Democrats Set Sights on Winning Wilson’s Job : Elections: Getting an early start on 1994, the party holds three “No Re-Pete Mobilization” rallies.

Energized by the election of President Clinton and two U.S. senators last fall, California Democrats opened the 1994 political season Saturday--679 days in advance of the next general election--by going gunning for Republican Gov. Pete Wilson.

With one potential Wilson challenger in tow, Democratic state Chairman Phil Angelides launched a “No Re-Pete Mobilization” campaign with rallies in Hollywood, Orange County and San Diego.

“He’s not going to go easily,” Angelides warned of Wilson, 59, the former San Diego mayor and U.S. senator who has passed the word to influential Republicans that he will run for a second term.

Angelides added that Democrats must be on the offensive against Wilson and “start now the process of putting this election together.”

Making the tour with Angelides and other party officials was state Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi, 46, a former Stockton-area state senator who described himself to a reporter as a likely candidate for governor in 1994.

“We threw the Republicans out of the White House and we’re going to throw them out of the Statehouse too,” Garamendi told about 75 party activists who turned out in the morning for the first of the rallies, in a basement meeting room of the musicians union hall in Hollywood.

With his new political aide, Darry Sragow, looking on, Garamendi added: “Most people will say Pete Wilson’s a nice enough man. And I’m not here to tell you different. He’s nice enough. But that’s not good enough to be governor of California during this time of crisis and it’s time for him to go.”

The other major probable Democratic candidate for governor, state Treasurer Kathleen Brown, 45, daughter and sister of former California governors, is booked to join Angelides for the continuation of his anti-Wilson campaign in the Inland Empire and in Northern California in early March.

Garamendi said he was astonished by the turnout on a blustery, rainy Saturday morning in Hollywood months before anyone could be expected to focus on the next election.

And Angelides said: “This isn’t the exciting political season. This is the tough season and to have this kind of crowd, it’s great. It’s an incredible start. I will tell you that in March of 1991, you could have fired a cannon in rooms in California and not found this kind of crowd.”

Saturday’s early bird rallies were typical of Angelides’ energetic and occasionally unorthodox leadership of the state party for the past two years. The Sacramento developer and former legislative aide has constantly pressed party leaders and officeholders to put aside their differences to tour the state and pump up grass-roots enthusiasm, arguing that party unity and early organization are critical to winning elections.

He has hounded and needled Republican opponents with anything at his disposal to keep them off guard and on the defensive.

Angelides also is credited with waging the voter registration and get-out-the-vote drives that helped Clinton carry the state’s 54 electoral votes, and bolstered the election of Democrats Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein to the U.S. Senate.

Except for its official meetings, it is rare for the state party apparatus to organize or sanction events this far in advance of the party’s primary election, particularly when one major potential candidate for governor is along and the other is not.

Angelides will step down as chairman at the Democratic state convention in Sacramento on April 3-4, probably to become a candidate for statewide office himself. He has talked about running for either treasurer or lieutenant governor.

The two candidates to succeed Angelides as chairman of the Democratic State Central Committee spoke briefly at the Hollywood rally. They are Bill Press, Los Angeles radio and television commentator and unsuccessful candidate for insurance commissioner in 1990, and Steve Barr of Venice, co-founder of Rock the Vote, a nonprofit organization that worked to get young people politically involved.

Although 1994 is considered an off-year election because the presidency is not at stake, it is a big one for California, with a U.S. Senate seat, governor’s race and seven other statewide offices on the ballot along with most of the Legislature.

Wilson gave up a secure U.S. Senate seat to become governor after defeating Feinstein, the former San Francisco mayor, for the state’s top job by 3.5% of the vote in 1990. Last November, Feinstein defeated Wilson’s handpicked Senate successor, John Seymour, to win the final two years of Wilson’s term. She will be on the ballot in 1994 for a full six-year Senate term.

Wilson has been plagued by deadlocks with Democrats who control the Legislature, a fractured state Republican Party and the lowest popularity poll ratings of any modern governor.

“He’s on the mat today,” Angelides told the Hollywood rally, “but he can pick himself up. So what I think we’ve got to do is keep him on the mat.”

The first test of whether Wilson can win GOP conservatives and religious political activists back to his side will come during the state Republican convention in Sacramento next weekend.