CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS : Indians Give Large Sums to Democrats : Tribes seeking to expand their casino businesses support Brown and Umberg because they have found Republicans unreceptive to their interests.

After a midsummer meeting with Kathleen Brown to discuss gambling on Indian reservations, several California tribes proposed raising more than $1.5 million for the state Democratic Party to help Brown and other Democrats win statewide office.

Tribal leaders say they have turned to the Democrats out of frustration with Republican Gov. Pete Wilson, who has refused to negotiate an agreement that would allow tribal casinos to offer slot machine-like electronic games and certain Las Vegas-style card games where the house acts as banker.

Thus far, Indian tribes have contributed $500,000 to the California Democratic Party, in some cases earmarking their contributions to aid Brown’s campaign to unseat Wilson.

They are also targeting funds for Assemblyman Tom Umberg (D-Garden Grove), who is trying to defeat Republican state Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren. Like Wilson, Lungren has been fighting expansion of Indian gambling in California, arguing that it will eventually lead to Las Vegas-style gambling throughout the state.

In entering the political arena for the first time in such a forceful way, the tribes say they are just doing what other special interests have long been doing in California--using their money to build support for politicians who are more to their liking.

Brown campaign spokesman Steven Glazer said that there was nothing unusual about large contributions to candidates from special interests. He noted several examples of Wilson taking substantial sums from groups interested in legislation that would require the governor’s signature. Among Wilson’s largest contributors are groups with an interest in gambling issues--including card rooms and Hollywood Park.

Glazer said Brown had never taken a specific position on the Indian proposal to expand gambling, which could be included in a formal compact negotiated between the tribes and the governor’s office. “She believes it should be a negotiated settlement under federal law,” he said.

Wilson campaign spokesman Dan Schnur acknowledged that the governor has accepted more than $150,000 from horse racing interests, but he said that horse racing is a “very strictly regulated industry that’s already in existence.”

He said that Wilson does not accept contributions from the Indian tribes.

“We don’t think it’s appropriate to take money from interests who are advocating such a wide-scale expansion of gambling,” Schnur said.

Both Wilson and Brown are raising huge sums of money to run for governor--$41 million between them through the end of September. The amounts contributed by the Indian tribes place them in an elite group of big-money givers. In 1990, the state prison guards’ union--the California Correctional Peace Officers Assn.--became a force to be reckoned with in statewide politics by spending almost $1 million to help elect Wilson. Altogether, organized labor has contributed about $2.5 million to Brown over the last two years.

After representatives of several tribes met with Brown, Mark Nichols, chief executive officer of the Cabazon Band of Mission Indians, sent a letter to more than a dozen tribal leaders enthusiastically supporting Brown and enlisting support to raise $1.1 million for her and $550,000 for Umberg.

At the summer meeting, Brown “expressed her unqualified support of California tribal governments as sovereigns,” Nichols wrote.

In a phone interview Tuesday, Nichols reiterated that the tribes were angry with Wilson’s refusal to negotiate. He and other Indian leaders say that Wilson’s intransigence follows a series of court opinions that favored the tribes and opened the way for adding new games that would give tribal casinos an atmosphere more like casinos in Nevada.

Unlike Wilson, Brown was “absolutely receptive,” Nichols said. “I’ve heard her on many occasions say that what the governor is doing is not productive for the state, that tribes have these rights and the governor should get about the business of obeying federal law.”

But Nichols noted that Brown stopped short of committing herself to a specific negotiating position. He said, “I want to be very clear in the context of any discussion, she always shied away from any kind of negotiation on any particular point.”

Nichols said that the tribes have discussed the possibility of sharing their gambling profits with state government as part of reaching a settlement on expanded Indian gaming. And that could mean added state revenue of $500 million a year or more. “This has got to be a win-win situation for the citizens of California and for California Indian tribes.”

He estimated that the Cabazon group has contributed $300,000 to various state and federal candidates this year, including more than $100,000 to the Democratic Party on behalf of Kathleen Brown.

Indian leaders say that gambling has given tribes a new economic independence, freeing many from federal support for the first time in more than a century.