CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS / GOVERNOR : Crime Issue Seen as Giving Edge to Governor

It was a tribute somber enough to cloud the heart of a sunny little beach town. And it was one that demonstrated why Pete Wilson, who has presided over some of California’s bleakest times, is now considered by many to be the favorite to win the race for governor.

In a grassy glade next to the baseball field in Live Oak Park, under the outstretched arms of an aged sycamore tree, the citizens of Manhattan Beach on Wednesday unveiled a memorial to one of their own, Police Officer Martin Ganz.

He would have been 30 years old Wednesday, had not three bullets from an unknown assailant cut him down two days after Christmas and given him unwanted distinction as the first Manhattan Beach police officer to die in the line of duty.

The memorial was achingly personal--cast bronze representations of Ganz’s helmet and gloves, sunglasses and keys sat atop a short pillar, set in a bed of polished blue concrete. The color, the designer said, of a cop’s uniform.

Scores of people, in uniforms, beach gear or dress suits, showed up. They filled the white chairs that had been set out and spilled onto the grass beyond. In the front row sat Ganz’s family, their grief evident still after seven months of mourning, and his fiancee, Pamela Ham, dressed in black. White roses were pinned to their lapels, and to the lapels of a few city dignitaries and the highest-ranking official in their presence, Gov. Wilson.

He was invited by the organizers to help soothe the battered feelings of townspeople, whose concern about crime was brought into harsh relief by Ganz’s killing. Wilson has been to so many of these events that he takes on the coloration of a comforting family friend.

“Too often today . . . people seem to mistake celebrity for heroism, fame for virtue, glamour for goodness,” said Wilson, facing rows of police officers from a host of South Bay cities. “Here in Manhattan Beach, a 29-year-old police officer named Martin Ganz, who was not a celebrity, wasn’t famous, who had a job that was not especially glamorous, was nonetheless a true hero. A man of great goodness.”

To Wilson, the grandson of a murdered Chicago cop, expressions of sympathy to victims and anger toward criminals come naturally. And that explains much of his recent comeback in the polls in a state that is increasingly fixated on its fear of crime.

When state Treasurer Kathleen Brown, the Democratic nominee for governor, entered the race, her strategists figured that the economy would be Pete Wilson’s albatross. Lo and behold, half a year later, crime has risen to be the issue of greatest concern to Democrats and Republicans alike.

And that has shifted much of the campaign dialogue to Pete Wilson’s turf.

Brown has recently sought to wrest the issue from him, unleashing television commercials accusing him of presiding over a parole system that has let dangerous criminals loose to murder and assault Californians. “Under Pete Wilson, dangerous parole violators are escaping justice and innocent Californians are being murdered,” Brown’s current television ad says. “That’s dead wrong.”

Most Democrats, however, assume that at best Brown can only neutralize Wilson’s hold on the crime issue. They acknowledge privately that she is hamstrung on the issue by her personal opposition to the death penalty.

Wilson angrily denounces Brown’s claims, saying that he has worked to stiffen criminal sentences and penalties for parole violations.

“This is a desperate candidate who is admitting now that she is behind in the polls,” Wilson, who leads by single digits in both his and Democratic polling, told reporters after the memorial service. “For her to accuse anyone of being soft on crime is more than a little bit hypocritical. . . . If she’s serious about protecting people, where has she been when the rest of us were fighting to change the law?”

Wilson is well aware that he could be accused of politicizing events such as the Ganz service, even if he has spent most of his political life in the company of victims’ rights activists. His remarks to the crowd Wednesday were deliberately nonpartisan; he did not mention Brown until asked about her afterward by reporters.

“If you’re going to run for political office, you’re going to have to put up with cynicism at all times, in particular during campaigns,” he said later. “Recognition was owed to Martin Ganz, and I don’t think that they should be required to postpone that to a non-election year.”

After the memorial, a steady stream of young and old paraded up to Wilson, handing him printed programs to autograph and wishing him well in his campaign. Ganz’s fiancee, who earlier had praised Wilson for his words of comfort in their previous meetings, gave the governor a hug. And then the mourners dispersed.

On Friday, Wilson will do it all again. On Friday, he is set to attend the funeral of a Bakersfield-based CHP officer, killed days ago in the line of duty.