Feinstein and Panetta Open to Possibilities

In her mind, Sen. Dianne Feinstein has the sketch of a campaign plan and she has an issue, education. She has the desire to be governor and the confidence she can “make a difference.” But she still does not have the commitment to run.

Nor does she have a deadline for deciding, even though in only two months, under California’s new campaign finance law, candidates can resume raising money for the 1998 race.

Waiting patiently for her decision is Leon Panetta, an eight-term Monterey congressman before he became President Clinton’s budget director and--until recently--chief of staff. There’s an unspoken understanding that he won’t run if Feinstein does. If she does not, he very well may.

One thing these two Democrats have in common is that they are California natives who grew up and were young adults during the gubernatorial regimes of Earl Warren and Pat Brown, two visionaries. Feinstein, 63, and Panetta, 58, were schooled politically on the activism of Warren and Brown and they’re still believers. Both believe great deeds are possible in Sacramento even today, a view not shared by all pols and pundits. Sure, the two say, times have changed--there’s less money, more people--but strong political leadership can get things done.

Politicians need to be “courageous enough and wise enough to unify behind common-sense goals,” Panetta says. “We’ve got to move beyond the narrow views of the left and the right and listen to both sides.” He talks about changing the financing of strapped local government, upgrading schools and modernizing transportation.

Basic stuff. No wedge issues.

Likewise Feinstein. “She wants to be Pat Brown,” opines a longtime associate. “She wants to leave a big mark by rebuilding the education system, something she can do better in Sacramento than in Washington.

“My view is she runs.”

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Most people around Feinstein think she’s leaning toward running. “She’s had a gleam in her eye in recent weeks,” says one insider. Bad memories of her three recent bruising campaigns--the first for governor, the others for Senate--”are starting to fade.”

But Feinstein said in an interview that she’s “not necessarily” leaning toward entering the race. “I am leaning toward trying to spearhead some major educational reform.” She and a small group of education experts have been drafting a proposal that would include a longer school year, class size limits and new state standards for students.

“If youngsters didn’t reach a certain level of achievement, they’d be held up a grade and given special help,” she said. “We can’t keep promoting kids when they’re failing.”

She might offer the reform package to Democratic legislative leaders, develop it into a ballot initiative or take it onto the gubernatorial campaign trail--or all three.

Indeed, Feinstein said, any campaign plan would involve a platform of “specific programs so when you win, people know what they’re voting for. If you run for governor based on slogans and explosive issues, you’re never going to get to the heart of good governance.”

She’d also like to “repair our deteriorating mental health system,” rebuild highways, make the air and water cleaner, retrofit more structures “to prepare us for the big earthquake. . . .”

“It’s time to rebuild this state,” Feinstein said. And she’s confident a governor can do it. “But the people have to want it to be done, they have to be willing.” And she’s not sure Californians are. That, she said, is what’s holding up her decision.

That “and whether I want to go through the campaign.”

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Feinstein and Panetta have another thing in common: They’re now being brushed with controversy over money. Feinstein, because her husband’s investment firm expanded its interests in China while she was promoting closer U.S. ties to China. Panetta, because he was White House chief of staff during Clinton’s questionable fund-raising.

Feinstein says she and her husband never talk business. Panetta says fund-raising wasn’t his bailiwick. But strategists for their potential rivals say Feinstein is hurt and Clinton kills Panetta.

“Husbands have become vehicles for some people to get at their opponents,” Feinstein says. “This is wrong. You don’t see it when the opponent is not a woman. It will happen more and more as women get into the [political] arena.”

Panetta says, “I have a lot of peace of mind on this issue. I was pretty straight and honest.”

He adds, “Ultimately, the public--God bless it--has very good judgment about these kinds of issues. They’re not what people really focus on. People care more about issues they live with on a day-to-day basis.”

Certainly that was proved by his former boss’ lopsided reelection.