Economics of the Would-Be Governors : Election: This day before the primary, plans to turn the state around range from anti-taxes to New Age philosophy.

If you listen past the noisy accusations, you could almost get the idea that the candidates for governor are of a single mind when it comes to helping California’s beleaguered economy.

Jobs, they earnestly declare, are needed more than ever. Red-tape gridlock must be broken up. Small business deserves a break. Defense conversion is vital. New, environmentally clean technologies are a key to the future.

Sound familiar? In fact, there are real differences among the contenders in Tuesday’s primary election. Their philosophies range from the free-market, anti-tax vision of Republican challenger Ron Unz to the greener, New Age economics of Democrat Tom Hayden.

There is another difference: Gov. Pete Wilson alone is saddled with the misfortune of having served in office during the state’s worst recession in decades, a period in which more than 600,000 jobs were lost.

The voters, of course, will decide how much he is to blame. But economists point out that, whoever prevails, a state governor lacks some of the key tools to manipulate the economy that are held by officials at the national level.

“You can’t control interest rates,” notes Adrian Sanchez, an economist at First Interstate Bancorp in Los Angeles. “You can’t go into deficit spending like the federal government. You can’t impose tariffs on goods coming in from Arizona.”

Adds Douglas Jeffe, executive vice president of Braun Ketchum Public Relations and a public affairs consultant to business: “Until you’re there (in office), the realities don’t necessarily sink in.”

State Treasurer Kathleen Brown has promised a million jobs in the course of a four-year term. But that also is the number of new jobs that economists generally expect--no matter who wins the election.

Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi has derided Brown’s million-job target as a “slow-growth strategy.” Wilson’s campaign literature, meanwhile, pledges an extra 160,000 private-sector jobs per year on top of the 1 million already forecast.

In today’s era of defense down-sizing and corporate cost-cutting, however, few analysts expect much more than a million new jobs in the next four years.

Whose leadership is most likely to help? Here’s an overview of the candidates’ major business and economic policies.

* Gov. Pete Wilson: The Republican incumbent argues that California’s economic future is linked to foreign trade, small business and an improved business climate with a lighter burden of red tape.

He pushed hard to reform workers compensation rules, and many business leaders say last year’s cost-cutting moves were a step in the right direction.

To create jobs, he has proposed a temporary, $1,000 tax credit for job creation and speeded up Caltrans construction contracts. Wilson also cites housing, such as the Century Freeway Housing project in Los Angeles, as one of the ways the state can create jobs.

He supports tax incentives for investment in small business and would help small companies by making more loan guarantees available.

To foster trade, he would double the state’s $5-million export-finance program, expand California trade offices in Mexico City and Hong Kong and open one up in Taiwan.

Wilson says his efforts are improving the state’s much-maligned business climate, and he is counting heavily on economic recovery between now and election day.

“We must rebuild California job, by job, by job,” he declares.

* Ron Unz: Wilson’s challenger in the primary offers an easy-to-grasp economic platform based on the sort of conservative Republican ideas associated with Ronald Reagan.

“Obvious” keys to economic growth include lower taxes and fewer regulations, says the entrepreneur who runs a financial software business out of his Palo Alto home.

Unz proposes $7.5 billion in budget cuts designed to shore up the state’s weak finances. To name just a few of the cuts, he would cancel pay hikes for state employees, restrict health care spending and freeze per-pupil spending totals in higher education.

Unz, who labels Wilson a “taxocrat” and has been endorsed by supply side guru Arthur Laffer, also says he would “invest in people and educate our work force to keep growth industries in California.”

In keeping with his anti-government, free-enterprise approach, he would slash California’s top income tax bracket to 5% from 11%.

* Kathleen Brown: The Democratic state treasurer, who repeatedly lashes into Wilson’s economic stewardship, also would offer tax incentives to create jobs. She would assist start-up firms by exempting them from business income tax or corporate franchise tax burdens in their first year.

She also would tilt the state procurement process in favor of California companies and California workers. When possible, 50% of parts and supplies used in a state contract would have to be made in California.

Brown pledges to provide capital for small- and medium-sized enterprises, as well as emerging technologies and firms owned by women and minorities.

She would steer money for community reinvestment into disadvantaged areas, and she promises to finance all these programs by shifting around existing funds or using state revenue bonds.

Gov. Wilson, she declares, “can’t hide from the fact that California has lost more than one job every minute of every working day he has been in office.”

* John Garamendi: Sweeping health care reform is a key to the insurance commissioner’s economic plan. Competing in the Democratic primary, he says it would free $5.5 billion annually in insurance, legal and other costs, and he would use the windfall “to stimulate the California economy and to assure that over the long term our economy will stay competitive.”

Asked to clarify, he points to education, police, public works and transportation as examples of the spending he has in mind.

A rancher with an academic background in international finance, Garamendi supports a break in the capital gains tax to favor long-term investments in small, high-tech companies. He also would provide tax credits to assist defense firms in making the leap to non-defense activities.

As chairman of the Senate Revenue and Taxation Committee in 1987, Garamendi pushed legislation that lowered corporate tax rates and provided tax credits for research and development.

The bill, which became law, also allowed firms to carry over part of their operating losses into the future--a provision he believes is of special value to struggling, start-up enterprises.

The state can nurture a modern transportation industry in California, he says, by providing bidding preferences and economic incentives. Over 20 years, “a $200-billion market would be created.”

* Tom Hayden: Hayden would plug tax loopholes and press for pro-environmental economic development, such as renewable energy and an electric-car industry to achieve a sustainable economic future.

Cutting out tax provisions used by speculators in commercial real estate and certain large corporations would net more than $2.5 billion, he believes.

The state senator from Santa Monica speaks in broad terms of easing tax burdens on the middle class, while increasing the tax liability of polluters.

He also wants the rich to keep on paying: Hayden opposes lowering the state’s top income tax bracket, now 11% for individuals with taxable income of $212,380 ($424,760 for couples), which is scheduled to drop to 9.3% at the end of next year.

Hayden cites tourism as crucial to a sustainable economic future but worries that tourists will steer clear of California, unless the state undergoes sweeping reforms.

People “already know that California is polluted, congested, racially divided, unsafe,” Hayden says. “We can only attract them if we reform ourselves.”