Wilson Lacks Vision, Brown, Garamendi Say

The two Democratic contenders for Gov. Pete Wilson’s job in 1994 accused the Republican chief executive Wednesday of failing to provide California with the vision, leadership and broad scope of solutions needed to make the state safe and prosperous.

In delivering the official Democratic Party response to Wilson’s State of the State address, State Treasurer Kathleen Brown and Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi faulted Wilson more for what he failed to say than for the proposals he actually made.

For example, Garamendi said California can use the talent and expertise of its declining defense industry to develop a new multibillion-dollar transportation manufacturing program in the state, making trolleys, subway cars and the like.

“But it’s going to take a different kind of leader than we have today,” Garamendi said during a side-by-side television appearance with Brown, whom he will face in the June primary for the Democratic nomination for governor.

Brown faulted Wilson for neglecting to address education in his speech and urged Californians to make their own assessment of how the state is doing under Wilson, who is expected to have no major opposition in the GOP primary. She asked rhetorically:

“Do you feel safer than you did three years ago? Are your children’s schools better? Do you feel more secure about your families’ economic futures and are you getting more from your hard-earned tax dollar?”

Answering for herself, Brown said, “I think these last three years left too many people out of work, too many criminals out of jail and too many Californians out of hope.”

The real political battle of the next five months will be between Brown and Garamendi as they fight for the party’s selection as the candidate to challenge Wilson’s reelection to a second term. Brown and Garamendi already have sparred sharply over which one has the best ideas, the most experience and leadership qualities.

On Wednesday, however, they treated each other as friends and allies in the greater political fight facing Democrats in the summer and fall--unseating a governor whose popularity has plummeted as California’s problems mounted, yet is recognized as a veteran, tough political campaigner.

By packaging Brown and Garamendi for the response, the Democratic Party sought to frame the State of the State as a campaign event.

Wilson, in contrast, presented the speech as about the chores of government rather than the hostilities of electoral politics. He struck a tone of conciliation, reaching out to Democrats to work with him during the coming session.

At the same time, Wilson projected a political message to viewers around the state: That he’s been toiling hard on their behalf and should be entrusted with another four years in office.

A Wilson spokesman, Dan Schnur, said the State of the State address was not meant as a vehicle for laying out Wilson’s entire campaign more than a month before his official announcement, but that the twin themes of economy and crime will be heard frequently in the months ahead.

“The two issues that he talked about tonight, jobs and crime, are issues that are foremost in the minds of the voters and in all likelihood will be foremost in the campaign.”

Beyond that, however, the governor was attempting to persuade voters that California is on the way back from the depths of the recession that helped make Wilson the most unpopular governor in recent California history midway through his first term.

“The message is that we are making it through,” Schnur said. “We are headed in the right direction. There is a difficult road ahead, but we will make it through.”

Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco) said Democrats are in a strong position for an assault on Wilson’s governorship. He said Kathleen Brown sounds tougher than Wilson on the crime issue and that Garamendi has projected a more comprehensive, coherent view than Wilson of what California needs to build for the future.

For the statewide television audience, both Brown and Garamendi sought to project sober reflection to appear gubernatorial. But in interviews with reporters, both were more sharply critical of the governor.

“There were a lot of very old, tired cliches” in Wilson’s speech, Garamendi said.

“One of the two of us is going to be the Democratic candidate and I think, in all honesty, one of us is going to be the next governor. We’re going to challenge Pete Wilson.”

Brown said it was a major omission for the governor not to address the problems facing public education in California.

“The issues of crime and the economy are paramount. . . . But we will never deal with the crime situation and the economy unless we deal with education and how we will have the high-skilled jobs and how we will have the high-wage jobs to truly move us forward into the 21st Century.”

In speeches throughout Northern California this week, Garamendi also talked about how the issues of crime and the economy are interconnected with improving the education system, job training, restoring the state’s manufacturing base, and putting new emphasis on research and development.

Garamendi also said far more must be done to solve crime than just locking criminals away for longer periods of time in more new prisons.

Both he and Brown called for creation of “boot camps” to house first offenders, drug prevention and drug rehabilitation programs in an effort to break the cycle of crime. Job opportunities are critical to the process, they say.

Brown took a shot at Wilson’s proposed tax cut by saying that his speech consisted of “election year rhetoric from an election year governor who raised taxes more than any governor in the history of California.”