Brown, Wilson Already Back on Campaign Trail

Reveling in a national spotlight, California’s two newly minted nominees for governor Wednesday coursed across the state with rhetoric at full throttle and formally opened what promises to be an epic struggle for the state’s top political job.

State Treasurer Kathleen Brown and incumbent Gov. Pete Wilson wasted little time celebrating their Tuesday primary victories, each instead knuckling down for the five long months to come before the November general election. Brown received the belated endorsement of second-place Democrat John Garamendi early Wednesday--the third major candidate, state Sen. Tom Hayden, had endorsed her Tuesday night--and set out to hammer Wilson for his handling of the troubled California economy.

“What this race is going to be about is effectiveness,” Brown told reporters at a Los Angeles news conference. “ . . . Pete Wilson has done too little, too late for the people of California.”

The Democratic nominee infused her pitch with optimism and said that, in contrast, Wilson has engaged in “the politics of despair . . . and divisiveness.”

“What we need is a restoration of the politics of hope, opportunity and promise,” she said.

Wilson opened his general election campaign before a Los Angeles gathering of women supporters, to whom he emphasized the themes that will dominate his bid for a second four-year term--cutting crime, curbing illegal immigration, creating jobs and scaling back welfare.

He scoffed at Brown’s gilded political lineage--both her father and brother have served as governor--and said the style that has garnered her nationwide attention would not sway California voters.

“It’s not about personalities,” said Wilson. “It’s about issues and performance.”

The air wars that have come to characterize California political races started afresh Wednesday. Wilson, as he had four years ago, opened his bid with a pair of television commercials.

Neither ad mentions Brown. Each opens with an acknowledgment of the tough financial circumstances that have caused great unease throughout the state and have sent his job approval ratings plummeting. Wilson, however, laid the blame elsewhere.

“The national recession and defense cuts have hit California hard,” the ads begin. “Nobody understands that better than Pete Wilson.”

The Brown campaign, which earlier had vowed not to let any Wilson effort go unanswered, said it would begin airing its own ads by Monday at the latest.

With the dawn of the day after the primary, the national political machinery kicked into higher gear on behalf of the candidates. The chairmen of both national parties characterized the California race as a high-stakes battle.

Haley Barbour, the Republican National Committee leader, said that winning in California tops the GOP list of desires and that the party plans substantial donations to Wilson’s cause.

“There is no more important race to the Republican Party in the country than Pete Wilson’s election,” Barbour said.

His Democratic counterpart, David Wilhelm, reiterated his pledge of $1 million in national party money to aid voter efforts in California. “There’s no question the stakes are enormous,” he said.

The national attention was immediately evident to Brown, who Wednesday morning was awarded a $300,000 check from the Democratic Governors Assn. Indiana Gov. Evan Bayh, the chairman of the governors’ group, said the unprecedented donation was merely a first installment.

Tuesday’s election results brought definitive victories to Brown and Wilson, even if each had struggled during the primary season.

Brown, who went from putative nominee to troubled candidate and back again over the spring, handily defeated her Democratic rivals. With 100% of the vote counted, Brown had 48.3%, to Insurance Commissioner Garamendi’s 33% and Hayden’s 13.9%.

Wilson, who fought back an unexpected challenge by 32-year-old Silicon Valley computer software whiz Ron Unz, finished with 61.4% to Unz’s 34.3%.

Some bad blood remained between the two Republicans on Wednesday. At the traditional post-primary Republican unity breakfast, Unz pointedly declined to endorse Wilson. Instead, he urged the crowd to vote in November for “those Republicans true to the principles of the Republican party.” All through the primary, Unz contended that Wilson had broken faith with GOP commandments.

All told, Tuesday’s voting set up a classic confrontation between two California archetypes. On the Democratic side will be the mediagenic treasurer, daughter of former Gov. Edmund G. (Pat) Brown, sister of former Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr. and a relative newcomer to statewide politics despite her family tree.

In contrast to the backslapping, hand-pumping Brown, there is the relatively taciturn Wilson, whose lackluster style masks his renown as the craftiest and most resilient of California politicians, a man who has served as a mayor, state legislator, U.S. senator and governor.

