Wilson Hurls Barbs at Clinton, Brown in Washington Visit

Gov. Pete Wilson, sounding like a politician warming up for a fierce reelection fight, assailed attempts by President Clinton to revive the California economy and belittled the qualifications of potential gubernatorial opponent Kathleen Brown on Monday.

The Republican governor arranged to visit Washington with hopes of pitching his state’s fiscal needs to Budget Director Leon E. Panetta as the White House this week puts the finishing touches on its budget blueprint for fiscal 1995. But the meeting never took place, amid accusations by Clinton Administration officials that Wilson was using the trip purely for political purposes.

At a luncheon with The Times’ Washington bureau, Wilson said Clinton has displayed “a reverse Midas touch” in promoting an economic agenda that so far has had negative effects in California. He said the Clinton Administration “got snookered” last week into negotiating a General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade that excluded the entertainment industry, which is expected to lose billions of dollars in foreign revenue.

Wilson, who faces a reelection campaign next year, also criticized California Treasurer Brown for having “very little credibility” in fiscal management areas and “trying to be something she isn’t” in espousing tough anti-crime measures.

The one-day visit, paid for by campaign funds, is part of the governor’s reelection plan to create a record demonstrating that Clinton policies have hurt the state, Clinton Administration officials said.

“Wilson’s strategy is clearly to blame everybody but himself for the state of the California economy,” said Thomas S. Epstein, special assistant to the President.

The governor flew to Washington on Sunday night, even though he had been told on Friday that a scheduling conflict would not allow a meeting with Panetta, the former Monterey Democratic congressman who heads the Office of Management and Budget.

Instead, Wilson spent the day courting the media, sitting down for breakfast with a group of about 15 Washington reporters and having lunch at The Times before attending to personal business.

Panetta spokesman Barry Toiv said that the budget chief would be happy to talk to Wilson, but that Panetta was tied up all morning in a meeting with the President and Wilson was unavailable in the afternoon. Wilson, however, said that he was available all day to meet with Panetta.

The two sides will attempt to arrange another meeting if Panetta goes to California for a holiday vacation. Wilson had intended to ask the federal government to pick up a share of California’s cost of providing health, education and welfare programs for illegal immigrants that are mandated by the federal government.

Wilson gave the President a C-minus grade on domestic issues, saying he accepts Clinton’s repeated expressions of his eagerness to help California mount an economic comeback.

“But whatever the good intentions, so far his Administration has had a reverse Midas touch,” Wilson said. “Everything they have done has gone sour.”

While praising the Clinton Administration for promoting the North American Free Trade Agreement and easing restrictions on exports of high-technology products, Wilson criticized the Administration on a wide range of issues. These included the increased taxes and budget cuts in the President’s economic plan, which he said will penalize the state, preventing the state from approving a low-level nuclear waste dump in the Southern California desert to store medical wastes and proposing protections for the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta that would cost jobs.

Of upcoming negotiations with federal authorities on a final water management plan for the delta, Wilson said, “I’m going to try and club them into making some sense.”

In separate interviews, Wilson also set his sights on Kathleen Brown, who has delivered a series of major policy speeches and raised $6.5 million for a campaign for governor. Wilson criticized Brown for “trying to make up for years of zero experience, zero participation.”

“Kathleen Brown is, I think, trying to be something that she isn’t. I think she understands very well the reluctance on the part of the traditional Democrats in California to be as tough as they should be on crime. Suddenly, now it’s a political liability. But she has, frankly, no credibility on the subject because the first peep she has ever uttered was days ago, after the Polly Klaas tragedy.”

Roy Behr, policy director of the Brown campaign, said, “Pete Wilson’s failed fiscal leadership brought us 580,000 unemployed Californians, 63 days of state IOUs and billions of dollars in education cuts. And as for crime, this is a man who is too timid to take a position on banning assault weapons.”

Wilson himself used the Klaas kidnaping case to reiterate anti-crime proposals to crack down on violent criminal offenders who are released early from prison. He told The Times that he favors life sentences without the possibility of parole for first-time convictions of rape, child molestation and arson.