CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS / GOVERNOR : Wilson and Brown Trade Bitter Attacks : Challenger criticizes governor’s record; he assails her death penalty opposition. Sharp exchange signals an acrimonious battle for state’s top post.

Republican Gov. Pete Wilson described Democratic challenger Kathleen Brown on Monday as an “ACLU liberal” who is weak on crime, and Brown responded that Wilson is using “misrepresentations and falsehoods” to cover up a governorship that has failed California.

The sharp exchange took place during their first appearances on the same program since the general election campaign began and signaled the likelihood of a bitter battle for the California governorship. The contenders have been pummeling each other in television commercials since before the June 8 primary election.

Against the serene backdrop of a golf course dotted with Monterey pines, Wilson and Brown each talked for 15 minutes to the annual convention of the California Broadcasters’ Assn. at the Hyatt Regency Resort. They fielded questions from the radio and television executives and then carried their acrimonious exchange into separate meetings with reporters.

Technically, this was not a debate, since they never were in the room at the same time. And it still is early in the summer, the traditional lull in election campaigns. But Monday’s encounter had all the drama and rhetorical fire of a face-to-face clash in the final days before the November election.

Brown and Wilson hit all the major issues that are likely to figure in the campaign: the state budget, taxes, the economy, welfare, illegal immigration, public education, crime and the death penalty.

Speaking first, Brown made it clear she intends to carry the campaign attack to Wilson, comparing his record to the promises he made in winning his first term in 1990.

“He did anything, said anything and stopped at nothing to get your votes back then,” Brown said. “He’s going to do the same thing today. . . . I’m going to hold him accountable for taking California from first to worst.”

She capsulized her own campaign more crisply and concisely than perhaps at any other time this year in three short paragraphs covering job development, revitalization of the schools and getting tougher on crime.

“Pete Wilson has had his chance, and he has failed,” she said. “That is the issue of this campaign, and I intend to take that indictment throughout this state.”

When it was his turn, Wilson defended his record by claiming the state has made progress in spite of great obstacles, including the recession and the federal government’s refusal to compensate California for the costs of providing services that Congress requires be offered to illegal immigrants.

Wilson called again for tough enforcement of border control laws and decried the cost to the state of providing services to illegal immigrants. He also said California must wage a tough new campaign against young, unmarried women having children, because they so often wind up on welfare.

Wilson accused Brown of inconsistency on issues such as the North American Free Trade Agreement. He said she would hurt job creation by raising taxes, and claimed she was trying to overcome her weakness on crime by running a “lurid and ludicrous” television campaign commercial attacking Wilson’s parole policies.

After Brown boarded her campaign bus for a two-day trip named “the 1994 Pete Wilson Broken Promises Tour,” she said Wilson’s ads attacking her were “lurid and unfair.”

“But I’m not whining,” she said. “I think he’s whining. He should take his (anti-Wilson) commercials like a man.”

In his session with reporters, Wilson said Brown’s positions on crime, including her personal opposition to the death penalty, are “greatly out of step with the people of California and I think that they would agree her priorities are those of an ACLU liberal who is weak on crime.”

He said Brown once helped raise funds for the American Civil Liberties Union, which often initiates lawsuits in an effort to protect the legal rights of criminal defendants and others.

In response to questions, Brown said she is not a member of the ACLU, but attended an ACLU fund-raising event by invitation to present an award.

The death penalty was the final question put to Brown during the session with the broadcasters, and the candidate responded heatedly that she is unable to change her personal opposition to capital punishment, but said, “It’s a law I will respect and uphold.”

Brown said she understands why the death penalty enjoys overwhelming support among California voters.

“I’ve got kids,” she said. “I’ve got grandkids, and if anybody tried to hurt one of my kids, I’d want punishment. But I was taught (the death penalty) was not right.”

Wilson argued that it isn’t a matter of upholding the law, as Brown insists she will do.

“Governors don’t enforce the death penalty,” he said. “They either grant or withhold clemency.”

The governor added that someone with the same feelings about capital punishment as Brown “would find a way to grant (clemency) simply as a means of avoiding a death penalty in which they don’t conscientiously believe.”

Again he noted that Brown’s brother, Jerry, appointed the controversial Rose Elizabeth Bird as chief justice when he was governor of California, adding: “The last person who told us she would enforce the death penalty was Chief Justice Bird and then subsequently, in 53 decisions, found ways to avoid doing so by making evidence inadmissible on technicalities.”

Brown responded to Wilson’s “ACLU liberal” charge by saying he is trying to inject ideology into the campaign.

“I don’t think you can put a label on me or my campaign,” she said. “I represent a philosophy of making government work for the people.”

In fact, when one reporter noted that she had differed with liberal Democrats in the Legislature on budget priorities, Brown said, “I think it’s important to have a Democrat who is willing to stand tough on welfare reform, stand tough on crime and who will be a fighter for education and a fighter for the middle class.”

Wilson, she said, is trying to avoid accountability for his record. “It is typical smoke and mirror politics when the people of the state are looking for real answers, real solutions to the difficult and complex problems of California. I don’t buy it. I don’t think they’re going to buy it.”

Wilson said Monday’s pointed attacks illustrate that there are basic differences between the two candidates.

“That’s what campaigns are all about,” he said.

Times staff writer Amy Wallace contributed to this report.