Brown Calls for Ban on Ads That Attack; Response Is Critical : Politics: She asks opponents to sign pledge. Wilson’s camp calls her a headline-hungry hypocrite. ‘Desperate gimmick,’ says Garamendi.

Calling for elected leaders to “change the way they do business,” state Treasurer Kathleen Brown on Monday challenged Gov. Pete Wilson and Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi to promise--in writing--to conduct “positive” gubernatorial campaigns and refrain from initiating so-called attack advertising.

The call for clean campaigning triggered a round of barbed critiques and backhanded counterproposals that did not bode well for the idea.

Brown asked Wilson and Garamendi to join her in signing the one-page treaty, titled the “honest and clean campaign pledge,” that she said would assure California voters that “all the candidates for governor are telling the truth.” She also called for the creation of a special commission to enforce the pledge, which Brown will promote in a 30-second television ad beginning today.

“I agree to run a different kind of campaign,” Brown says in her ad. “No negative ads bashing your opponent, but instead an election about the issues. So John, Pete--let’s all sign on.”

In response, Wilson’s campaign painted Brown as a headline-hungry hypocrite. “She’s been trashing the living daylights out of us for six months and now she wants a positive campaign?” asked spokesman Dan Schnur, who swiftly issued a compendium of barbs that Brown has flung at the Republican incumbent in recent months.

Garamendi, meanwhile, labeled Brown’s proposal a “desperate gimmick” intended to try to limit the scope of debate.

“It is a fact that you say you oppose the death penalty, say you will enforce the death penalty, but refuse to say whether you would sign legislation expanding the death penalty,” Garamendi wrote in a letter faxed Monday to Brown. “It is a fact that you have taken over $1 million in contributions from the investment banking industry that receives huge contracts from the treasurer’s office. . . . I trust the voters of this state to make up their own minds.”

Conspicuously missing from both Brown’s ad and her pledge was any mention of state Sen. Tom Hayden, who last week entered the June 7 Democratic primary race. Brown’s campaign explained that the ad was produced before Hayden’s announcement. In a letter delivered Monday to Hayden, Brown said she would ask him to sign the pledge as well.

Hayden, who said he would not “speak ill of my opponents,” late Monday chastised Brown for making a 30-second ad whose 81-word message was in a format that Hayden said failed to “transmit any meaningful information.” Hayden issued his own “honest and clean campaign pledge addendum” calling upon candidates not to air 30-second ads.

The call for clean campaigning has become a staple of modern political races, but the high ideals often seem to falter in the heat of campaigning, when one candidate’s aboveboard salvo becomes another’s scurrilous attack. “The question,” said pollster Mervin Field, “is just how do you define negative?”

There was immediate confusion Monday about how, exactly, Brown was defining it. Bill Press, chairman of the state Democratic party, said he interpreted “no-negative” to mean a ban on personal attacks--a proposal he heartily endorsed. Ads that pick apart a candidate’s public record, however, should still be fair game, Press said.

“Speaking for the party, I think it’s very fair and important and honest to contrast Pete Wilson’s rhetoric with Pete Wilson’s record, as we have done and will continue to do,” he said.

But Michael Reese, spokesman for Brown’s campaign, indicated that Brown intended her proposals to have a much broader sweep.

“A negative ad would be defined as any ad that criticizes explicitly or implicitly another candidate, named or unnamed,” Reese said. “Attacking Pete Wilson for doing fund raising with the heads of regulatory agencies in his Administration, unfortunately for us, is a negative ad. Saying the economy is in trouble would not be.”

Recent polls have shown the 48-year-old Brown to be the front-runner by a narrow margin, and to some observers Monday’s stay-positive proposal seemed designed to shield her from attacks that might nibble away at that lead. Field, a longtime analyst of California politics, predicted that Brown’s vow to stay on the political high road would please some voters.

“There is some benefit to being the first candidate to come out and say something like that,” Field said, although he added that “in this day and age, it’s almost impossible for campaigns not to get negative. . . . It’s almost like the Muslims and the Serbs having a truce. It just can’t be maintained.”

Some political analysts, however, said that the “no-negative” proposal could backfire for Brown, who is fending off criticism that her likable image could be a liability in an intense gubernatorial race.

“Democracy is all about thrust and parry, back and forth and controversy and attacks and counter attacks,” said Ken Khachigian, a Republican political consultant who dismissed Brown’s proposal as “semi-whiny.”

“This points up one of her weaknesses: Does she have the stature and the strength and the muscle and the conviction and the thick skin to be governor of the state of California?” he asked.

Darry Sragow, Garamendi’s campaign manager, hit on the same theme.

“This is typical of what we’ve come to expect from Kathleen,” he said. “She’s a very nice person who comes from a family that has included two governors. But she tends to think in very simplistic terms.”

Reese, Brown’s spokesman, rejected the suggestion that Brown was attempting to dodge criticism and said that her call for responsible conduct should be viewed as a daring move.

“It’s easier to sling mud,” he said. “The challenge here is to stay with the issues and be positive. That’s not ‘nice.’ . . . That’s meeting a demonstrated need. . . .”

Wilson campaign director George Gorton said the governor might be willing to negotiate a code of campaign conduct if Brown first responds to 10 detailed questions about state issues.

Gorton sent letters Monday to Brown, Garamendi and Hayden demanding answers to queries about education funding, cuts in health and welfare, taxes and other matters.

Gorton said he did not expect that Brown or the other candidates would answer the questions. Instead, he said, the Wilson campaign was trying to make a point: that the governor has been making difficult decisions for more than three years and his opponents should not be allowed to get away with talking in generalities.

“What we would like to do,” Gorton said, “is focus the campaign on the issues.”