CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS / GOVERNOR : Brown Woos Wall Street, Criticizes Wilson on Finances : The treasurer goes to New York to try to bolster the state’s credit rating. A new campaign commercial accuses the governor of four years of fiscal mismanagement.

As state Treasurer Kathleen Brown sought to reassure Wall Street about California’s fiscal stability, Democratic candidate for governor Brown also unleashed a new series of ads Tuesday alleging that her Republican foe, Gov. Pete Wilson, has bungled the state’s finances ever since he took office.

In one of three new Brown campaign commercials, an announcer says: “The Wilson years--tax hikes, IOUs, now this: $7 billion in borrowing, a $3-billion deficit, tax breaks for the rich at the expense of students, senior citizens and the middle class.”

The ad ends by saying: “Four years of fiscal mismanagement. Can we afford four more?”

Brown was in New York, along with other California fiscal managers, seeking to bolster the state’s credit rating against concerns about another year of deficit financing in the new budget signed into law last Friday by Wilson.

Wilson is running for a second four-year term in the Nov. 8 general election.

A Brown campaign aide in Sacramento said there was no inherent conflict in her statements as treasurer and her campaign’s anti-Wilson claims.

Steven Glazer, a Brown campaign aide, said her role as treasurer in New York City is to assure potential investors that the state will be able to meet its obligations, even though Brown sharply disagrees with Wilson’s method for paying off the debt.

“I think it’s consistent with her own view that she needs to fulfill her responsibilities as treasurer, yet doesn’t take away from her own judgment about what a bad job the governor has done,” added Glazer, a senior campaign adviser for communications and policy.

But the Brown ads also appeared to criticize Wilson for failing to take actions that Brown so far has declined to take herself.

For example, a commercial on education said Wilson tried to “slash billions” from the budget for public schools; Brown’s own proposed budget outline released in June did not call for any increase in public school finance.

She also criticized Wilson for welfare cuts that she also has embraced.

“That’s true,” Glazer said in reference to spending on education. But he added, “Wilson can’t run away from his record on education, his record of failing to support the schools.

“There is a theme to our challenge here,” Glazer added. “That is there is a clear record of mismanagement. We are going to hold him accountable for that.”

But Wilson campaign spokesman Dan Schnur said Wilson’s budgets had provided the full funding required by Proposition 98, the voter initiative that established school spending as a certain percentage of the state’s General Fund each year. Several of the Brown campaign claims were based on original budget proposals by Wilson that were altered while the spending document was being worked out with the Legislature, which is controlled by Democrats.

Brown’s budget outline did not vary greatly from Wilson’s. She proposed that the $3 billion in state debt be paid off over a five-year period rather than two as proposed by Wilson. Wilson aides said state law did not allow the government to stretch out a debt payment over five years without a vote of the people, thus claiming that Brown’s plan was illegal.

What the Brown ad labels “tax cuts for the rich” are not tax cuts in the traditional sense. They refer to Wilson’s refusal to extend a temporary increase in the state income tax for the wealthiest of Californians beyond the end of 1995. They will continue to be in effect next year and could be extended then by the Legislature and governor.

The third Brown ad attacked Wilson on a subject that has been a constant theme: that Wilson’s claim to be tough on crime is undercut by a parole policy that has allowed violent criminals to remain on the street in spite of violations of their parole. In the case cited Tuesday, the criminal now is being held for trial on charges of committing murder while remaining free in spite of parole violations.

Brown’s argument on parole violators has not been that they automatically be returned to prison, but that they should not be allowed to remain free until they have been subjected to a parole revocation hearing.

Schnur responded by saying the ads will only remind voters that Brown personally opposes the death penalty, although she says she would enforce it as governor just as rigorously as Wilson does, and that she is against Wilson’s proposed law that violent sex offenders should be subject to a possible life prison term on a first offense.

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Stall reported from Los Angeles, Gladstone from Sacramento. Times political writer Cathleen Decker also contributed.