‘92 DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION : National Party Is Eager to Showcase Its California Duo : Women: Feinstein and Boxer also profit from media exposure as they are portrayed as symbols of change.

Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer stood amid a phalanx of kindred women candidates Tuesday, under a canopy of red, white and blue balloons, as Bill Clinton took the stage and faced a cheering crowd.

“I’d be glad to be on Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer’s coattails any day,” Clinton said in saluting key-state Senate candidates. “We don’t just need a new generation, we need a new gender of leadership.”

For Boxer and Feinstein, it was a golden-moment photo opportunity in a week designed to produce many of them.

California’s two Democratic candidates for the U.S. Senate are sprinting through what is surely one of the most important five-day stretches of their political lives.

They’re on the morning network talk shows and the evening network news shows. They’re shaking hands at back-to-back fund-raisers and speaking from the floor of Madison Square Garden. Feinstein huddles with Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell outside the posh Tavern-on-the-Green in Central Park; Boxer gets speech-giving tips from the master herself, Texas Gov. Ann Richards. (“Barbara, make them put it on a TelePrompTer!”)

The Democratic Party is showcasing California’s Senate hopefuls, along with several other women candidates, and they are taking full advantage of it.

This is the politics of mutual benefit: The Democratic Party, striving to portray itself as the party of change, needs women candidates to symbolize such change and to attract women and disaffected voters. Feinstein and Boxer, and their “sister” candidates, need the publicity, the money, the network.

California is in the rare position of electing both of its senators in the same election this fall. Feinstein’s Republican opponent is appointed Sen. John Seymour, and the two are competing for the final two years of the term left open by Pete Wilson’s election as governor. Boxer will face conservative television commentator Bruce Herschensohn. No state has ever had two women senators, and only 16 women have ever served in the nation’s highest legislative chamber.

On Tuesday night, Feinstein, the former mayor of San Francisco, and Boxer, a five-term congresswoman from Marin County, were among seven honored guests at a lavish fund raiser for women Senate candidates that is expected to net $750,000--a record for women office-seekers.

“The sisterhood of the pocketbook can change the American political terrain,” Feinstein told an audience at one fund raiser that included such matriarchs of the women’s movement as Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem.

In their dozens of appearances, both Feinstein and Boxer managed to line up potential donors from Miami, Chicago, Dallas and other cities as part of a national money-making strategy.

“I hope my message of change and choice and taking care of our own will be heard,” Boxer said as she rushed out of a luncheon at People Magazine and to a reception hosted by Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski of Maryland, the only female Democratic senator. “And that will boost not only my campaign but the others too.”

During an exclusive, convention-eve party hosted by Richards, Boxer deftly worked the ballroom of the Supper Club. She shook hands with a Texas lawyer who congratulated her on her primary victory (“Hey, darlin’! You kicked ass!”) and chatted with a New York television producer about a possible movie of the week about--what else--a woman running for the Senate.

Feinstein, whose style is more restrained than Boxer’s, has had less showy appearances. She brunched with Southern California Edison bigwigs and joined West Virginia Sen. John D. (Jay) Rockefeller IV for a reception at his suburban home.

As the convention was getting under way, Democratic National Committee Chairman Ronald H. Brown conceded that the party has failed to take full advantage of the so-called gender gap in years past, and he pledged not to make the same mistake this year.

Some activists wonder, though, how committed the party is in this endeavor. When the women Senate candidates addressed the convention Monday night, it was from two specially built platforms on the Garden floor--not from the central podium.

Tuesday night’s recognition of women candidates was up against baseball’s All-Star Game.

Where the Democratic Party wouldn’t or didn’t provide the television spotlight, Boxer and Feinstein looked elsewhere.

In a rare joint appearance, Boxer and Feinstein used Larry King’s CNN talk show to praise the ticket.

King seemed to make the two women uncomfortable when he mentioned their well-known personal and political differences. In the past each has supported the other’s opponent in various races.

“We never clashed personally,” Boxer said, stumbling slightly. “We’re grown-ups, and we had different alliances and allegiances. . . Let me say, that’s history, and we’re together now, and we’re very excited at the prospect of being a team.”

Feinstein sidestepped the question. “Of course we’re allowed to disagree . . . “

“I believe that if ever we were going to see this, if you will, revolution, it will be this year, because, as Dianne says, people are ready for a domestic agenda,” Boxer said. “And that’s what we women talk about. We talk about the family, we understand the needs of our people. We hurt when we see the unemployment rate, we hurt when we see kids in trouble . . . and that women’s agenda is becoming the nation’s agenda.”

Whether the glow of this week in steamy Manhattan will last very long remains to be seen. Roz Wyman, a veteran party activist from Los Angeles, recalled the 1984 convention when the nomination of Geraldine Ferraro as vice president brought tears of emotion to the eyes of many delegates. But that ticket went down in flames.

“A convention is a place where you hope you can showcase the best of what you’ve got,” said Wyman, who is involved in the Feinstein campaign. “In 1984, the night of (Ferraro’s) nomination was one of the most exciting nights of politics. We went out of that convention two or three points ahead. It was the only time we were ahead.”