CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS: GOVERNOR : Wilson Expands Reasons to Support Term Limits

SACRAMENTO —  U.S. Sen. Pete Wilson on Thursday portrayed the state Legislature as the chief roadblock to fighting crime, improving schools and reforming auto insurance and declared that the “one sure way” to end its “arrogance” is to limit legislators’ terms.

“It is sad that to change the laws we must change the lawmakers,” he said, “but if that’s what’s required, so be it.”

The Republican gubernatorial candidate thus sought to broaden the debate over legislative term limits beyond abstract political science to the practical concerns of average voters who are worried about street crime, the quality of their children’s education and sky-high auto insurance premiums.

And, of course, his main target was not so much the Democratic-controlled Legislature but his Democratic opponent, former San Francisco mayor Dianne Feinstein. She won’t endorse term limits, Wilson asserted, because “she is beholden” to Assembly Speaker Willie L. Brown Jr. (D-San Francisco).

“The Democratic leadership is largely responsible for where she is today and she won’tchallenge their grip on power,” Wilson claimed in a prepared statement.

Feinstein has said she opposes term limits because they weaken a Legislature by destroying the opportunity to develop experienced leaders. “If people don’t like an incumbent, they should vote against that incumbent,” she has said.

Wilson, a career politician, had refrained for months from “running against Sacramento.” But he clearly has concluded that the state Capitol--with its legislative gridlock and corruption scandals--offers too tempting a target to ignore. One Wilson adviser, who asked not to be identified, said that term limits will be “one of (his) dominating themes” for the remainder of the race.

Wilson first signaled his change in strategy during last Sunday’s televised campaign debate by unexpectedly endorsing Proposition 140, a tough term limits initiative sponsored by Los Angeles County Supervisor Pete Schabarum.

On Thursday, Wilson elaborated at length for the first time on his reasons for endorsing Proposition 140. He chose as the location a meeting room across the streetfrom the state Capitol, where he once served as an assemblyman.

Referring indirectly to Feinstein and her “candidacy of change,” Wilson told about 300 members of the Sacramento Rotary Club that “the changes that must be made in our educational system, in our public safety, in fundamental restructuring of the (state) budget process, which is a disaster . . . can’t be made . . . by anyone who is beholden to the special interests that, in fact, are controlling too much of what goes on across the street.”

Wilson said stiffer penalties for violent criminals--such as paroled rapist Lawrence Singleton, who chopped off the forearms of his teen-age victim and left her for dead--have been blocked for years by the Assembly Public Safety Committee. He asserted that Brown has stacked that committee with “ACLU liberals” while “dispensing plums” to stay in power.

He also charged that Brown, because of his alliance with trial lawyers, has blocked legislation to provide affordable auto insurance. He cited a case last January when the Speaker twisted arms and changed votes to kill a compromise bill that would have provided low-cost insurance for the poor.

Wilson also said that Democratic legislative leaders have bowed to “the defiant egalitarianism of the teachers union” and blocked merit pay for the best teachers, thus perpetuating “mediocrity” in the classroom.

But the senator acknowledged, in effect, that one of the biggest factors in his decision to endorse term limits was simply political revenge. There were “two straws that really finally broke the camel’s back,” he said.

One straw was the “completely deceptive and dishonest campaign” of Democratic leaders to defeat two reapportionment “reform” initiatives on the June ballot, Wilson said. Gerrymandering of legislative districts has kept incumbents in office, he implied. And he noted that Democrats also beat back a GOP-sponsored legislative “reform” in 1984, after which Brown boastfully described his side’s advertising campaign as “a con job.”

The other straw was a federal judge’s recent ruling that threw out campaign contribution limits, a decision that has greatly helped Feinstein’s fund-raising ability. Wilson told reporters Thursday that he regards the judge’s ruling as “highly suspect,” coming five weeks before the election.