Candidates Seek Votes in O.C., Across the State

Campaigning the length of California, the four major candidates for U.S. Senate and governor readied their final pitches Sunday, the two Republicans appearing at an Orange County rally and all expressing a politician’s confidence in their chances for election 48 hours hence.

Gubernatorial candidates Kathleen Brown and Pete Wilson continued their angry back-and-forth about illegal immigration, Proposition 187 and crime, issues that have dominated their campaign in recent weeks.

While giving his standard endorsement of Proposition 187 before a rally of 500 to 750 people in Costa Mesa--amid chants from a small band of demonstrators nearby--Wilson made a special appeal to Orange County Republican loyalists.

He urged Orange County voters to deliver a wide enough ratio to offset Democratic strongholds in other parts of the state, recognizing that Republicans for statewide office need 2-to-1 vote ratios in the county to maximize their chances of victory.

“Work, my friends, work until the polls are closed to get every Orange County vote out,” Wilson implored in a rally that included Senate candidate Rep. Mike Huffington and other GOP candidates for statewide office. “The last time there was a statewide election for this office, I counted on Orange County.”

As he did at an earlier campaign stop in Monrovia, Wilson told GOP volunteers that they should not be swayed by his lead in the polls but should work hard until election day.

“Run up the score,” he told them.

Brown was upbeat during a day of campaign stops.

“I should be dead. I oppose the death penalty. I’m Jerry Brown’s sister. I am a woman. I’m running against an incumbent. I’m being outspent by 3 to 1, and I have (opposed) an initiative that was going to win by 66% of the vote up until two weeks ago and even now it’s on the edge,” Brown told reporters. “I should be dead. I don’t feel dead for some reason. I feel really great, so we’ll see.”

Senate candidates Dianne Feinstein, the incumbent Democrat, and Huffington kept a somewhat slower pace but the heat of their rhetoric was nonetheless intense. Feinstein reminded voters of her work on the federal crime bill and the ban on military assault rifles; Huffington spoke in favor of the initiative on the California ballot that would imprison for 25 years to life those who commit three felonies.

Huffington, in Monrovia, called Feinstein and U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer the “Thelma and Louise” of politics.

“And you remember what happened at the end of the movie,” he said, alluding to the characters’ demise off the end of a cliff. “We’re going to send Dianne Feinstein home in two days to the city by the bay.”

For her part, Feinstein was more confident than she has been in recent weeks and exhorted her followers to work hard through Election Day.

“If we let these races be bought, if we let these people who have huge amounts of money go on and run slanderous ads and you can’t do anything about it . . . the American political process will be rent asunder,” Feinstein said in Pasadena.

Brown, whose campaign aides said they were convinced that the treasurer is making up ground, campaigned vigorously, her speeches firm and feisty despite a weekend spent explaining her campaign’s financial troubles.

She made campaign stops in San Diego, Sacramento and in Los Angeles, where Brown spoke at a rally against Proposition 187, which would deny public education and non-emergency state services to illegal immigrants. She said the election presented a distinction between “politicians who use issues just to hold onto power and politicians who use power to address the issues of the day.”

Brown characterized Wilson as one who “would use our fears and our anger and our frustration just to hold onto power.”

“It has happened before,” she said to a standing ovation at the West Los Angeles United Methodist Church. “We must not let it happen again.”

Speaking to reporters later, Brown dismissed the open worries of many Democrats that her campaign’s decision to air virtually no television advertisements on the final weekend before the election would be harmful to her and other party candidates.

Brown aides said Saturday that they were unable to air ads this weekend because they had essentially run out of money last week. They still planned to run two anti-Wilson immigration ads beginning today.

Brown said she had decided instead to put her campaign money into a field operation that could persuade voters to turn out on Tuesday.

Asked if she felt that her staff had mismanaged the finances--as White House officials had grumbled Saturday during the President’s visit to California--she said, “I think you evaluate all of that afterward.”

But Brown defended her campaign against accusations that it had violated the first rule of financing--make sure there is money for the end of the campaign.

“It’s also been a rule of politics for the last decade and a half that you don’t put one dime into the field,” she said. “It’s a rule of politics that you spend it all on TV. I have not done that. I have been unconventional in a whole variety of ways in this campaign.”

Wilson spent the day with other GOP candidates at a series of events that exuded Americana, from the huge American flag and Marine Corps hymn that greeted him in Riverside to the Little Leaguers with caramel popcorn and hot dogs in Monrovia.

In Orange County, security was increased--a sign of the high emotions running through both sides of the Proposition 187 campaign.

As Wilson pleaded with voters to pass Proposition 187, the voices of protesters could be heard from outside the fence of the Orange County Fairgrounds where the rally was held. Almost three dozen people, waving the flags of the United States and Mexico, chanted: “Children yes, Wilson no.”

Accusing the federal government of not doing enough to help California with problems related to illegal immigration, Wilson told the cheering crowd: “We will take it into our own hands. We will fix it. We will vote yes on 187.”

State Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren, who shared the stage Sunday with Wilson, said after the Orange County rally that he had not yet decided how he would vote on Proposition 187, but that he would announce his position today, the day before the election.

In a brief news conference after the Orange County event, Wilson continued his criticism of Clinton, who campaigned in California this weekend.

“If he had done his job, there would have been no need for 187,” Wilson said. “I think, frankly, his performance in this state has been pathetic.”

At the Monrovia rally in favor of the “three strikes” proposition, Wilson exhorted voters to pass that measure and dismissed suggestions that it might lock up felons who are not truly dangerous.

“They are incurable, incorrigible repeat offenders,” Wilson said of the measure’s targets.

Feinstein spent the final Sunday of her campaign at a union hall in San Luis Obispo and before supporters in Pasadena, where she talked about the ban she authored on military assault rifles. She said illegal immigration and campaign finance reform would be her top priorities if she wins a full term in the Senate.

With an eye toward the $28 million of his own money that Huffington has already spent on his own behalf, Feinstein said her reforms would include meaningful spending limits.

As she has many times before, Feinstein used the Pasadena event to tout her bipartisan support and was joined by the city’s Republican vice mayor, Bill Paparian. He announced not only his support but Feinstein’s endorsement by the Armenian National Committee, a politically conservative group that is supporting Wilson and carries some sway with the state’s 500,000 Armenians.

Huffington, meanwhile, appeared at two events with Wilson and other GOP candidates. At one, the rally for the “three strikes” initiative, he brought up the recent deaths of two South Carolina boys, allegedly at the hands of their mother.

“I was disgusted,” he said. “I cried. I was racked with pain. Our society is too lenient. We have too many liberals saying it’s our fault, it’s society’s fault.

“No, it’s not. It’s the criminals’ fault. Let’s elect a senator to the United States Senate who is going to appoint the toughest judges available.”

This article was written by Decker in Los Angeles and reported by Times staff writers Martinez in Orange County, Greg Krikorian with Feinstein, Amy Wallace with Brown and Dan Weintraub with Wilson and Huffington. Also contributing was Times staff writer Dave Lesher.