Pete Wilson Is Awash in Praise at Opening of State GOP Convention : Politics: Two prominent Democrats join mostly partisan supporters to endorse his gubernatorial bid.

Surrounding himself with an “all-star team” of local supporters, gubernatorial candidate Pete Wilson opened the state Republican Party convention in San Diego Friday in an onrush of praise for his candidacy.

Wilson, who was San Diego mayor for 11 years and later a member of the California Assembly before he was elected a U.S. senator in 1982, relished the mostly partisan and predictable endorsements from a host of local officeholders and business leaders.

However, the list of supporters released by the Wilson campaign also included some well-known Democrats. Former Democratic state Sen. James Mills, chairman of the Metropolitan Transit Development Board, and Dist. Atty. Edwin Miller, also a Democrat, were listed as Wilson supporters.

Neither man attended the press conference, at which local supporters were introduced. Secretaries for both Mills and Miller said they were out of the office and unavailable for comment.

Mateo Camarillo, former executive director of the Chicano Federation, and a Democrat, also announced his endorsement of Wilson. Camarillo, president of the Barrio Enterprise Zone Inc., praised Wilson’s support for the city’s minority community while he was mayor.

“As a lifelong Democrat, I will (nevertheless) support the person,” said Camarillo.

A group of local supporters, called “San Diegans for Wilson,” was introduced by Dick Davis, former executive director of the San Diego Economic Development Corp. Davis said the group’s primary role will as a “truth squad” to publicize Wilson’s accomplishments as mayor and neutralize attacks by Democratic gubernatorial candidate Dianne Feinstein on Wilson’s mayoral record.

In a press conference after the endorsements, Wilson said he welcomed a comparison of his record as mayor with Feinstein’s record as mayor of San Francisco.

“The real story and honest facts will give me the undisputed advantage,” said Wilson.

San Diego County Supervisor Susan Golding touched on an issue that emerged this week in the governor’s race when she spoke about Wilson’s commitment to affirmative action. Golding praised Wilson for bringing “people into government who had never played a role before.”

The Wilson camp has attacked a promise by Feinstein to appoint women and minorities to state posts in proportion to their percentage in the state’s population. In a television commercial, Wilson attacked Feinstein’s plan as putting “quotas over qualifications.”

Feinstein’s campaign responded by circulating copies of an affirmative action plan used by San Diego when Wilson was mayor. The San Diego plan in use then strived to hire city employees “consistent with the minority composition of the city of San Diego” and is said by the Feinstein campaign officials to be almost identical to what she has proposed.

Don Wood, president of San Diego’s CIII environmental group, endorsed Wilson’s record on environmental issues and credited him with focusing on downtown growth while limiting urban sprawl.

But Sierra Club official Joan Jackson, in a separate interview, took issue with Wood and charged Wilson with “leaving a mess of the city’s sewer system.”

“He refused to do anything about upgrading the city’s sewer system and caused the city to lose money from the federal government to upgrade the system,” Jackson said.

Other San Diegans who were listed as supporters of Wilson’s candidacy included Sheriff John Duffy, former San Diego Police Chief Bill Kolender and Roger Revelle, director emeritus of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

The Republican convention will continue throughout the weekend at the Town & Country Hotel and will feature most Republican candidates running for statewide office.