The Sagging Bottom Line at Wilson Inc.

Political campaigns are a lot like publicly traded corporations. They depend on investor confidence. Stock players try to buy into winners and shun losers. And Gov. Pete Wilson’s stock has been in free-fall, his corporation in debt.

Like any sick company, Wilson’s is trying a shake-up before it considers pulling the plug. There will be “significant downsizing”--layoffs--says the PR office. The firm will live within its means and be more efficient; management will be tightened with more central control.

There will be a CEO firmly in charge: campaign chairman Craig Fuller, former chief of staff to then-Vice President George Bush. That was how it was supposed to be when Fuller got recruited in May. But wounded egos and office politics--stuff common to corporations everywhere--interfered. There was conflict and little cohesion.

So as of Wednesday, campaign manager George Gorton--Wilson’s longtime political director--is out. “Resigned.”

The candidate now hopes that potential contributors will take notice and invest in his presidential candidacy. If they don’t, he probably won’t last the year. “Their first calculation,” notes a Wilson strategist, “is can this guy win?”

Outside the Wilson boardroom, there’s little expectation that he can. Poll numbers--the key indicators--mostly have been in single digits beyond California: 4% in New Hampshire, 8% in New York, 3% in Florida, 5% in Michigan.

Investors see these figures, hear about staff spats and lose confidence. Wilson’s once-promising campaign, insiders say, is more than $1 million in debt. During August, it didn’t even raise enough money to pay for fund-raising costs.

Projected revenues are way off. Wilson expected to raise $10 million by the end of September but has taken in much less. That means a TV ad campaign sold to him by Gorton will be scratched. It also means that Ann LeGassick, his veteran campaign finance director, who is Gorton’s companion, likewise is out. “Resigned.”

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It’s a jungle, both politics and corporate America. And often a soap opera.

The sordid details of the Wilson soap are tangled. But this is a consensus summary:

It involves more than mere scapegoating, the finger-pointing that invariably occurs when things go bad. It involves bad blood as well. Gorton was personally hurt when Wilson named Fuller CEO without consulting him. After all, he had managed the governor’s four winning statewide races.

But Wilson wanted somebody in charge who was a good organizer, had national credentials and had run a presidential campaign, as Fuller had Bush’s in 1988. Gorton’s forte was TV ads with a focused message, a necessity in California, but less important in the early primary states.

To use his special talent, and also to assuage bruised feelings, Gorton was given free reign over development of message strategy and TV ads. But it bugged him being No. 2. And, insiders complained, he made decisions on his own and frequently acted out of control.

Gorton won a couple of victories over Fuller at a strategy session Sept. 7. Wilson agreed to wage a heavy TV “air war” this fall in New England; Fuller wanted to save money and focus on field organizing. It also was decided to immediately pull out of the Iowa caucuses; Fuller advocated withdrawing gradually with less attention.

Fuller said he would return to Washington, set up a campaign office and concentrate on fund raising and organizing; Gorton could run the day-to-day campaign in Sacramento. But Gorton’s mistake, according to insiders, was bragging he had won a power struggle and Fuller was out.

Wilson began having second thoughts. And at another strategy session last Friday in Los Angeles with his finance chairman and Irvine Co. CEO Donald Bren, gubernatorial chief of staff Bob White and Fuller--but this time not Gorton--Wilson gave complete control back to Fuller and asked him to “restructure” the campaign. The governor, sources say, was shocked at the red ink.

Fuller never gave Wilson an ultimatum: It’s Gorton or me . But the candidate concluded that on his own.

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“Fund-raisers have been telling us for several days, ‘Settle this one way or the other and we can raise you the money,’ ” says a Wilson adviser. “ ‘If the feuding goes on, you’re dead.’ ”

So investors will see a smoother, more efficient operation. They’ll also see a marketable product--the patented focused message. But what about the marketing? That depends on candidate performance. And this--after you examine all the spreadsheets--really is the campaign’s biggest problem.