CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS / GOVERNOR : Brown Tries to Pin the ‘Tax Hiker’ Label on Wilson : In a new ad, she accuses the Republican of raising taxes. But his spokesman says the Democrat backed the higher levies during each of the past two years.

Democrats have had the label thrown at them for years, so it was with no small amount of pleasure that Kathleen Brown’s campaign for governor Wednesday threw it back at Pete Wilson.

Putting a twist on lines of attack that California voters have come to expect, the Democrat Brown called the Republican Wilson a tax hiker. In a 30-second television commercial that began running statewide Wednesday, she accused him of raising “almost every tax in California,” inventing new taxes and, indeed, of lying about his past record on tax hikes.

“A different kind of ad for a Democrat,” offered Brown spokesman John Whitehurst in a bit of understatement.

The Wilson campaign, for its part, scoffed.

“The hypocrisy here is so thick you could choke on it,” said Wilson’s spokesman Dan Schnur. “Kathleen Brown has called for tax increases on the people of California in each of the last two years.”

The tax ad and an earlier Brown commercial criticizing Wilson’s parole policy are meant to strike at the heart of traditional political theology--that Republicans, not Democrats, are tough on crime and taxes.

Faced with public opinion polls that show voters most concerned about crime, she has tried to wrest that issue from Wilson by criticizing his handling of the state’s parole system. On that subject and on taxes, Brown contends that the issue is how Wilson’s promises compare to his record.

But she continues to open herself to charges of hypocrisy. In her most recent advertisements, Brown does not mention that she supported most of the things that she criticizes Wilson for advocating.

The tax ad lists a host of levies that have risen under Wilson, among them the “sales tax, the candy tax, the farm tax, the railroad tax, the health insurance tax, the gas tax, the billboard tax, the beer tax, the business tax, the vehicle tax, the renters tax, the day-care tax, the snack tax, the newspaper tax, the magazine tax, the water tax.” And “the income tax.”

Whitehurst, when asked, acknowledged that Brown had sanctioned the hikes.

“She supported all of them at the time,” he said. “For example, the snack tax and the tax increase of 1991 was about, from the perspective of the treasurer, how do you make the state solvent and you’ve got to do it by either having the revenue or having the cuts.”

Brown aides argued, however, that her positions were beside the point. Had she been governor, they said, the tax increases would not have been necessary because she would have better managed the state’s fiscal crisis.

In her ad, the treasurer also flatly accused Wilson of lying in his 1990 campaign commercials when he contended that he was “the only candidate for governor who has balanced 11 straight budgets without raising taxes.” The slogan was meant to compare Wilson’s tenure as mayor of San Diego with that of his 1990 opponent, Dianne Feinstein, when she was mayor of San Francisco.

“But Wilson lied,” the ad says. Aides based that statement on Wilson votes to hike the San Diego hotel tax and business license taxes when he was mayor.

In a second advertisement, which will run only in Southern California, Brown took Wilson to task for the economic difficulties that have befallen Los Angeles and neighboring counties. The commercial is the opening salvo in a series of regional appeals aimed at voter-rich areas of the state.

Brown contends that Wilson “forced local tax hikes, slashed services for children, threatened our fire protection and jeopardized county law enforcement” by blocking $1.5 billion in state funds from the counties over four years.

The bulk of the money, however, was part of a 1993 tax shift in which the state kept revenues that it normally disbursed to local governments and, in exchange, gave counties and cities a half-cent share in the state sales tax income. The threats to fire and police departments that the ad cites dissolved when voters in November approved extension of the half-cent tax, for which Wilson campaigned.

While Brown in 1993 supported only half of the $2.6 billion in local cuts that Wilson initially advocated, she endorsed almost all of the $500 million in cuts that he advocated this year, Brown aides said. The major exception was $30 million to $40 million in criminal justice funds to be spread statewide.

Wilson’s budget this year included a $350-million loss to Los Angeles County.

Schnur, the governor’s campaign spokesman, said a host of reasons--including natural disasters and the downturn in defense employment--were to blame for Southern California’s dogged recession.

“Kathleen Brown has got to be the only person in the state of California who thinks that Pete Wilson is responsible for fires, earthquakes and the end of the Cold War,” Schnur said.

Brown’s spokesman said the treasurer’s campaign intended to hold Wilson accountable.

“The point of the ad is his record,” Whitehurst said. “She has a whole series of economic recommendations which would not have allowed the Los Angeles region to face the crisis.”