Wilson Takes 1st Steps to Run for Presidency

Gov. Pete Wilson has taken his first concrete steps to run for President next year, opening a bank account and raising money for a possible White House campaign, sources close to the governor said Thursday.

Wilson officials cautioned that the steps do not mean that the governor has made a decision about whether he will enter the race. Instead, they said, the bank account was required to comply with federal election laws while Wilson evaluates his candidacy.

“The governor is definitely not decided,” said George Gorton, who managed Wilson’s 1994 reelection campaign. “We are talking to a lot of people.”

Wilson sources said the governor expects to announce his decision on the White House race about March 31.

In the last few weeks, Wilson has attended a series of meetings with some of the nation’s top Republican fund-raisers at which his possible presidential campaign was discussed. Sources said the governor also has talked with his advisers about the strategic game plan that he would use in a presidential campaign.

The governor’s supporters believe that he is inclined to run, but they said the remaining issues are deeply personal ones involving the hardships that a campaign would impose on his personal life and on his work in the state Capitol.

“I think he’s concentrating on how to carry out his agenda in California and the personal things involved,” Gorton said.

Wilson sources said the bank account was created in the last few days for “testing the waters.” The account was said to have hardly any money in it.

*

They said federal law does not require that the account be publicly reported unless the candidate decides to run or if the fund collects more than a few hundred thousand dollars, an unspecified amount when federal regulators would question whether the candidate was stockpiling money for a campaign. The account must abide by federal contribution laws limiting individual donations to $1,000.

If the Wilson effort becomes more serious, officials said, the account would be converted into a fund for an exploratory committee or a presidential campaign. At that point, records would have to be filed with the Federal Elections Commission to identify the governor’s contributors.

Wilson officials said the money was necessary to pay expenses such as telephone bills and travel costs related to the governor’s research.

“The governor some time ago asked several of his advisers to begin the process of collecting information so that when it came time for him to make a decision, he was in position to make an informed one,” a source said. “This is a mechanism to pay for that information gathering.”

The Wilson official said the information-gathering process involved the identification of potential campaign staff members, supporters and fund-raisers. The source said a number of people were asked, “If Pete Wilson were to run for President, would you be interested in helping?”

Wilson cannot use money from his election committee for the governor’s race because state and federal laws differ in how the money can be raised. Also, the governor still has a debt of more than $1.5 million remaining from his 1994 reelection campaign.

Wilson officials disclosed Thursday that the governor has scheduled three fund-raisers to be held this month in New York, Washington and Boston. He also has scheduled fund-raisers this month in Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco. Officials said the fund-raisers have been scheduled for several weeks, and the money collected will be limited to paying off the debt from the governor’s campaign.

The governor also has private meetings scheduled today and Saturday in Los Angeles and Orange County that will include campaign contributors, sources said.

The speculation about a Wilson presidential campaign has increased since late last year when the governor unexpectedly came from behind to win a landslide reelection over Democrat Kathleen Brown. The interest grew as several top Republican contenders announced that they would not enter the 1996 contest.

National political observers put Wilson in the top tier of possible candidates for the White House.

Many of the governor’s closest supporters say they believe that he is inclined to get into the race.

Already, he has resolved a number of crucial issues by concluding that he can raise the money necessary for a campaign and calculating that the race is winnable.

Wilson also has addressed concerns from Republican lawmakers in Sacramento by saying that if he were a presidential candidate he would still help them raise money for their own reelections.

Sources said he also has resolved to not abandon a race because of Republican complaints that his election to the White House would leave the governor’s office to Lt. Gov. Gray Davis, a Democrat.

Wilson officials have proposed a ballot measure to change the succession for the governor’s office if there is a vacancy. In any case, supporters have argued, Davis could be checked by a Republican Legislature.