A Tug of War to Wear the Mantle of ‘Candidate of Change’ : Wilson: Back from Washington, the senator hits the campaign trail with attacks on Feinstein. He promises to be an activist governor.

Pete Wilson returned to his campaign for governor Sunday with slashing attacks on his opponent Dianne Feinstein and appeals to Republicans and Democrats alike to choose him as the candidate who can change California.

The Republican senator arrived in San Diego from Washington at 10:45 a.m. Within the hour, he was emphasizing the line he will maintain as he and Feinstein surge toward Election Day: That he would be an activist governor, and as much of an outsider as a career politician can be.

In Burbank, at a mid-day press conference where two dozen Democrats and independents announced their endorsement of Wilson, the senator went back to the centrist appeals he used earlier in his campaign. He ticked off programs that he said indicated activism--prenatal care and mental health counseling in the schools.

“We are going to intervene to protect children,” he said, “and we are going to see to it that they have in California a climate that is second to none anywhere. That’s as important to Democrats as it is to Republicans.”

At rallies in the northern San Diego County town of San Marcos and in Elk Grove near Sacramento, Wilson pointed to his support of Proposition 140, an initiative that would limit terms for state lawmakers, as an indicator of his desire for change.

Wilson accused Feinstein of “flip-flopping” on the issue of term limits. She opposes two term-limit initiatives, Propositions 131 and 140. But Wilson’s staff passed out copies of a 1969 newspaper article in which Feinstein advocated limits, and Wilson said she should be held to the position.

He said that “moving out the old boys” would ensure more political access for women and minorities.

Wilson also said, for the first time, that he would support limits on the terms of members of Congress. But he refused to rule out a run for a third term in the Senate if he loses the election for governor.

“It doesn’t mean I will not run again for certain,” he said.

Both candidates have been trying on the mantle of “candidate of change,” as they put it, and Sunday each pulled and tugged to prevent the other from assuming it.

Throughout the day, Wilson vigorously tried to undercut Feinstein’s attempts to portray herself as an energetic new presence in California politics. He repeatedly used her longtime political association with Assembly Speaker Willie L. Brown Jr. (D-San Francisco) to demonstrate that she was “wedded to the status quo.”

Feinstein has adopted a more populist tone, contending that Republicans like Wilson are captives of a constituency of the rich. Democrats across the country have grasped at that theme with new vigor since Republicans in Congress fought their efforts to raise taxes on the rich.

Feinstein also has said that Wilson will follow in Gov. George Deukmejian’s footsteps and be a conservative, laissez-faire Republican.

As he has throughout the campaign, Wilson on Sunday was careful in what he said about Deukmejian. He said it was “time we turned California around”--an inherent criticism of Deukmejian’s eight years as governor. Later, however, he said the state was better off now than before Deukmejian’s tenure.

“There’s certainly no question (we’re) better in the sense there has been a change . . . in that first and basic requirement that we make California safe.”

As evidence of how he would like to separate himself from the current governor, Wilson openly bridled at Feinstein’s effort to connect him to Deukmejian. “Dianne should try to put forward her own ideas and not try to engage in what she thinks is guilt by association,” he said. “She’s running against me, or should be. As a matter of fact, she’s losing to me.”

But the senator defended his own repeated insinuations that Feinstein was merely a tool of Assembly Speaker Brown. “She is the one who has tied herself to Speaker Brown,” he said.

Wilson had left California for Washington on Oct. 15, under fire from Feinstein for missing Senate votes, and Sunday marked his first venture back before voters here.

He left Washington after casting a vote against the budget compromise arrived at by White House and congressional negotiators. The compromise passed the Congress, but Wilson called it “not a very palatable one.”

“There’s just too much taxation in it; there’s too little in the way of spending cuts,” he said. He specifically criticized the increase in the gasoline tax.

On his arrival in San Marcos, his first event of the day, Wilson was greeted by a crowd of fewer than 150 people--well below the 500 his campaign expected.

Despite that, the senator said he had a “good feeling” about the dynamics of the race. Recent polls show the candidates running neck-and-neck, with Wilson holding a slight edge.

After the San Marcos rally and the Burbank press conference, Wilson traveled to a larger rally in Elk Grove.

Trying to fend off any lethargy among his supporters, Wilson challenged Republicans to try to match the election record set in 1966, when a state Republican slate led by Ronald Reagan captured all of the constitutional offices.