Brown Sets Her Agenda in Campaign for Governor : Politics: The state treasurer says she will focus on the economy, education, crime and violence. She hits the luncheon circuit with Texas Gov. Ann Richards.

State Treasurer Kathleen Brown said Friday that she knows she faces a tough, bitter campaign in seeking to become governor in 1994, but declared that “I am ready, because the cause is right and the time is now.”

Addressing a Beverly Hills fund-raising luncheon that Brown aides said drew an estimated 2,200 supporters at $150 each, the prospective Democratic candidate said she would focus her campaign on the economy, education, and crime and violence.

Brown said she would propose a plan next week to make public school areas free of drugs and crime because “the first thing we need is safe schools.” And she also said California schools must adopt smarter methods of fiscal management, including limits on the amount of a school district’s budget that could be used for administration.

Brown said she would prepare a detailed agenda of change for California. But she also said she would emphasize leadership and old-fashioned values, including the assumption of responsibility by the people, by the business community and by government in attacking the state’s problems.

“It has to be about empowering our people because they have lost their hope and confidence about how great California can be,” she said.

Brown cited the state of Texas, which she said has made a comeback under Democratic Gov. Ann Richards, who joined Brown in addressing the mostly female crowd in two large ballrooms of the Beverly Hilton Hotel.

While Brown spoke in one room, the crusty Richards delighted her audience in the other. Then they switched rooms and gave their speeches again.

“Texas has made a comeback because Ann Richards is a fighter for Texas and a fighter for her people,” Brown said. “California needs a fighter and California’s people need a fighter and we need one now. As a Brown, I happen to know what governors can do and this governor (Wilson) just isn’t doing it,” she said, alluding to her father and brother, both former chief executives.

Brown and Richards began the day with a fund-raiser in San Diego and they will appear together in San Francisco and Sacramento today. Brown aides said the statewide fund-raising swing would gross Brown’s campaign treasury as much as $650,000.

The ballrooms were dotted with posters featuring side-by-side photos of Brown and Richards with a legend reading: “Two Treasurers. Two Grandmothers. Two Governors?” Richards was the Texas state treasurer when she won election as governor after a campaign that was considered nasty even by Texas standards.

Richards said she normally does not get involved so early in a campaign and said, “I am not here to campaign against anyone.”

But she added, “I am here to say that Kathleen Brown is one of the most remarkable leaders that I have known and I will do everything I can to move her career in politics forward because she has been a great public servant and she is going to be a great chief executive officer for the state of California.”

Although Brown focused her criticism on Wilson, she is expected to face a tough Democratic primary campaign next June against State Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi.

“This next year is not going to be pretty,” Brown added, saying she had told her husband that after opponents had finished spending $20 million or $30 million in campaigns against her, “you might not recognize me.”

But she said she is ready for that, saying of her prospects for becoming the third Brown to be governor: “It’s possible. It is absolutely possible. Ann Richards has proved that in Texas and I am determined to prove it here in California.”