Golden State Warriors

By Jordan Bonfante/Los Angeles

Why are women making such exceptional political headway in California? San Diego's liberal Republican Mayor, Susan Golding, once ventured a theory. Women, she said, more naturally represent that state's particular, two-beat public pulse: socially progressive and fiscally conservative. Or, up with choice and down with taxes. If Kathleen Brown is elected California's Governor next fall in the most important U.S. race of election year 1994, she will not only enshrine that ideological combination, she will also raise women's political power to historic heights.

Vaulting alongside Senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, she would complete a powerful triumvirate of Democratic women in the top elected offices of the biggest state. Democrats and the Clinton re-election machine would palpitate with excitement watching the threesome standing like Olympians on the medals platform. Brown believes Feinstein and Boxer already broke the gender barrier in 1992 the way Kennedy broke the Catholic one in 1960. "That said," she exults, "it's going to be a great day for women."

The question is, Can Kathleen Brown pull it off? Can she subdue not only her Democratic rivals but also incumbent Republican Governor Pete Wilson? By most appearances, she has everything going for her. She has the name. As the youngest daughter of Pat Brown, the revered 1960s Governor who turned 89 last month, and as the kid sister of Jerry Brown, the erratically innovative Governor from 1975 to 1982, Kathleen, 48, is heir to California's most prominent political dynasty. And she has the money, having assiduously raised funds at $25 kaffeeklatsches and $500-a-plate banquets for the past 18 months. In the most recent campaign disclosure, Brown reported nearly $4 million in reserve, in contrast to $58,000 for her Democratic adversary, insurance commissioner John Garamendi.

In a recent statewide poll, Brown won face-offs with both Garamendi, 42% to 25%, and Wilson, 51% to 39%. The state Democratic convention in Los Angeles last month declined to endorse a candidate this year, but her dominance at the event gave her a badly needed lift after a long season of unfocused strategy and outright foul-ups. Ushered before the placard-waving delegates swaying to rock music, Brown wore a suit of banker's blue with a string of Barbara Bush pearls as she uncorked a new campaign that pushed just two messages: a promise of 1 million new jobs and an excoriation of the sitting Governor's record. "You know who Pete Wilson is?" she asked mischievously. "He's George Bush. Without the charisma."

Yet Wilson, 60, whose long-shot challenger in the Republican primary is computer tycoon Ron Unz, 32, cannot be written off. The bland but scrappy Governor, who a year ago suffered a record-low 15% approval rating, has rebounded on the strength of swift action during the brush fires in October and November and the earthquake in January. Wilson's own explanation for his resurgence takes note of Brown's new tack. "People are paying attention to real issues. And those are the ones upon which I have been visible," he says, citing his efforts to create jobs and legislate longer prison sentences.

Brown, meanwhile, has ceded the initiative on two of the three main issues. On crime -- like all the candidates except radical Democrat Tom Hayden -- she duly supports tougher penalties and California's new, three-strikes-you're-out law, but her failure to justify or explain her personal aversion to the death penalty, which a majority of voters want, leaves her open to charges of being soft on law and order. On immigration, she adamantly opposes Wilson's proposals to deny the children of illegal immigrants their citizenship, schooling and even emergency health care, but may have gone too far in her own way by proposing that Army units be used in support of a U.S. border-patrol crackdown. Latino leaders quickly decried that proposal as a "militarization of the border." On the economy, though, her call for the million new jobs in the next four years has provided a clear-cut slogan that she can back up with her expertise gained in the past four years as the state's treasurer.

Brown's new campaign has been crafted by a freshly hired gun, Clint Reilly, the strategist who engineered the victory of Los Angeles Republican Mayor Richard Riordan. Reilly revamped Brown's organization and focused on targeting, among other groups, Republican women and blue-collar Reagan Democrats in recession-hit suburbs. He acknowledges that Brown, like Feinstein, is bound to face a prejudice among many male Democratic voters that "women aren't tough enough." He warns that countering Wilson's attacks effectively will require negative campaigning. Ironically, Brown proposed in February that the candidates all sign a joint "honest and clean campaign pledge." Luckily for her new strategy, neither Wilson nor Garamendi subscribed to it.