Miscues Have Some Insiders Doubting Brown’s Chances : Politics: As campaign enters crucial stretch, she needs a ‘blockbuster’ to recover momentum, some analysts say.

The Kathleen Brown campaign, once considered an unstoppable juggernaut headed straight for the governor’s office in Sacramento, now is struggling for its political life in the view of many California political experts--most of them Brown’s fellow Democrats.

Even though recent polls show the race still close, several developments in the last month have contributed to deepening alarm inside and outside the Brown campaign and led many Democratic insiders to conclude that hopes for winning the governorship are slipping away.

Among the most pessimistic of them, the fear is not whether Brown will lose, but by how much. A significant Brown loss, by 5% or more, could create a “downdraft” effect that would defeat Democrats running for other statewide offices, they believe.

Some of the reasons for concern have been beyond Brown’s control. Opinion polls nationally, and to a lesser extent in California, suggest a powerful Republican undertow that could bring down many incumbent Democrats, and make life that much tougher for Democratic challengers.

But in the past few weeks, a series of stumbles and miscues by Brown’s campaign has triggered widespread second-guessing of whether she squandered her chance this summer to overtake incumbent Gov. Pete Wilson, for whom voters still seem to have little affection.

Publicly, Brown and her campaign spokesman declare that they are right where they want to be. “We’re very confident of winning,” said Steven M. Glazer, a senior adviser to Brown, the state treasurer.

Other Democratic political consultants and strategists described the Brown campaign in interviews with The Times in terms that ranged from “not working” to “an abomination.”

The corps of Brown campaign critics even have included Brown’s husband, television news consultant Van Gordon Sauter. And one Brown insider said Thursday that changes were being planned to present Brown in a more personal and aggressive fashion, putting her in closer contact with average voters.

With about five weeks to go before the Nov. 8 general election, Brown needs to score some sort of dramatic breakthrough--a “blockbuster,” as one insider put it--if she hopes to defeat Wilson, many Democratic political consultants and independent analysts said.

The views of the Democratic experts were not unanimously gloomy. Some argued that Brown could turn her campaign around, noting that a month can be a lifetime in California politics. “I think she can still win,” said political consultant Darry Sragow, who ran Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi’s unsuccessful primary campaign against Brown this year.

Another respected strategist said: “I don’t think she’s doing nearly as bad as the conventional wisdom says.”

But many of the experts interviewed by The Times cited the inexperience and proneness to error of a candidate and campaign team running at this level for the first time. By contrast, Wilson has a highly seasoned group that has been with him for years, winning two races for the U.S. Senate as well as the governorship. His campaign not only guards itself zealously against miscues, but is quick to pounce on opposition errors.

Wilson on Friday completed an effective September “Rose Garden” strategy, using his incumbency to promote some of his key issues--particularly crime--and he will be on the road almost constantly the rest of the campaign.

“Pete Wilson will be all over the place,” said Wilson spokesman Dan Schnur. “She’s been spoiling for Pete Wilson to come out and campaign. She’s about to find out: It’s not going to be a particularly pleasant experience for her.”

Republican strategists are so confident that Wilson will win that they believe he can afford to spend some time and resources on behalf of down-ticket Republicans.

Brown’s core problem--according to political experts--is that she still has failed to define herself and her goals clearly or forcefully enough to move voters to her column. The major public opinion polls indicate that Wilson, even though he is not a popular governor, maintains greater credibility on the issues of most concern to the people this fall--violent crime, illegal immigration and the economy.

Ironically, the criticism of the Brown campaign has gathered intensity just as the candidate finally has polished her campaign speeches, in both content and delivery, and has seemed far more at ease on the stump than she was last spring. So far, however, this image of Brown has not been transmitted to the Californians who will vote based on television news coverage and campaign commercials--that is, most voters.

Often the first critical sign of a faltering campaign is lack of funds. One observer said this past week that the campaign was beginning to “hit the wall” on contributions. But Glazer insisted that the campaign had enough money to carry it to Election Day.

One Democrat, who is associated with another statewide race and who has watched the Brown campaign closely from the beginning, said it is “reaching the phase where panic sets in.”

“There is this frantic searching around for things to do,” he said.

Brown’s husband, Sauter, has been reported to be unhappy about the way Brown was being portrayed in the campaign run by consultant Clint Reilly, commenting in Ontario last month: “It’s been very difficult for me to recognize my wife in this campaign.” He said the image presented to voters was not the Kathleen Brown he knows as “an intelligent, articulate, well-rounded individual who wants to restore confidence in government.”

Brown’s recent campaign stumbling has capped a year in which she has been repeatedly criticized on the issues of campaign strategy and effectiveness and has rarely exuded an aura of confidence or consistency.

