Presidential Questions Shadow Wilson : Politics: Governor makes speech in Van Nuys on his economic agenda, but the focus of the day is elsewhere.

Gov. Pete Wilson was talking about the need for tort reform in California on Friday, but the real story of the day was written all around him.

As the governor spoke about problems with wrongful termination lawsuits and product liability cases, reporters strained their eyes to read the words printed on baby bottles lining a shelf behind the podium. “Pete for Prez,” they said.

Another message was spelled out in the colorful squares of a nursery room carpet that Wilson was standing on. “Run Pete Run,” it said.

Wilson got a laugh when the encouragements were pointed out to him by a television reporter after he had given his brief speech to a group of professionals and employees at Munchkin Inc., a Van Nuys manufacturer of baby supplies. The governor said the messages were “unauthorized, but pleasing.”

Then he politely deflected a series of press questions about the 1996 presidential campaign: Would he be a candidate? When would he make up his mind? What was taking him so long?

As the governor saw Friday, until those questions are answered, little else matters.

These days are intoxicating and frustrating for Wilson.

He is basking in a national media spotlight that has portrayed him as one of the best-suited contenders to be President of the United States, a job he has long coveted. But his ability to perform his job as governor has also been severely stifled, at least temporarily.

Close Wilson associates say the governor is inclined to run, but he is in the final stages of making one of the biggest decisions of his long political career. On Friday, the governor said his announcement would come “fairly soon. Probably toward the end of the month.”

Between now and then, the governor will attend a series of six major fund-raisers--three in California and three in New York, Boston and Washington.

The fund-raisers are intended to help pay off about $1.5 million in debt outstanding from Wilson’s 1994 campaign for governor. Privately, Wilson officials said the governor has also sounded out some of the contributors about his prospects in the presidential race.

George Gorton, Wilson’s longtime political manager, has said the governor has not made his decision and that he is still evaluating the impact a presidential campaign would have on his personal life and on his job as governor.

Wilson declined to discuss his own thinking Friday. “No,” he said, smiling. “But I appreciate the interest.”

The governor did confirm that he has opened a bank account to collect money for a possible White House campaign. The account is intended to pay for the costs of “testing the waters,” such as phone bills and travel expenses.

The governor’s trip to Van Nuys on Friday was part of a series of speeches he has given in the last three weeks focusing on different parts of the ambitious economic agenda he proposed in his State of the State speech in January.

Under the theme of making the state more attractive for employers, Wilson has outlined a three-point package of reforms that include a 15% income tax cut, a reduction in costly government regulations and reform of the state’s legal system to prevent “lawsuit abuse.”

Wilson appeared Friday at the Van Nuys manufacturing company to underscore the costly impact of frivolous lawsuits. Officials from Munchkin complained that the threat of lawsuits has made their insurance premiums extremely expensive even though they have never been sued.

“The costs of lawsuit abuse are monumental,” Wilson said. “Those costs are not just absorbed. . . . You have heard this morning how that translates into an increased cost for a Toyota and an increased cost for a condominium. . . . It is an unfairly high cost that Californians are paying.”