CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS / GOVERNOR : Feinstein Says Wilson Demeans Her

Democratic candidate for governor Dianne Feinstein, contending that her opponent Pete Wilson has “gone out of his way to demean me,” defended her tenure as San Francisco’s mayor and suggested Monday that Wilson would add nothing more than “hot air” to the battle against crime.

Wilson, appearing by satellite for an Anaheim audience two hours before Feinstein spoke in Los Angeles, showed no inclination to ease his criticism. To several hundred members of the League of California Cities, he contended that Feinstein’s advocacy of state and regional solutions to problems would add to the mounting difficulties faced by cities.

Both Republican Wilson and Democrat Feinstein have reached back to their tenures as mayors of San Diego and San Francisco, respectively, to give voters reason to cast ballots for them. And each has found some ammunition to fire at the other.

Feinstein’s remarks, made at the Biltmore Hotel to 450 members of the local Town Hall, were intended to refute a Wilson campaign commercial that has been running for nearly two weeks. In it, he says Feinstein raised taxes in San Francisco and left behind a massive deficit.

Not so, she said. “Every one of my nine budgets was balanced. And my last budget, which closed out six months after I left office, did so with a $16.2-million surplus,” Feinstein said.

Moving aggressively on the matter of crime, Feinstein cited Federal Bureau of Investigation statistics that show that crime rose 25% during Wilson’s time as mayor of San Diego. It fell 27% in San Francisco during her two terms there--although she acknowledged that the crime rate was higher to begin with in San Francisco.

The issue was relevant, she said, because “we’ve already had eight years of a governor who thought he could fight crime with tough talk, and the result has been more serial murders, more drive-by shootings, more gangs, more automatic weapons. . . .”

“Dope pushers and gang members don’t listen to the hot air of politicians,” she said. “They listen to the sound of jail doors closing behind them.”

Feinstein supports Proposition 133, an initiative authored by her running mate, Lt. Gov. Leo T. McCarthy, which would raise the sales tax by a half-cent to earmark $7.5 billion over four years to fight drugs and crime. Wilson once said he might very well vote for the measure, but he has since come out against it.

“You can’t fight a war on drugs unless you’re willing to fund a war on drugs,” Feinstein said.

Feinstein indicated that she believes Wilson was knocking her record in order to boost himself.

“My opponent, Mr. Wilson, has gone out of his way to demean me, I think in order to puff himself up,” she said. Wilson had been scheduled to address the League of California Cities convention in person, but had to stay in Washington after negotiations to settle the long-delayed federal budget faltered over the weekend. Appearing over two projection screens in the darkened Anaheim Convention Center, he opened his remarks by making light of his location.

“You can’t fully appreciate just how much I wish I were with you, rather than here in exile,” he said.

In his address, Wilson tried to reinforce his characterization of Feinstein as a tool of Assembly Speaker Willie Brown of San Francisco. At one point, he referred to the duo as “Dianne who would be governor and Willie who would be regent.”

And Wilson, a 24-year veteran of public office, said he would protect cities from the “overreaching” of state and federal governments.

“We need to change the attitude that Sacramento knows best,” he said. “It will require a clear, a determined and an energetic leadership of an activist governor--and I’m going to be just that.”

Repeating his frequent pledge to reform the state’s budgeting process, Wilson said that he would veto any attempt by legislators to make demands on local officials unless the state provided the money.

The senator, in a gibe at Feinstein’s proposed growth-management program, said he would veto any effort to impose “a new and unneeded layer of regional government to second-guess the land-use decisions of local elected officials.”

But Wilson did call on the state to ensure that new developments do not unduly damage one city while benefiting another.

“Location of a new shopping center, or a new factory, or a new community college campus should not place all the revenue and benefit on one side of a political boundary,” he said, “and all the traffic congestion and housing and tax burden on the other side.”

Feinstein, in her remarks to the Town Hall group in Los Angeles, said her regionally based growth-management plan would “preserve the quality of life that makes us so proud to be Californians.”

Among other things, Feinstein has pledged to try to push new growth into less-populated areas of the state, to develop rail and transportation systems that can link distant areas and limit freeway congestion, and to integrate jobs and housing into the same areas to reduce commuting time.