She continues to be haunted by the death penalty issue after months of seeking to assure voters that she would be tough in enforcing the state’s capital punishment law even though she personally opposes the death sentence.

The most painful recent wound, at least to insiders, was self-inflicted. Brown was quoted in the Sept. 10 issue of the National Journal as saying she had maintained her personal principles by--unlike a number of other leading Democrats--not changing her mind on the death penalty when she ran for statewide office. She then named, among others, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who is engaged in a bitter contest against Republican Rep. Mike Huffington. Feinstein and other Democrats were outraged, and Brown had to correct herself because Feinstein, in fact, had changed her views long before running for statewide office.

Earlier, Brown appeared to be whining when she complained to a Sacramento Bee reporter that she was let down by supporters who went to Washington to work in the Clinton Administration rather than in her campaign.

“There were people who said yes to me and then they went away. . . . I had been seduced and abandoned,” Brown was quoted as saying.

In themselves, these are relatively minor events, but for Democratic experts they provided accumulating evidence of a troubled campaign.

Still, the critical portion of the election campaign remains ahead. It is the period in which the media--particularly television news--will focus more intently on differences between the candidates.

“It’s still six weeks,” said Mark DiCamillo of the Field Poll. “We’re not looking at huge margins in the polls. Wilson is still negatively perceived.”

Speaking on the record, consultant Sragow--who is not involved in the gubernatorial campaign--was more charitable about Brown’s chances than were others who follow the campaign closely.

Several work for other statewide Democratic candidates and would discuss the Brown campaign only if they were not quoted by name.

“The impression is that it’s sliding away from her,” said one Democratic insider not directly involved with the Democratic slate. “Some external event needs to occur to turn this thing around for them.”

One potential for changing the dynamics of the campaign is debates. But Wilson resisted Brown’s efforts to set up a series of debates and both campaigns declared Friday that there would be no gubernatorial debates.

In any case, Wilson, though not a gripping speaker, is not likely to make a major error in a debate. In 1990, Wilson went into his one debate far behind nominee Dianne Feinstein in the polls and emerged from it leading in the race.

One Democrat working in another statewide race offered this critique of the Brown campaign:

* Brown should never have stonewalled the press for months about reasons for her opposition to the death penalty. When she finally confronted the issue, the response came across as phony. People still do not understand her personal opposition to the death penalty.

* Brown allowed her opponents to define her to voters before she could do so--basically portraying her as an opponent of the death penalty and as the sister of former Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown.

* She missed a major opportunity to grab voters on primary election night with a pointed victory speech that told viewers who she was and why she wanted to be governor, and why Wilson should be replaced.

This Democratic tactician also was sharply critical of the shotgun fashion in which the campaign aired more than two dozen different television commercials, saying none of them aired long enough to make an impression.

“They’re not penetrating,” he said.

From the Wilson camp, spokesman Schnur said Brown made a major strategic error by trying to checkmate Wilson on the crime issue with television ads during the summer.

“That’s like Bill Clinton putting up a sign in the war room: ‘It’s Desert Storm, Stupid.’ ”

The point is that crime is Wilson’s issue no matter what Brown does, Schnur said, just as Clinton never could have defeated former President George Bush in 1992 by attacking him for the Persian Gulf War. Rather, the sign in the Clinton campaign “war room” read: “It’s the economy, stupid.”

Political Scorecard

37 days to go before Californians go to the polls.

THE GOVERNOR’S RACE

* What Happened Saturday: Neither Republican Gov. Pete Wilson nor Democratic nominee Kathleen Brown had any public events.

* What’s Ahead: Wilson was scheduled to appear at the reopening of St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica, which was damaged in the Jan. 17 Northridge earthquake. Brown planned to fly to Washington, D.C., for a two-day visit.

THE SENATE RACE

* What Happened Saturday: Both U.S. Senate candidates--Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Rep. Mike Huffington--were in Washington, where Congress is in session. There were no campaign events scheduled.

* What’s Ahead: Both candidates will remain in Washington today. There were no campaign events scheduled.

NOTABLE QUOTES

“A CEO who managed a business this way would be fired by its board of directors. As California’s top CEO, Pete Wilson deserves to have his contract terminated by the voters.”

--Steven M. Glazer, Brown’s senior adviser, in discussing new 30-second television ad that hits Wilson on the state’s fiscal problems.

“This scheme could cost taxpayers tens of millions of dollars every election cycle. At a time when government is compelled to cut essential services, it is indefensible to spend taxpayer money to finance political campaigns.”

--Gov. Pete Wilson, in vetoing a proposed election campaign finance measure passed by the Legislature.