Despite their differences, both are essentially centrists, and they will battle for the next five months over the ideological middle ground, the bloc of conservative Democrats, independents and moderate Republicans that traditionally determines success in California.

The candidates’ schedules Wednesday made clear their strategic imperatives. Wilson began the day speaking to an organization of women supporters called “Pro-Wilson 1994,” whose incarnation four years ago helped him to defeat Democratic nominee Dianne Feinstein. Then he traveled to Orange County, the geographic heart of conservative Republicanism.

Brown started with a unity breakfast in Los Angeles, then traveled to the historically conservative San Fernando Valley for a news conference at a Canoga Park defense industry plant. Then she flew to San Jose, to the increasingly important Silicon Valley, for another talk.

Each has a heavy schedule of fund raising set for the next several weeks, an element of the campaign particularly important to Brown, who has $1 million in the bank to Wilson’s nearly $3 million. But the donations flowing in Wednesday helped allay Democratic concerns that she would be unable to match Wilson on television as the race grows more heated.

The donation from the Democratic governors nearly tripled the largest amount given to any candidate in the group’s history. In 1993, the organization donated $110,000 to the campaign efforts of New Jersey Gov. James Florio, who was reelected, and Virginia gubernatorial candidate Mary Sue Terry, who lost her bid.

The money, as one Brown aide put it, amounts to “a week of TV.”

Promises were flowing in from elsewhere. Tom Epstein, the California point man for the White House’s political affairs operation, said the Clinton Administration is planning a multi-pronged effort on Brown’s behalf.

It probably will include appearances and fund raising by Hillary Clinton; Vice President Al Gore and his wife, Tipper; Cabinet members, and perhaps Clinton himself, Epstein said.

Wilson leveled a retaliatory strike at the expected influx of Democratic notables.

“Any time the President wishes to come, any time the vice president wishes to come, all the Cabinet people they will send out trying to help here--they will probably have Cabinet meetings out here,” he said. “I don’t think any of that does any good.”

Exit polling showed Brown and Wilson have work to do if they are to coalesce support behind their campaigns. Brown, in particular, faces difficulties in winning over the moderate voters who will probably determine the election, according to the Los Angeles Times’ surveys of voters leaving the polls Tuesday.

A clear favorite among liberals, Brown was hobbled by Wilson’s strong grasp on the issue most important to voters: crime. The Democratic nominee personally opposes the death penalty but says she would enforce it as governor--a stance that capital punishment advocate Garamendi sought to exploit in the primary.

In a finding worrisome to Brown, just 36% of Garamendi and Hayden voters said they would vote for her in the fall, while almost as many--33%--said they would cross party lines to vote for Wilson.

Wilson, however, has serious liabilities of his own. His job approval rating Tuesday was only 39%, dangerously low for an incumbent, and more than two-thirds of Tuesday’s voters believe the state is on the wrong track.

Some Democrats on Wednesday were encouraging Brown to broaden her attacks on Wilson beyond the economic arguments she has been making--particularly in light of the exit poll findings that Californians are less concerned about the economy now than in past months.

“Certainly the death penalty and the overall crime issue is a problem,” said one well-placed Democrat, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “She needs to get aggressive on immigration, too. You can’t let Wilson dominate that field.”

Wilson’s strategists believe that by narrowing his focus to crime, welfare, immigration and job creation the governor will bore in on the only issues that will matter to voters in the fall. He also has the task, however, of hammering home those issues without offending the more moderate elements of the electorate.

“The key swing voters in this race are independent and moderate Republican voters, especially moderate Republican and independent women who like the idea of voting for a woman candidate for governor,” said Wilson’s spokesman, Dan Schnur. “Our task is very similar to the task we faced in 1990, which is to show those voters that this particular woman candidate is very different from that ideal candidate that they imagine.”

Times staff writers Amy Wallace and Daniel M. Weintraub and Washington Bureau Chief Jack Nelson contributed to this story.

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