NEWS ANALYSIS : Wilson Gets Mileage Out of Rebuilt Freeway : Politics: Governor grabs glory for fast work on the Santa Monica. But he angers Democrats who were central to the effort.

The early reopening of the Santa Monica Freeway next week will fit neatly into Gov. Pete Wilson’s reelection strategy as he strives to replace the negative image many voters have of him with one of a tough and competent can-do leader.

But a hastily called televised news conference in which the Republican governor announced the reopening left a bitter taste among Democrats, particularly those in Washington whose help made the quick freeway reconstruction possible.

One prominent Democratic assemblyman is questioning whether the Wilson Administration deliberately overestimated the time it would take to fix the Santa Monica Freeway so that the governor could triumphantly celebrate the project’s supposedly early completion.

Clinton Administration officials are grumbling that Wilson, who never misses a chance to complain about what he says is a weak federal commitment to California, is now trying to hog the credit for a project that was financed entirely by federal tax revenues.

Ultimately, the earthquake repairs will probably be only background music in a campaign where the main note is the condition of the state’s economy. But an incumbent running 5 to 10 points behind in the polls looks for every opportunity to improve his standing, and Wilson did just that at Tuesday’s news conference.

“This is something we can point to with pride,” said Joe Shumate, a top Wilson campaign strategist. “It fits into what we have been saying about the governor, that he is a problem-solver who has the ability to get things done.”

Shumate said the campaign is not producing commercials using footage of Wilson disclosing plans to reopen the nation’s busiest freeway. But he added: “Anything’s possible.”

Wilson’s appearance at the freeway was one of a series of events orchestrated by the governor’s office and the campaign to persuade voters that Wilson is responsible for some of the things that are going well for California.

The campaign’s theory is that once an uninformed electorate is told what Wilson has been doing for them, voters will change their view of his performance.

“A lot of tremendous things have been accomplished over the last three years, and they’ve been accomplished because of Pete Wilson and his hard work,” said Dan Schnur, Wilson’s campaign communications director. “On a lot of occasions, those achievements have been overshadowed by other breaking news events. So part of our job at the campaign is to remind the people of California about those achievements.”

Indeed, a Los Angeles Times poll last month found that 70% of those surveyed believe Caltrans is doing a good job protecting the freeways from earthquake damage, an exceptionally high rating for a much-maligned bureaucracy that never has been seen as a model of efficiency. Wilson’s task is to remind people that he is the one who directs the bureaucrats who direct Caltrans.

But some Democrats are questioning just how much of an achievement the Santa Monica Freeway job was, and others are casting doubt on Wilson’s role in it.

The reconstruction of the two downed overpasses is due to be completed 74 days ahead of schedule. The firm that rebuilt the structures stands to earn a bonus of $200,000 for every day the job is done early, or more than $14.5 million.

Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sylmar), chairman of the Assembly Transportation Committee, suggests that Caltrans may have deliberately estimated a lengthy construction period, knowing the project could be completed sooner.

“Either the Department of Transportation is wildly incompetent when it comes to project management, or somebody is playing games, because the contractor was able to do this in half the time allotted by Caltrans and pocket a nice little sum in the process,” Katz said.

Clinton Administration officials, meanwhile, were angered by the governor’s news conference Tuesday, in which Wilson appeared to be taking all the credit for the reconstruction job. Although another event planned for next week will include federal officials, the reopening will be old news by then.

The governor’s snubbing of Clinton was all the more galling to the White House because Wilson has been complaining for more than a year that the federal government is doing too little to assist California.

John Emerson, a White House aide who coordinated the federal earthquake response for Clinton, said it was the President who prompted state and federal officials to speed up the reconstruction timeline.

Emerson said Clinton, when told by Caltrans officials in January that the projects might take as long as a year, immediately ordered Secretary of Transportation Federico Pena to work with Caltrans to “come up with whatever creative means we could come up with to try to speed up the process.” News accounts from the time support Emerson’s version of events.

“They were able to get this completed and get it completed without costing California taxpayers a dime,” Emerson said.

Another Clinton Administration official was a little more emphatic when asked to comment on Wilson’s Tuesday news conference.

“What he did was grotesque,” said the official, who asked not to be identified. “This has been a partnership every step of the way. For him to jump out (and take credit) was very unfair and highly political and we’re unhappy about it.”

Leslie Goodman, Wilson’s communications director, said the Democratic criticism of Wilson was unfounded.

“We welcome the federal assistance and we welcome the increased tourism by Clinton Administration officials to the state,” she said. “But even they know that ultimately the delivery of services to the state is a state responsibility.”

Wilson made the announcement Tuesday afternoon, she said, because engineers determined Tuesday morning that the project would be done much sooner than had been expected.

“When we set deadlines and miss them we get criticized for missing them,” Goodman said. “When we set deadlines and announce that we’re meeting them early, we get criticized for hogging the spotlight. It’s damned if we do and damned if we don’t.”

This kind of insider backbiting, however vitriolic, is unlikely to have much impact on the California governor’s race.

Voters tend to expect government to get the job done, and they don’t give much credit--to anyone--when that happens.

Even the governor’s advisers recognize that Wilson all along faced a larger downside risk, because voters angry over a delayed reconstruction effort might take it out on him at the polls.

Wilson’s Democratic opponents say the early opening of the Santa Monica Freeway merely emphasizes the governor’s lack of accomplishments earlier in his term. “He remains extremely vulnerable to the charge that he acts only in the pressure of an election campaign,” said Michael Reese, spokesman for Kathleen Brown. “Otherwise he dallies and stalls.”

Even Wilson aides concede that any boost the governor gets will be short-lived. By November, voters’ attention will have turned to other matters, particularly their own economic well-being.

“Something that happens in the summer or before--that helps temporarily, but I’m not sure it has a long-term effect for the governor,” Shumate said.