Wilson Enlists Top Bush Strategist for ’96 Drive : Politics: Craig Fuller helped direct former President’s campaign in 1988. He joins a team made up of some of GOP’s most senior statesmen.

Gov. Pete Wilson put the finishing touch on the team he hopes will guide him into the White House next year, announcing Thursday that his campaign will be run by a former tobacco company executive who helped steer George Bush’s 1988 election.

Craig L. Fuller resigned his position Thursday as senior vice president of the Philip Morris Cos. in New York to join Wilson’s campaign at its Sacramento headquarters. Fuller, 44, will have overall responsibility for running the campaign, Wilson aides said.

As he attempts to transfer his campaign prowess to the national arena, Wilson has so far assembled a team of about 20 people assigned to fund raising, television advertising, press relations, issues research and strategy. The membership of Wilson’s team contains a mix of longtime aides with some who have not had longstanding Wilson ties. It also reflects the generational range of the Republican Party, including some of its most senior statesmen, such as Stuart K. Spencer and Ken Khachigian, both of whom have had leading roles in GOP politics for more than a generation, along with some of the party’s cutting-edge personalities.

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“They are all outstanding, very qualified, seasoned political professionals,” said Gary Koops, campaign spokesman for one of Wilson’s chief rivals, Texas Sen. Phil Gramm. “I’ve always believed they would put together a strong team.”

Even with the first voting in the presidential race nearly 10 months away, Wilson is getting a late start compared to his opponents--notably Gramm and Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole of Kansas. Wilson was reminded of that again Thursday when Dole disclosed that he has won the endorsement of a key Republican governor, Illinois’ Jim Edgar.

Wilson has hoped to appeal to fellow governors and piggyback on their support in states where he is not well-known. Edgar’s political profile resembles Wilson’s, and as a result he had been considered a prime target--one whose position as the popular governor of one of the nation’s largest states could have provided Wilson with a particularly helpful boost.

“We felt all along if Gov. Wilson was going to start getting traction, it would be with individuals like Gov. Edgar,” said Bill Lacy, Dole’s deputy campaign chairman.

Dole, who has already been endorsed by New York Gov. George Pataki, is also expected to win the backing of Connecticut Gov. John Rowland on Monday.

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Wilson spokesman Dan Schnur downplayed the announcements, saying that the nation’s anti-government mood is going to dilute the influence of political endorsements. But Wilson’s campaign has also boasted of the prominent supporters it has gained recently, notably Massachusetts Gov. William F. Weld and former Texas Gov. William Clements.

In Los Angeles, Weld told editors and reporters at The Times that he plans to raise $10 million for Wilson in the Northeast. Weld said Donald L. Bren, president of the Irvine Co. and another co-chair of the Wilson finance team, had a target of “roughly twice that” in the West. In addition to that $30-million goal, Wilson expects additional funds to be raised by Clements and others elsewhere in the country, Weld said.

One other governor who is being widely courted by presidential aspirants, New Jersey’s Christine Todd Whitman, met privately with Wilson on Thursday evening before the two appeared at a dinner in Century City hosted by the Richard Nixon Library and Birthplace.

Privately, Wilson aides acknowledge that their strategy has changed because the governor’s rivals have scooped up so many major backers. But they also describe a careful, methodical plan for gearing up their campaign that placed a high priority on getting the right team of senior strategists.

Fuller has never headed a national campaign himself, but as chief of staff in Bush’s vice presidential office, he was among the inner circle of the 1988 team along with the late Lee Atwater, image maker Roger Ailes and pollster Robert Teeter.

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As in many campaigns, Bush’s team suffered internal tension at times, and Fuller was reported to be the cautious alternative to Atwater’s bold style. A similar tension potentially could develop in Wilson’s campaign between Fuller and Wilson’s longtime strategist George Gorton, 47, who has managed three of Wilson’s four winning California elections--two for U.S. Senate and two for governor. But Gorton and Fuller have known each other most of their adult lives--a fact that could mitigate possible problems.

After the 1988 campaign, Fuller served as president of a public relations firm. At Philip Morris, which he joined in January, 1992, he served as senior vice president for corporate affairs.

Wilson’s team includes a number of longtime loyalists such as Gorton, who began his service with Wilson about 20 years ago. And it borrows heavily from three previous Republican Administrations, especially Bush’s.

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Stuart K. Spencer, who began his career with Gov. Earl Warren’s reelection in 1950 and was a chief architect of Ronald Reagan’s election, has agreed to modify his retirement in Palm Desert and advise Wilson’s campaign. And Khachigian, a former speech writer for Nixon, will join Wilson as a chief strategist.

Wilson’s team also includes a number of baby boomer-age consultants, such as Don Sipple, a television ad maker who worked on the governor’s reelection campaign last year and who was sought by the Dole campaign, and several up-and-coming faces from the Bush campaign, including pollster Fred Steeper and Margaret Alexander Parker, who served as national finance director for the 1992 Republican campaign.

Both will be teamed with Wilson veterans. Steeper will join Richard Dresner, who has conducted Wilson’s polls in previous campaigns. And Parker will join Anne LeGassick, Wilson’s chief fund-raiser last year.

Among the other Bush transfers are James Lake, a communications director who worked on two Reagan campaigns and then played a major role in Bush’s 1992 effort; Kathleen Shanahan, an aide in the Bush White House who recently served as Wilson’s deputy commerce secretary; James Ray, a Bush White House political director in 1989 and 1990; Joseph D. Rodota, a Reagan aide and national opposition researcher in the last three presidential races; Ken Reitz, a former vice chairman of the Republican National Committee, and Joe Shumate, a Northern California political consultant.

“I think one of the key things is that many of them have worked together in the past,” said GOP consultant Sal Russo. “This is a mix of all kinds of people. There’s Reagan’s people, there’s Bush’s people, there’s Midwesterners. And they’ll be able to run a very competent campaign, which no one should doubt when it comes to Pete Wilson.”

Times staff writers Ronald Brownstein in Washington and Bill Stall in Los Angeles contributed to this story.