REPORTER’S NOTEBOOK : Brown Unruffled by Hayden Surprise

State Treasurer Kathleen Brown gained a potential rival Wednesday, but as she completed a two-day, seven-city tour of the state, the name Tom Hayden rarely passed her lips.

In Santa Barbara, where Brown shook hands at an electronics firm that trains high-skill workers, she responded to a query about the well-known state senator’s unexpected gubernatorial ambitions by predicting, “This is going to be an exciting Democratic primary race.”

In Fresno, where Brown stumped in front of the county juvenile hall, a similar question prompted this response: “It’s a wonderful country and state that we live in.” She said she would stick to her chosen issues, jobs, crime and education, “no matter who else joins the race.”

The official campaign position was clear: It will take more than a third Democratic would-be governor to knock Brown off her mark. Just to be safe, though, she wasn’t giving Hayden any free press by repeating his name in public.

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In 30 hours, Brown had delivered and redelivered a single speech seven times. On the campaign jet, she gave reporters an idea of what such repetition can do to a candidate by grimacing and crossing her eyes.

Those who had followed her around from Sacramento to San Diego and several stops in between understood what she meant. In all, she had belted out her speech’s tailored-for-TV slogan, “Enough is enough,” more than 50 times, shaken countless outstretched hands, autographed scads of campaign posters and fielded questions about everything from the death penalty to the color of her suit.

So why, after such a backbreaking schedule, was Brown still smiling? Michael Reese, her spokesman, ventured a guess: “With satellite feeds, we’ve hit all the media markets in the state. Not bad for two days work.”

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Reporters weren’t the only people in the crowd. From Burbank to Santa Barbara, Brown was greeted by admirers, many of them women.

Stephanie Priest, an electronics worker in Santa Barbara, wore a vintage campaign button from one of Brown’s father’s bids for governor--”Pat Brown for me,” it said. Kathleen Brown had impressed her, she said, and the fact that she is a woman was an added plus.

“My job is very male-oriented. So is politics,” said Priest, whose female colleagues nodded in agreement. “But she’s a mother, she’s a wife. She sees what we see.”

Earlier in Sacramento, another group of women beamed approval at Brown--but these were faces she knew. The foursome, who had traveled from New York, Aspen and Ojai to be by the candidate’s side, are among Brown’s best friends--a tightknit group who call themselves the Meter Maids.

The nickname, said Meredith Brokaw, the wife of “NBC Nightly News” anchor Tom Brokaw, dates back to when they all lived in New York City and played tennis almost every morning before work. The custodian of the courts, mystified by their early schedules, asked if they were meter maids. The name stuck, and so did the friendships.

When Brown was inaugurated as treasurer, Brokaw said, the Meter Maids were there to witness it. There’s no way they would miss the beginning of her gubernatorial bid.

“We’ve been through our children’s crises, our husbands’ crises and through our own. We’ve also shared the joy,” Brown said later, remembering the Sunday night potluck dinners and annual Easter egg hunts the women shared. “We’ve always been there for each other.”

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Being there for each other was a theme repeated throughout the two-day junket. Van Gordon Sauter, an executive at Fox Television and Brown’s husband, spent the first day on the campaign trail, as did several others, including her mother Bernice. The candidate’s twin grandchildren, Brendan and Katherine, were trotted out on the first stop Tuesday--a ploy Brown later admitted she had found “shameless” when her father did it. Now, she explained, it had suddenly become “irresistible.”

Not surprisingly, the state Republican Party attempted to use her family ties against her by distributing leaflets at one stop that compared her to her controversial brother, Jerry, the last Democrat to serve as governor.

Brown was unfazed. “This is going to be a race between Pete Wilson and Kathleen Brown,” she said, artfully omitting the name of Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi, the man she hopes to beat in the June 7 primary.

Voters, she said, “are not voting for my brother. They’re not voting for my father, or for my husband or even my grandchildren.” In the future, she said, she hopes the Republicans will use better photographs on their leaflets.

“I would love it if they’d use a family picture,” she said. “It’s a great family. Just use a good picture and I’d like the grandchildren up front.”