Feinstein Joins Harman on Campaign Trail

Now, Rep. Jane Harman and U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein have one more thing in common: They have both been the primary targets of the two most expensive state political campaigns in U.S. history.

On Friday, the two Democrats joined forces on the campaign trail for the first time, as Harman tried to battle back in the governor’s race after being knocked out of first place by weeks of attack ads on television from rival Al Checchi.

Those ads remain the key turning point in the 1998 contest--sending Harman downward and allowing Lt. Gov. Gray Davis to take first place in the Democratic primary race.

Amid signs that his long-shot campaign was shifting its television advertising, an emotional Checchi wondered whether he should have done things differently--perhaps showing more ads with working people and not, he said scornfully, “all those glossy commercials.”

“I am the only one talking about the issues,” said Checchi, his eyes welling during the third day of his statewide tour on a rented yellow school bus. “The others are just moving up the ladder.”

Checchi has spent an estimated $35 million on the race.

Feinstein and Harman also said they hoped things would be different next time. They said candidates like Checchi and Michael Huffington, the Republican who spent about $30 million to nearly unseat Feinstein in 1994, are not healthy for the political system.

“We are creating a situation where only very wealthy candidates can run,” said Feinstein, who repeated her endorsement of Harman on a San Francisco radio talk show Friday morning. “I hope the signal [of this campaign] is that you cannot destroy another candidate in order to puff yourself up. Campaigns have nothing today that is beaming, that is uplifting. They are brutal.”

Like Feinstein, Harman also has a personal fortune that she has tapped to pay for her three congressional races and her current bid for governor. Still, she agreed with Feinstein’s diagnosis: “The system is broken.”

Harman went so far as to suggest that the U.S. Supreme Court rethink its 1st Amendment decision prohibiting limits on the use of personal wealth in campaigns. “I frankly think that not limiting money is a violation of the 1st Amendment because so many people without means cannot even play,” she said.

Harman faces long odds of upsetting Davis in the primary barely three days away. But she remains “optimistic” and determined because, she said, voters are unusually uncertain about their choices in this race.

San Francisco voters are the most volatile, her campaign aides said. So Friday, the city became the scene of a cross-town campaign shootout, with Harman and Feinstein appearing on one side of the city and Davis joining Willie Brown on the other.

Both candidates raised the issue of gun control, with Harman continuing to flog the issue in the campaign’s closing days.

Appearing with local police at a memorial for slain officers, Harman said she would require that all guns be registered and all owners be licensed. She called for an identification similar to a driver’s license that could be obtained only after a gun purchaser had demonstrated skills and undergone a background check.

Davis offered a semi-endorsement of Harman’s proposal. He said he supports mandatory gun registration in principle, but only for new gun buyers.

But Davis turned his focus Friday mostly to a new enemy: complacency.

Perched comfortably atop the opinion polls, he acknowledged that the Democratic primary fight is essentially his to lose. But he warned supporters in San Francisco to take nothing for granted.

A few hours later, Davis told a revved-up convention of letter carriers in Burlingame that he is particularly happy about his success “because I’ve had to listen to two months of every political pundit tell me I was dead meat, I was road kill, I was just massacred, goodbye, sorry Charlie, see you later.”

Even Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren, the lone big-name Republican in the contest, was already sizing up a general election contest against Davis on Friday.

“I think it could be the classic clash between the two different visions of California,” Lungren said. “I will happily stand with the Republican governors of the past 30 years if he’ll stand with the Democratic governors of the past 30 years.”

Lungren, in Los Angeles, highlighted his support Friday for a repeal of the state vehicle license fee by visiting the world’s largest Ford dealership.

Checchi was the only Democrat touring in Southern California on Friiday, where his unair-conditioned school bus tracked through the largely Republican areas of a sweltering inland desert.

Times staff writers Mark Z. Barabak, Cathleen Decker, Amy Pyle and Jodi Wilgoren contributed to this story.