NEWS ANALYSIS : Wilson, Brown Styles Belie Who’s Leading in the Polls : Politics: In last stages of the campaign, he seems a concerned challenger, she a freewheeling front-runner.

Kathleen Brown had just finished the latest broadside against her opponent for governor when the voice of a television reporter came wafting toward her.

“Governor Brown,” the reporter said, mistakenly substituting her name for Pete Wilson’s.

“Gov. Brown! Yes! Yes! Yes!” exulted the Democratic candidate, thrusting her arm dramatically skyward with each exclamation.

“I’ve been called a lot of things in this campaign,” Brown said, then indulged in a comedian’s pause. “And I like that one.”

In the last and longest stage of the campaign, where nerves are frayed to shreds, sleep usually comes only fleetingly and the pressure of always being on can seem unbearable, Kathleen Brown is loose.

Somewhere along the path to Election Day, she cast off the shroud of public caution that she has draped around herself most of her life. With less than three weeks to go before judgment, she is belting out her message with a verve unseen even a few months ago.

If polls are to be believed--and the consultants and managers on both sides do believe them--Republican Wilson is substantially ahead in his race for a second term. And the Democratic state treasurer, as the numbers have it, has watched a double-digit lead hurtle earthward, leaving her struggling for money and attention.

But never, if you saw Wilson and Brown out in public as their hard-fought campaign wrenches toward conclusion, would their actions betray the political realities. Wilson comes across not so much a confident front-runner as a concerned challenger. Brown comes across not so much a desperate challenger as a freewheeling front-runner.

Campaign style frequently, of course, bears little similarity to the outcome. This year, in this race, it may be less a reflection of their comparative standing than a window on their public personas. If Wilson is behaving as though he is taking nothing for granted, Brown is acting like she has nothing to lose.

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Out on the stump, the tradition of public handshaking and speechmaking seems almost quaint now, like fist-to-fist combat conducted under a sky filled with media smart bombs. It might look impressive but have little impact, so it is easy to dismiss.

But campaigning is an art form, and on this day Brown is an artist. In the computer-filled graphic design classrooms at Pasadena High School, she is gliding through with her entourage of four, all scattered by teen-agers who are looking at her curiously. What she seems to be, to them, is a hip mom, quietly supportive of a student whose computer literacy abandons him under pressure, able to converse brightly about the advantages of a software program whose headquarters she has previously toured.

“It’s scary, it’s so good,” says Brown, whose own computer guru comes in the form of her son Zeb, who is not much older than these students. She turns to one with a grin that seems suddenly wicked. “You can really do some things that could be dangerous.”

Hers is not a campaign that has seemed dangerous; for most of its tenure the Brown effort has labored under the perhaps unfair expectation that she was a gold-plated candidate capable of beating the stuffing out of a man who is perennially California’s most underrated pol. As the gap widened between that potential and reality, both the effort and Brown have seemed occasionally erratic.

And now, as with all campaigns behind in the final weeks, the rumors circle like buzzards. She’s broke. (Campaign aides say there is enough money to be competitive, if not enough to match Wilson.) The campaign is in disarray. (Campaign aides say events are being changed hurriedly sometimes, but only to take advantage of political developments).

Brown has been considered down for the count long enough that it comes as something of a surprise when she walks into a Pasadena classroom and delivers a punchy, crisp speech that matches assaults on Wilson with glimpses of her own vision of California.

There is nothing, though, that could prepare the gathered students for Brown’s sudden left turn from the subject of welfare reform to the topic of teen-age pregnancy. Specifically, Brown’s own. She asks how many of the 50 or so students have a friend who is a teen-age parent. Every one of them raises a hand, and Brown looks stricken.

“Let me tell you, I was almost a teen-age parent,” she says quietly. “I got married when I was 19 years old. I had my first child four days after my 20th birthday. I had every advantage to have in life. I had a great family, I was married, I had finished high school. I had a year and a half, two years of college under my belt.

“And my life changed. My life changed. And I think about teen-agers who don’t have those advantages. We have to help our kids understand that they have the power and the skills to change their lives. To take control of their lives.”

By the time she finishes, with a plea to the students for help, not a sound can be heard.

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If Brown is buoyant and verges on the effervescent in her public dealings, Wilson carries with him the almost visible weight of office. Wrinkles of worry crease his forehead. The relative conviviality that marked his 1990 campaign, when he was running as the “compassionate conservative,” has faded, replaced with a reserve.

But he is not too far out of the old focus, and that stability is the secret of Wilson’s success. His self-deprecating, wry humor is still present. He never gets too excited when things are going well, never too aggravated when they are going poorly. Always, he is the personification of the even keel.

This day, Wilson blends in perfectly with the blue-clad sea of business owners gathered in the warehouse of a Hollywood plant. He is distinguishable from those who have gathered in his support only by the gentlemen around him with conspicuous earpieces and wrist walkie-talkies.

It is the first of three back-to-back, business-oriented events, and Wilson is demonstrating why, even if the conversation seems acutely arcane to outsiders, he is the business owners’ candidate.

Stilted economic argot drips off his tongue. He boasts of reinstituting the “small business net operating loss carry-forward,” which is accounting talk for writing off losses in future years when a business is profitable. Better that, he says, than Brown’s tax moratorium plan that would take effect in early years when many businesses earn little taxable income.

He chides Brown for opposing the North American Free Trade Agreement and for endorsing health care plans that require employers to finance their workers’ insurance. And he saves most of his firepower not for the big issues of the campaign, like crime or immigration, but for precisely what many of the people here want to discuss: workers’ compensation.

“We had first to set right what was wrong,” he said. “. . . . It was a national disgrace. We were able to bring about reform.”

But there is little of the personal Wilson on display; indeed, apart from mentioning a grandfather who was a police officer shot dead before Wilson was born, or introducing his wife, Gayle, the governor rarely treads into personal territory. Where Brown innately prefers the emotional connection, Wilson treasures toughness.

Nonetheless, he tailored his campaign spiel ever so slightly in recent days, since their recent debate clash on crime. The treasurer essentially accused Wilson of having no clue as to what it was like to be a woman or a mother concerned about societal violence.

For years, Wilson’s campaign speeches have been laced with a lament about fear faced by women who have to walk across a darkened parking lot or wait alone at a bus bench. The new version appeared to be insurance that he could connect himself--as had Brown--to the electorate’s fear of crime. And it was telling, since for much of the campaign Brown has been the one tailoring her remarks to her opponent.

“It is wrong,” he said, “when a husband has to worry about his wife walking to her car at a day’s end or walking to a bus stop. . . . I see a California where we change that.”