave, child support, child molestation, teen-age pregnancy, domestic violence and the prospect of the U.S. Supreme Court overturning the Roe vs. Wade abortion ruling.

As do other women candidates running this year, Feinstein seizes on the controversy over Anita Hill’s sexual harassment allegations against Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas during his confirmation hearings last fall.

In a Pasadena address, she said: “I believe that the real issue is not who do you believe? Was it Clarence Thomas? Was it Anita Hill? The real point was that her testimony became irrelevant.

“It was never investigated. The seriousness of her statements was ignored. Simply stated, the committee did not know what to do with it. The procedures were improper.”

Proper procedures would have been followed, she argued, if there had been more than two women in the 100-member Senate.

If running for statewide office is less daunting for Feinstein now, it is not necessarily less complicated.

In 1990, the contest for governor was alone in the spotlight at the top of the ticket and Feinstein was a bright new political star on the California stage.

This year, a dozen major candidates are competing for two Senate seats in the shadow of a volatile and attention-grabbing presidential contest. One of the Democrats running for the six-year Senate seat is Rep. Barbara Boxer of Marin County, whose campaign is rooted even more deeply than Feinstein’s in women’s issues and who is counting more heavily on female contributors and voters.

Feinstein dismisses the suggestion by some analysts that the two women candidates could work against each other.

Feinstein responded: “They don’t ask those questions when there are two men.

“Each race is independently run and will be independently won in the primary,” she said. “I don’t think frankly that having two women, if it turns out that way, will be all that big a problem for people.”

Pollster Field, who has analyzed California politics for four decades, is not so sure of that. He argues that “a lot of women would be slow to vote for two women.” Those who decide to choose one or the other are more likely to vote for Feinstein, Field said. That bias may be more pronounced since Boxer has become embroiled in the House check-writing scandal, he added.

But Feinstein has her own problems with the FPPC lawsuit.

A Davis spokesman said that Feinstein’s handling of the campaign reports “makes the House bank look like a Big Eight accounting firm,” signaling that the issue will be grist for the campaign mill.

If Davis attempts to exploit the FPPC suit, though, the Feinstein campaign is likely to retaliate by resurrecting a state investigation in 1987 of complaints that Davis, a member of the Assembly during the 1986 campaign, used aides on the state payroll and state telephones to raise money for his controller’s race. Even though some of the allegations were substantiated, the attorney general, Van de Kamp, declined to file criminal charges. Davis reimbursed the state for lost wages and expenses.

If Feinstein was forged from tragedy going into 1990 and tempered by defeat in 1991, is she prepared for the rigors of 1992?

“Yes, as best as we can be,” she said. “It’s always hard to know what is going to happen. But I feel good about what’s out there.”

Profile: Dianne Feinstein

Dianne Feinstein is seeking the Democratic nomination for a two-year term in the U.S. Senate. The seat is held by Republican John Seymour, who was appointed.

Born: June 22, 1933, San Francisco.

Residence: San Francisco.

Education: B.A., major in history, Stanford University, 1955.

Career highlights: Member, California Women’s Board of Terms and Parole, 1960-66; San Francisco supervisor, 1970-78; mayor of San Francisco, 1978-88; Democratic nominee for governor of California, 1990. Personal: Married to San Francisco investment banker Richard C. Blum, Jan. 20, 1980. One daughter, Katherine Anne.

Quote: “Basically, my life is government. I believe in it as an honorable process for effecting change. I believe very strongly in the public trust and upholding it.”