Feinstein Mystery Theater Keeps Many on Edge of Seat

For the past year in California politics, the sun, the moon and the stars have all revolved around a single cosmic question: Will she or won’t she?

Fortunes have waxed and waned, seasons come and gone as Sen. Dianne Feinstein ponders whether to run for governor.

“Her dilemma is simple: She would like to be governor and she understands fully what a gubernatorial campaign entails,” said one political advisor, among those happy to keep the pot boiling as the Feb. 4 filing deadline nears.

This fixation on the career choices of one 64-year-old woman, while not necessarily shared by the public at large, makes sense from a political standpoint. After all, opinion polls show that Feinstein would be the instant front-runner in the governor’s race, with all manner of implications for the state in 1998 and well beyond.

However, the obsession reflects things both bigger and smaller--human nature (everyone loves a mystery), the desperation of the state Democratic Party and the back-scratching relationship between political campaigns and the media that cover them.

Some have had enough. “What needs to take place is to settle down and let the process take its course,” said Art Torres, the chairman of the state Democratic Party. “It’s all a lot of insider spin.”

But for those who love the sensation of speculation, the giddy fun of gossip, these are high times indeed.

“Politics abhors a vacuum,” said Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a political scientist who ponders the latest scuttlebutt from her perch at the Claremont Graduate University.

This week, the conjecture reached new heights--or depths--with a mystery phone call to Feinstein from the White House, which created a speculative subgenre: What did the president say, and when did he say it?

The San Francisco Chronicle reported Monday that Clinton telephoned Feinstein last week to urge her entry into the race. Her press secretary, Susan Kennedy, confirmed the account--which officials back in Washington immediately contradicted.

“It was more casual: ‘Dianne, what are you going to do, this and that, yadda, yadda,’ ” said a political operative familiar with the White House end of the conversation.

“Right now, we’ve taken no position on the governor’s race out there,” he went on. “Did she receive assurances that if she gets in we’d endorse her? No, she did not receive those assurances. But in fairness, we might. The situation is so much in flux, we can’t make that decision.”

Kennedy stuck by her account of the conversation, however, and Feinstein further muddied matters Wednesday by telling reporters that she had not shared the details of the conversation with anyone. After a crime speech in Long Beach, the senator declined to say what Clinton told her, referring all questions to the White House.

Whatever was said, the Clinton conversation prompted a crescendo of favorable publicity that left image-makers awe-struck.

“The conductor of the L.A. Philharmonic couldn’t have done it half as well,” said Dan Schnur, a former press strategist for Gov. Pete Wilson and one of California’s most astute analysts of the matrix between media, message and manipulation.

“First, a group of Democratic members of Congress beg her to run. Then a group of Democratic legislators beg her to run. Then Clinton begs her to run. Reporters can only write so many ‘will-she-or-won’t-she’ pieces, but her people have done a terrific job of stoking the fires by finding new hooks on the waiting game.”

Those close to Feinstein--who resolutely declines to discuss the matter--insist that she is genuinely conflicted about whether to make her fourth run for statewide office in eight years. (Her staff, on the other hand, is itching to go).

In particular, people who have discussed the options with Feinstein say she dreads the prospects of facing another opponent with a bottomless wallet--potential primary opponent Al Checchi--after being brutalized in her 1994 Senate reelection race against Michael Huffington. The freshman congressman with a thin resume and skimpy public record spent nearly $30 million of his personal fortune to turn Feinstein from the state’s most popular politician into one of the least popular, polls showed--and he nearly beat her.

“She’s concerned that once you run through the primary process, even if you survive, you end up being battered and broke,” said one close advisor. “Then you have a virtually untouched Dan Lungren” --the attorney general and all-but-certain GOP nominee--”to face as a general election contender.”

But the countervailing argument is that Feinstein has always coveted the governor’s job, which she sought in 1990, and has more incentive than ever to leave the Senate, now that Democrats are in the minority for the foreseeable future and she has emerged as the undisputed queen of California politics.

“Democrats do not have a deep list of candidates who can run statewide,” said an aide to one Democratic House member, whose boss has hitched himself to the Feinstein bandwagon. “We don’t have many stars, and she is a genuinely verifiable star.”

The concern among Democrats is particularly acute given the elevated stakes in 1998. The next governor will preside over the state’s once-a-decade reapportionment, redrawing the political boundaries that will affect representation in Sacramento and Washington well into the next century.

“If you’re a Democrat and haven’t seen the inside of the governor’s office for 16 years, since Jerry Brown left, it’s worth putting up with all this from her,” said Schnur. “Desperation can make people very tolerant.”

A decision is expected soon. The question within the bigger question is this: When does anticipation stop building and expectation curdle into something more like irritation? Privately, some of Feinstein’s political advisors have suggested that the time is near, and her rivals are eager to exploit the appearance of dithering.

“If someone thinks it’s tough running for governor, try being governor,” sniped Dave Puglia, manager of the Lungren campaign. “If someone’s having that much trouble deciding whether to run, maybe they need to think long and hard about whether they can actually do the job.”

But if Feinstein chooses to run, most analysts agree that any signs of indecision will be soon forgotten. Most voters, they point out, haven’t paid nearly as much attention to her deliberations as the relatively small number of political insiders.

And if she chooses not to run, a whole other guessing game can start anew. Said political handicapper Allan Hoffenblum: “I think she sits around and waits for Al Gore to pick her to be vice president in 2000.”

Times political writer Cathleen Decker contributed to this report.