Brown, Garamendi Begin TV Onslaught : Politics: The rival Democratic gubernatorial candidates will air ads for the next 10 days. Campaign signals an early start to aggressive battle.

The two leading Democratic candidates for governor announced Wednesday that they will take to the airwaves today, launching expensive, head-to-head television ad campaigns in California’s biggest media markets.

State Treasurer Kathleen Brown plans to spend more than $500,000 to air two 30-second advertisements focusing on school safety, education and jobs, campaign spokesman Michael Reese said. The ads--one showing Brown interacting with children in a classroom--will air over the next 10 days in Los Angeles, Sacramento and San Francisco.

“When my kids were little, my big worry was they’d get hurt during recess,” says Brown, 48, as the camera lingers on children playing on a swing set. Now, she says, kids “bring guns to school. It’s an outrage.”

Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi’s three 30-second ads, scheduled to run during the next two weeks in Los Angeles, Sacramento, San Jose and the Eureka-Arcata area, portray the former college football star as a different kind of politician who has made tough choices. Campaign manager Darry Sragow declined to say how much Garamendi, 49, is spending on the ads, which address welfare reform and illegal immigration. But Sragow said the costs are comparable to Brown’s.

“As a young man, he passed up a chance at the NFL to join the Peace Corps,” says the narrator in one sepia-toned ad, as a photo of Garamendi in the East-West All-Star game uniform appears. “Now . . . Garamendi is at work again at over a hundred different jobs all across California. . . . It’s not the way most politicians run for governor. But then again, John Garamendi has always done things his own way.”

The double-barreled advertising blitz signaled an early start to what is expected to be a pitched battle for the Democratic nomination for governor. And it prompted sharp reactions from the other major candidates.

State Sen. Tom Hayden of Santa Monica, the third Democrat in the race, announced his candidacy earlier this month with a pledge that he would not run 30-second ads that he says fail to explore real issues. He advised voters to “just hit that mute button” when Brown and Garamendi appear on the screen.

“I am campaigning in the belief that democracy is in serious danger when 30-second spots reach more people than the free press,” said Hayden, 54, who faces Brown and Garamendi in the June 7 Democratic primary. “I would hope that voters would hit the off button on their clicker and pick up the telephone and ask these candidates where they really stand.”

George Gorton, who is managing Gov. Pete Wilson’s reelection campaign, dismissed the Democrats’ ads as mere rhetoric and took Brown to task for votes she cast while on the board of the Los Angeles Unified School District--votes that he claimed allowed on-campus violence to worsen.

“It’s easy to talk the talk, but Californians deserve a leader who’s proven he can walk the walk,” Gorton said. “While Kathleen Brown watched crime rise in L.A. Unified Schools . . . Pete Wilson continues to show the leadership and courage it takes to tackle these issues head-on.”

Media experts, asked to assess the sweep of the media campaigns, described them as significant. Assuming that Brown splits her $500,000 equally in the three markets, one media buyer estimated that she will reach about 86% of Californians more than six times each.

Reese said Los Angeles viewers would see Brown’s ads throughout the day. “We’re going to do a little ‘Oprah,’ a little ‘Good Morning America’ and ‘Today.’ We’ve got a little bit of evening news, a little early prime time--like ‘Jeopardy.’ And we’re going to be on ‘Nightline,’ ” he said.

Some political consultants predicted that unless Garamendi’s ads are extraordinarily creative, the head-to-head ads could help Brown, who was 15 points ahead of Garamendi in a Jan. 20 Field Poll and whose name is familiar to many as both the daughter and the sister of two former governors.

“Garamendi needs to make a real difference in voters’ minds for them to leave the name that sounds familiar,” said Robert Nelson, a public relations executive and Republican political consultant. “With both of them coming out with ads at the same time, if they are a series of mainstream political commercials, that will probably tend to help Brown.”

But Nelson said Garamendi’s approach--highlighting his choice of public service over athletic stardom--may be enough to set him apart from Brown.

“He was in fact a football star and probably would’ve made millions of dollars if he had gone professional,” Nelson said. “He took the road not taken. That may be the kind of creative (point) that really does grab people.”

Aside from that point, Garamendi’s first ads follow the usual political script in that they are primarily biographical. For voters who want to know exactly where Garamendi stands, one ad gives a toll-free “issues line.”

Brown’s ads, on the other hand, are clearly written with the assumption that voters know who she is, without any mention of her background or her famous family. The only personal detail voters will be able to glean is that Brown has children.

Sragow, Garamendi’s campaign manager, said he was pleased that the ads will run together because it will give voters a chance to view the two candidates side by side.

“All our research proves that when the voters compare . . . he wins hands down,” Sragow said.

Usually, campaigns conserve their resources, saving most television advertising until about eight weeks before the election.

But there are notable exceptions to this rule, and some political observers said Brown and Garamendi may be attempting to mimic what was seen as a masterful early ad put on by Dianne Feinstein in January during the 1990 gubernatorial race.

The ad portrayed the former mayor of Francisco as a tough leader forged from tragedy--the murders of Supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone. Many say the ad gave Feinstein a clear identity that she had lacked.