Wilson Hints at Softer Style After Election Drubbing : Politics: Governor blames recession for string of defeats despite his heavy investment of political capital.

Undaunted after an 0-for-4 drubbing on Election Day, Gov. Pete Wilson on Wednesday blamed the worst economy since the Great Depression for a Democratic “tidal wave” and hinted that he now may be more conciliatory toward his legislative adversaries.

“Although there are differences in philosophies, people can work together for the perceived common good of the state,” said the man many consider to be one of the most combative California governors of modern times.

Wilson’s longtime political adviser, George Gorton, was more direct. “It’s time to put the wars behind us, try to mend fences with Democrats and make policy,” he told a reporter. Gorton said that Wilson will try to rekindle the warm working relationship he enjoyed in Sacramento after first taking office in January, 1991.

But things have changed dramatically for the Republican governor since then.

Although he did not acknowledge it during a morning-after press conference, Wilson probably emerged from the election in the weakest condition--both in terms of politics and the ability to govern--of any first-term California chief executive in decades.

The governor played high-stakes politics in this election and the Democrats cleaned him out.

Democrats increased their majority in the state Assembly, despite the governor’s best campaigning efforts. They were largely responsible for beating Wilson’s Proposition 165, on which he had staked his prestige and $2 million in personal political cash. His hand-picked senator, John Seymour, was buried by Democrat Dianne Feinstein. And the President whose California campaign he chaired became only the second Republican in 11 presidential elections not to carry the state.

And there was more. Democrats strengthened their domination of California’s congressional delegation, despite a Wilson-orchestrated redistricting plan that was supposed to benefit Republicans. Voters passed Proposition 162 in retaliation for the governor’s alleged raid on public employee pension funds last year. Even a few days before the election, he went to bat for Central Valley farmers and struck out trying to argue President Bush into vetoing a major water redistribution bill.

As a result of the election, California’s governor will have no political ally in the White House, nor is he allied with the state’s two U.S. senators. And he will have more political enemies in the Legislature and the congressional delegation.

What’s more, only 28% of the voters approve of Wilson’s job performance, according to an Election Day exit poll by The Times.

Looking a bit weary from lack of sleep but not subdued, Wilson tried to dismiss much of this at his post-mortem press conference in a Century City hotel. The defeat of his welfare budget initiative, Seymour and Bush “aren’t going to have all that much impact on the future,” he insisted. “They’re history.”

“You can engage in all kinds of second-guessing,” he said, “but I think if you go back to the Great Depression, you will find there was a similar result. . . . It seems to be there’s more than a simple analogy. The major explanation . . . for the depth and the reach of the Democratic victory has to do with the state of the economy. I don’t think we have seen a state of the economy like this since the Great Depression.”

Then he compared Bush to Herbert Hoover and Bill Clinton to Franklin D. Roosevelt, at least politically: “When FDR won and Herbert Hoover left office, they took an awful lot of Republicans with them. . . . I think that’s what happened here.

“The fine points can be thoroughly massaged, you can spend as much time going through the entrails as you wish, but basically what you had here was a Republican disaffection.”

Now there also may be a GOP blood bath as warring factions point accusatory fingers and jockey for party power. While Wilson and GOP leaders talked of trying to unify the party behind the core pocketbook issues of job creation and a better business climate, others spoke of hardball politics and recrimination.

“The country club Republicans got their heads handed to them last night,” said John Stoos, a strong conservative and executive director of California Gun Owners. “Wilson became irrelevant.”

Michael Schroeder, an Orange County attorney who is president of the conservative California Republican Assembly, said: “The reason why no one has been able to work with Wilson is that Wilson himself is not a team player. . . . What he likes to do is very much in your face, strong-arm tactics that don’t sit well with anybody.”

The grass-roots party leader asserted that the voters’ rejection of Proposition 165 and Sen. Seymour was “a devastating loss for the governor and it’s a huge setback for his hopes of being reelected in 1994.”

Agreeing with that analysis was state Democratic Party Chairman Phil Angelides, who said Tuesday’s elections represented “a sea change in California politics” and announced that “the 1994 governor’s campaign starts this morning.”

Holding a press conference in San Francisco, Angelides added that “the governor had four goals this (election) year. He came up 0-for-4. Not a grand slam.”

California Republican Chairman Jim Dignan of Modesto said GOP politicians “have to start talking about issues that are important to people--issues dealing with the economy--and prove to them that Republicans can deliver. And we should not forget what we learned Tuesday.”

While basically supportive of Wilson, the party chairman complained that Proposition 165 “was a driving force” which prompted many Democrats to vote who otherwise would not have. “It was a good-intentioned proposition, initially, but it cost us some elections,” he maintained.

One Wilson ally, Republican activist-attorney Steven Merksamer of Sacramento, said, “There’s no question the governor had a lot riding on this election. And he came out weaker than he went in. Having said that, I’ve been around politics and government enough to know that one election is not the end-all and be-all.”

Still, said Merksamer, who was former Gov. George Deukmejian’s chief of staff, “Wilson has his work cut out for him. His window of opportunity is shrinking.”

The governor optimistically told reporters that “we’re going to have several new legislators, Republicans and Democrats, and I’m prepared to offer them a very vigorous program come January. I anticipate there will be a number who will want to accomplish the same goals.”

And one of his goals continues to be an overhaul of the welfare system, Wilson said. “There will be welfare reform,” he vowed. “Let me make it clear that I intend to offer it to the new Legislature.”

Times staff writers Ralph Frammolino, Jerry Gillam and Dean E. Murphy contributed to this story.