CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS / GOVERNOR : Brown Blames Wilson for 1.2-Million ‘Jobs Deficit’ : Politics: State treasurer escalates her attacks on Republican incumbent and renews promises on creating 1 million jobs. She launches a 22-day tour of the state.

Democrat Kathleen Brown launched a marathon four-stage bus tour of California on Saturday by blaming Republican Gov. Pete Wilson for a 1.2-million “jobs deficit” since taking office early in 1991.

In the month remaining before the June 7 primary for the Democratic nomination for governor, the state treasurer plans to campaign by bus throughout California for part or all of 22 days, an aide said.

Brown said the bus tour “represents this campaign getting on the ground and driving back to Sacramento where we want to bring this state back for all our people.”

“I’m taking this campaign on the road to launch my mission, which is to create 1 million new jobs,” she told about 100 supporters at a kickoff rally at the Casa Blanca Restaurant in Hacienda Heights, in eastern Los Angeles County.

Before stepping onto the bus outfitted with overstuffed chairs, telephones and a fax machine, Brown escalated her charges that California has suffered a job hemorrhage since Wilson took office in January, 1991, just as the national recession was gripping the state.

Until now, Brown had charged that California lost 540,000 jobs during Wilson’s watch. On Saturday, she boosted that figure to nearly 700,000.

Additionally, she said, some economic experts had forecast, before Wilson became governor, that California would gain 521,000 jobs during 1991, 1992 and 1993.

“But with Pete Wilson, we didn’t create those jobs; we lost nearly 700,000, so Pete Wilson’s given us not only a budget deficit, but a jobs deficit of 1.2 million jobs,” she said.

Brown based her allegation in part on government statistics released Friday that had California’s unemployment rate jumping a full percentage point during April, to 9.6%, while the national jobless rate declined.

Officials said one reason for the California increase was that the number of people who had re-entered the work force--and had not been counted as jobless in previous reports--increased to 494,000 from 417,000.

The number of people who had been fired or laid off actually declined during the month, to 688,000 from 781,000, the report said.

Wilson campaign spokesman Dan Schnur said the major reason that the state’s unemployment percentage increased in April was because more people had entered the work force.

The jobs deficit allegation grew out of Brown’s own defense of her strategy of creating 1 million jobs in California during her first term, if she is elected governor. Brown critics belittled the claim by declaring that California would gain 1 million new jobs during a period of recovery no matter who was governor, or what action he or she took.

Brown then cited the pre-recession Western Blue Chip Economic forecast to come up with the “deficit”--the 700,000 jobs lost, plus the 500,000 that had been forecast but failed to materialize because of the recession.

Brown has proposed a variety of actions, such as a tax break for creating jobs, to stimulate the economy.

As usual, Brown did not mention her principal opponent in the June 7 Democratic primary, Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi. Garamendi was at his ranch near Mokelumne Hill in the Sierra foothills, presiding over his annual Basque barbecue fund-raising event. He planned a bus tour of his own through the Central Valley today.

Brown press spokesman Dan Whitehurst said Saturday that Brown would emphasize a new variation on the jobs theme during each week’s bus trip, beginning with job losses. Then will come Brown citing business failures, the personal toll of recession on average Californians, and finally, raising the question of “whom do you trust” to revive the state’s economy, Wilson or Brown.

Brown declined to say, in response to questions from reporters, whether she supported the decision of a state commission to raise salaries of state legislators by 37%, from $52,500 to $72,000 a year beginning in December.

“I’m going to take a pay cut as governor if we have the same budget problems we have as we’ve got today,” she said.