NEWS ANALYSIS : Budget Issue Tests Wilson’s Dual Effort : The governor faces the dilemma of leaving California to campaign for the presidency while a spending plan for the new fiscal year remains unadopted.

Going into this Fourth of July weekend, Gov. Pete Wilson faced the first real dilemma of a high-risk, high-wire act: running the state of California and running for President at the same time.

Could Wilson risk leaving California just a few hours after the state entered a new fiscal year without adoption of a state budget? Would something embarrassing, or worse, happen when he was 2,500 miles away and a Democrat was in charge as acting governor?

After all, Wilson is trying to persuade Republicans that they should support him for the GOP presidential nomination in part because he says he is the best and most-experienced fiscal manager in the field.

On the other hand, precious weeks of campaign time have slipped away from the 61-year-old Republican governor while he has recuperated from throat surgery. Could Wilson afford to lose a long weekend to his GOP foes out there harvesting potential votes and, more importantly, critical campaign funds? Wilson was late to the presidential game to begin with and has a lot of catching-up to do.

By late Thursday, the decision was made. There was no crisis and nothing Wilson could do to break the budget deadlock over the weekend, the governor’s office declared.

So Wilson would hit the road. His schedule had him in New Hampshire and Massachusetts on Sunday and early today and in Iowa tonight and Tuesday.

“As it turned out, it really wasn’t a dilemma,” said Dan Schnur, Wilson’s campaign spokesman. “Had it appeared his presence [in Sacramento] was necessary, that would have been a dilemma.”

But Mervin Field, founder of the Field Poll and a veteran political analyst, said this weekend illustrates that Wilson faces “two sets of monumental problems.”

“I think this demonstrates . . . that he and his staff underestimated the magnitude of being governor and then going off and spending a third of the time this year already, running for President,” Field said.

“He’s got to divide the time, and he’s not going to do either one well,” Field added.

Wilson aides insist there is no such problem. If ever there is a conflict between being governor and running for the White House, state business will always come first, they said.

Indeed, there was no immediate sense of urgency in Sacramento over the budget. In recent years, California has stumbled into new fiscal years more often than not without a budget. There will be no tangible impact for two weeks or so, until the state begins missing part of its payroll.

But Wilson leaves behind a Sacramento that many experts fear is slipping into long-term meltdown. Liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans are deadlocked, and giving no quarter, on issues that would have seemed inconsequential in past years.

In the state Assembly, Republicans are fighting Republicans with equal vigor and bitterness as an outgrowth of Republican Doris Allen’s pact with former Speaker Willie Brown that made her Speaker of the lower house. Allen won the job with 40 votes, those of 39 Democrats and her own.

Wilson had remained aloof from the budget tangle until Thursday. Then, under prodding by Democrats, he convened a meeting of the legislative leadership to assess the situation and see if deals could be cut on some of the most contentious items.

In the end, the leaders agreed to meet again Wednesday after directing the Senate-Assembly budget conference committee to continue negotiations over the weekend.

“They punted,” said one Assembly insider familiar with the private budget meeting.

But the meeting did free Wilson to campaign in New England and the Midwest over the long weekend with reasonable expectations that there would be no big budget blowup that might tarnish his image as a disciplined fiscal manager.

During the coming week, Wilson said, the leaders would “continue our own deliberations until we have a budget. We will be here until we’ve got a budget.”

The governor’s statement was interpreted by some as meaning that he would not leave Sacramento to campaign until a budget is enacted into law. If so, it seemed to be an open invitation to be held hostage in Sacramento by a long budget struggle. No one is sure just how long the stalemate will last.

But aides said Wilson did not view his statement as a pledge not to leave Sacramento at all.

“The budget is his top priority,” said one official who asked not to be identified. “As long as he is needed in Sacramento, he will be here. But it doesn’t preclude him from going somewhere for a one-night fund-raiser or flying out briefly for a campaign event.”

Wilson has a heavy stake in the budget process because he has proposed a 15% tax cut to be implemented over the next three years. By winning the tax cut battle, experts have said, Wilson can help offset whatever negative image he may have--or his opponents try to paint--as a result of the $7-billion tax increase he approved in the midst of the 1991 budget crisis.

This is especially important in New Hampshire, site of the nation’s critical first primary, which has no sales or income tax. The first thing to greet a candidate when crossing the border into the Granite State is a demand to “take the pledge.” The pledge is an iron-bound promise not to propose or support any tax increase in any manner. Wilson has taken the pledge.

The Wilson campaign also is nagged by an increasingly militant tone from Democratic Lt. Gov. Gray Davis, who becomes acting governor with full executive powers whenever Wilson leaves California airspace.

Early this year, Wilson served notice that he was taking over the lieutenant governor’s offices across the hall from the governor’s suite in the east wing of the Capitol. Davis was reluctant but willing to accede, and find office space outside the Capitol. Now, he has changed his mind and is not budging.

Garry South, Davis’ chief aide, said everything changed when Wilson unexpectedly announced for the presidency and began traveling extensively outside California. Now, South said, it is entirely appropriate that Davis stay in the Capitol.

Davis also has been irked by the manner in which Wilson has soft-pedaled the lieutenant governor’s authority when Wilson is out of state.

An example was this exchange between Wilson and talk show host Larry King on the CNN television network recently:

King: You leave the state, the lieutenant governor will be governor.

Wilson: No.

King: If you win . . . he will be governor?

Wilson: Not for long.

Wilson was correct only to the extent that the lieutenant governor does not become “governor.” But he does become acting governor with all the governor’s powers. Wilson loses them when he leaves California.

If Wilson did win national office, Davis automatically would succeed to the governorship for the remainder of Wilson’s term, until January of 1999.

Wilson based his answer on the supposition that California voters next year will approve a ballot initiative, being proposed by his campaign supporters, abolishing the office of lieutenant governor. However, public opinion polls consistently have indicated that California voters favor retaining the lieutenant governor’s office.

The issue of the governor’s powers was settled by the state Supreme Court in 1979. When Democrat Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr. was governor and a presidential candidate, he sued Republican Lt. Gov. Mike Curb in an effort to stop him from taking executive actions while Brown was campaigning out of state.

The court, dominated by Brown’s own appointees, voted 7-0 to uphold the lieutenant governor’s powers.