CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS / GOVERNOR : New Brown Ads Push Some Themes Reagan Used in 1966 : Democrat approaches the middle class much like Reagan did in successful bid to oust her father from governor’s office.

Democrat Kathleen Brown opened a new advertising campaign Monday that promotes some of the same broad themes used by Republican Ronald Reagan 28 years ago to oust her father, Edmund G. (Pat) Brown Sr., from the California governorship she now seeks.

Much as Reagan did in 1966, Kathleen Brown sought to appeal to the California middle class on issues of government waste, bureaucracy, welfare spending and a get-tough approach on criminals.

In one of two new 30-second television commercials, Brown says “middle-class families are not getting their fair share.” She proposes to cut the state bureaucracy if elected governor on Nov. 8 over Republican incumbent Pete Wilson and is critical of a “misguided” welfare system and wasted tax money.

“As governor, I’ll manage California’s budget for the middle class--guard the money, cut bureaucrats and reduce welfare,” Brown says. “I’ll use the savings for better schools and colleges, job creation and police--the fair share middle-class families deserve.”

The commercial did not include specific proposals, although Brown has drafted detailed issues papers on many of those subjects.

In 1966, Reagan sought to deny Pat Brown a third term by running against what Reagan decried as a spendthrift government and a bloated bureaucracy that served an overly generous welfare system and coddled criminals.

All of this came at the expense of middle-class Californians who obeyed the rules and paid their taxes without complaint, Reagan said. He portrayed Pat Brown as a political bumbler who made a mess of managing state government.

In a retrospective of the campaign, Brown wrote: “In 1966 a majority of Californians wanted to hear a new articulation of their changed political and social attitudes.”

In 1994, that articulation has come full circle, as state Treasurer Kathleen Brown seeks to unseat Wilson, first elected to public office in the Reagan-led GOP sweep of 1966.

The new Brown ads, which began airing statewide Monday, marked a shift from a long succession of commercials this summer that attacked Wilson on a variety of issues with the common theme of mismanagement in government. She does not name Wilson in the new ads and they were viewed by campaign experts as a beginning of the Brown effort to acquaint voters with Brown and her own proposals for making life better in California.

Wilson campaign manager George Gorton said the new ads are part of a Brown attempt “to prove that the campaign is not about ideology.” A goal of the Wilson campaign has been to portray Brown as a liberal, much as her brother was during his governorship.

In one ad, Brown is shown with 13 members of her family, although her father, Pat Brown, is not present because of a prolonged illness. Nor is her brother, Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr., who was governor of California from 1975 to 1983. Brown campaign aides were not certain why Jerry Brown was not included.

The ad opens with the candidate introducing herself and her mother, Bernice Brown; her husband, Van Gordon Sauter; her children, and grandchildren.

“My mother was born in the beginning of the century and my grandchildren at the end,” Brown says. “Each generation of California families has built a better life for the next. But today, middle-class families question whether their future will be as good as their past.”

“Only with good jobs, good schools and affordable colleges and homes will California families believe in our future again.”

In response, the Wilson campaign focused on Brown’s proposed welfare cuts. Acknowledging that she recently proposed a 5% cut in benefits, they said she has a meager record on welfare reform and faulted her for failing to endorse specific proposals backed by Wilson.