FOR PETE’S STATE : Wilson’s Race for the Presidency Might as Well Benefit the Voters Who Elected Him Governor

Pete Wilson, our governor, is stretching out his neck on the block of the presidential campaign.

In due course, the ax will fall, as surely as a New England maple leaf. Maybe with one stroke, after New Hampshire. Maybe after a few more chops, when Super Tuesday delivers the fatal blow.

Until then, in the wingtipped footsteps of Richard Nixon, Sam Yorty, Ronald Reagan and Jerry Brown, another Californian will drag himself through the wheat fields and mosquito bogs. It is Peter Barton Wilson’s turn to put in some slushtime on Elm Street in Manchester.

To those little states back there, all Californians must seem alike--someone in the O.J. trial or on “Baywatch.” Yet Wilson probably has a lower Q rating than Rosa Lopez. They might confuse him with Kato, who seems pretty confused himself. They might ask whether he knows Judge Ito. No, Wilson could say helpfully, but I succeeded the governor who appointed him.

Not good enough for celeb-spoiled New Hampshire voters. Presidents and senators hail them by their nicknames and pass them the ketchup at the diner.

And imagine the press: So, governor, is it true you’ve offered tax breaks to people who buy those beepers that signal when the surf’s up?

Agricultural policy question here, governor: What kind of sprouts do you favor on your salad--alfalfa or mung bean?” How very amusing.

The irony is that, by Time magazine hot-tub-in-every-yard standards, Wilson is not only not an echt Californian, he is hardly Californian at all. Britain’s King George V, dissed by H.G. Wells as “alien and uninspiring,” admitted: “I may be uninspiring, but I’ll be damned if I’m alien.”

In vain will you search Wilson rallies for the Beach Boys; Wilson’s favorite musical performers are probably the cast of “South Pacific.”

Excepting his Eddie Bauer disaster gear for fires, floods and quakes, Wilson’s wardrobe is more suited to the West Wing than the West Coast.

If Jerry was Gov. Moonbeam, dour Pete is no Gov. Sunbeam. Sometimes you think a smile would crack his face like a 6.8 on the Newport-Inglewood. In East L.A., he greeted a cute 7-year-old girl whose family had been touched by drive-by violence . . . by shaking her hand, thus missing the moment and the photo op. No wonder he placed third in local coverage that day, after Nelson Mandela and Janet Reno.

And the topper: He has to be the least tan Californian since Michael Jackson.

His only chance of living up to California expectations is on TV, when he shows up in top hat and bolo tie on a “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman” episode next month, playing a territorial governor from the days when almost everything was a hangin’ offense.

This, of course, is how Nixon “renewed” himself in 1968, demanding “Sock it to me” on “Laugh-In.” Clinton did it by playing the sax on “Arsenio.” Both candidates won, Arsenio bombed.

Do it differently, governor. Be big--because California is big. Re-mythologize the state, the California of fable, home of those pre-genetic engineering postcards of oranges as big as volleyballs and carrots the size of cruise missiles.

Every time a voter brings up Charles Manson, give him back Jeffrey Dahmer. He sneers about Tinseltown, tell him you’d rather be home to John Wayne than John Wayne Bobbitt.

Stand out in an Iowa cornfield, and stand tall for California: “You call this topsoil? We wouldn’t put this stuff in ashtrays. You ever been to Buttonwillow? Now brother, that’s farmland.”

At the foot of the White Mountains of New Hampshire, with a pitying little chuckle: “You call these mountains? Ever seen Mt. Whitney? Tallest in the Lower 48, 14,495 feet, and we’ve got a little old lady--true story--climbed it 24 times.”

And at Plymouth Rock, dashed by Atlantic spray: “You call this an ocean?”