NEWS ANALYSIS : Voters Set Public Safety as Key Issue for ’94 : Propositions: Electorate shows concerns about crime, wildfires in approving half-cent sales tax extension by wide margin. Candidates for governor take cue by stressing issues related to security.

Crime, violence, fires and other maladies that fall under the rubric of public safety emerged as major concerns of Southern California voters in Tuesday’s special election and offered a preview of the 1994 campaign for governor.

Throughout Southern California, where television airwaves have been saturated with a variety of violence and fire stories in recent months, voters overwhelmingly approved Proposition 172, the $1.5-billion annual extension of a half-cent sales tax.

The funds will be used to avert threatened cuts in city and county budgets for police, sheriff’s and fire departments, district attorneys and the like. The measure passed by 58% to 42% statewide in spite of going down to defeat in 18 rural Northern California counties and in Kern County.

But Southern California is where the votes are, and the public safety message is bound to be a central theme of the 1994 contest for governor, an election that will be held one year from next Tuesday.

At a press conference Wednesday, a grim-faced Gov. Pete Wilson declared that any arsonist who would set a wildfire is as despicable as a child molester and should get a life sentence in prison rather than the six to nine years under current law.

“These are people who ought to be locked up,” Wilson said. “The first offense ought to be the last.”

Wilson’s two likely Democratic challengers, state Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi and state Treasurer Kathleen Brown, are showing no indication they will yield the public safety issue to him.

Garamendi toured Los Angeles television stations Wednesday--as he had the previous week--advising fire victims to file damage claims promptly and promising to deal harshly with any insurance company that might balk at settling legitimate claims or attempt to cheat policyholders.

Brown planned a major address in Sacramento today on the subject of safety in and around the public schools. It will be the second in a series of speeches in which she sets out her position on issues in the campaign for governor.

Brown has said that education is a critical issue in California but that little can be done about it until the schools are made safe from violence, drugs and fear.

Tuesday’s election, in a sense, was the backdrop for a chronic clash within the California political character: the demand that law enforcement agencies maintain a safe environment versus an instinctive antipathy toward giving politicians any more tax money to spend.

Additional taxes prevailed in just the one instance, but a significant one: the passage of Proposition 172, which made permanent a half-cent sales tax that was installed temporarily in 1991.

California voters almost overwhelmingly said no to five of the seven statewide ballot measures before them in the first special statewide election since 1979.

The biggest victory margin for Proposition 172 came in Los Angeles County, where it passed with 62% of the vote. It carried with about 58% of the vote in San Bernardino, Riverside and Ventura counties and 52.3% in traditionally conservative Orange County.

The voters most emphatically rejected two proposals with potential fiscal impacts on taxpayers: Proposition 174, the school voucher initiative, which Wilson said California could not afford because of the potential cost, and Proposition 170, which would have allowed school construction bond issues to pass by simple majority vote rather than the traditional two-thirds.

The voter mood reflects a sense of apprehension among Californians and an unwillingness to experiment, observed Mark DiCamillo of the Field Poll.

“They didn’t want to fiddle with things,” DiCamillo said after analyzing results of Tuesday’s election in which 34% of the state’s 14.5 million registered voters went to the polls, about 3% fewer than the number voting in the last special election 14 years ago and 6% below the official turnout forecast.

In Los Angeles the turnout was lower--about 28.7%--but election officials did not attribute the lower vote to the highly visible fires in the Malibu area. In Riverside, where another wildfire burned, turnout was 32.2%.

“There is a general sense of apprehension that pervades Californians about their own personal financial conditions and the state’s financial condition. Basically they didn’t want to make things worse for themselves,” he said.

On the surface, the voters’ resistance to change would seem to auger well for Republican Gov. Wilson and his prospects for reelection to a second term.

Wilson led a high-visibility winning campaign for the sales tax, and thus averted threatened budget cuts in police and fire departments throughout California. He also opposed the unsuccessful voucher proposal.

George Gorton, the governor’s reelection campaign manager, said the victory fortified Wilson’s position as someone who will be tough on crime.

But the voter apprehension does not necessarily favor keeping an incumbent in office, DiCamillo said.

“The voters are clearly saying, ‘We’re just not happy with government. It doesn’t seem to be doing a good job.’ ”

They would be willing to risk a change in governors, he said, “so long as it’s a palatable change . . . a credible challenger.”

The only ballot measure to pass other than the sales tax was Proposition 171, which gives some voters a tax benefit. It allows people whose homes have been destroyed in a disaster to rebuild in another county without losing their Proposition 13 property tax advantages. It carried, 51% to 49%.

There were no statewide candidates on this ballot, but voters in four areas did vote to fill vacant seats in the state Legislature.

Republicans Maurice Johannessen and Tom Campbell won state Senate elections in Northern California and Republican Bruce McPherson scored something of an upset by winning a Central Coast Assembly district seat by defeating Democrat Gary Patton.

In southern San Diego County, Democratic Assemblyman Steve Peace of Chula Vista led the field in a primary election to succeed state Sen. Wadie P. Deddeh of Bonita, who resigned, with 48% of the vote. Since he failed to win the majority needed to win outright, Peace will face a runoff election against Republican Joe Ghougassian.