CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS / GOVERNOR : Brown Ads Target Job Losses, Crime : Politics: Wilson camp counters by quoting Democrats who say state economy is on the mend. Treasurer also attacks governor’s parole policy, citing 1992 murders.

Democrat Kathleen Brown launched a summer campaign offensive against Republican Gov. Pete Wilson on Thursday, attacking him on two familiar fronts: crime and the California economy.

In a new 30-second television spot, the Democratic candidate for governor claims California is the only state in the West to lose jobs during the past four years. The commercial closes with an unflattering photo of Wilson and this line: “Now Pete Wilson wants to keep his job, but what has he done to protect yours?”

Wilson campaign aides responded by releasing a list of quotations from Brown’s fellow Democrats--including President Clinton--that tout the California economy as being on the road to recovery.

And on Thursday, state Treasurer Brown traveled to the scene of a 1992 double murder in Pasadena to again attack Wilson’s parole policy, which she alleged allows violators to remain on the streets “to rape and murder and kill innocent people.”

Wilson aides said the parolee charged with the Pasadena killings, Cedrick Singleton, had not been accused of any violent crime, either when originally sentenced to prison--for auto theft and drug sales--or when accused of violating the terms of his parole.

Dan Schnur, Wilson’s reelection campaign spokesman, said Singleton would have remained free even under Brown.

Brown campaign officials acknowledged Thursday that Wilson has edged ahead of Brown in their own opinion poll during a period in which she based her campaign almost exclusively on crime and the economy.

Soon, aides said, the state treasurer, who won the Democratic nomination for governor in the June 8 primary, will expand her attack to include the decline of education under Wilson and general allegations of fiscal mismanagement and government waste.

Many observers have considered education to be a major potential issue for Brown, a former Los Angeles Board of Education member, and have wondered why she has not used it more aggressively. The aide said the education issue will get special emphasis later in the summer, as schools prepare to open for the fall.

As for the parole question, Singleton, the figure in the case cited by Brown on Thursday, was arrested while on parole in 1992 for possession of an illegal knife and drug paraphernalia and for smoking marijuana. The parole officer’s recommendation that Singleton be jailed pending a parole revocation hearing was overruled, Brown said, and he was freed. Singleton now is awaiting trial in the murder of the two Pasadena residents two weeks later.

Brown claimed that the slayings were an outgrowth of a Wilson Administration policy crafted to “save dollars at the expense of human lives.” Specifically, she alleged that the Wilson Administration has set quotas for reducing the number of convicts returned to prison for parole violations in an effort to relieve prison overcrowding.

Administration officials denied that they have set such quotas, but have acknowledged that new parole procedures have resulted in fewer offenders being returned to prison for nonviolent and misdemeanor violations.

Anyone committing a violent crime while on parole is returned to prison, Schnur said. And any parolee originally convicted of a violent crime will be returned to prison regardless of the nature of his parole violation.

Brown did not give a direct answer Thursday when asked what her policy was on returning parolees to prison for use of drugs, but said the parole agent’s recommendation that Singleton remain in custody should have been followed.

Brown’s new television commercial is the second to air since the primary election. Both have dealt with unemployment, blaming Wilson for the loss of 550,000 jobs since 1991.

In trying to show that the economy is recovering, Wilson aides distributed recent quotes from several Democrats arguing that conditions are improving. One was a quotation from a magazine article on Clint Reilly, Brown’s campaign manager, that said: “Last year, voters were more interested in the economy than in crime. This year, with the economy picking up, voters’ primary concern is personal safety.”

That notion has been reflected by major statewide polls. But a Brown campaign aide said Thursday that in Brown’s own poll, 36% of the respondents said the economy, including the job situation, was the most important issue, followed by crime at 27% and education at 17%.

Times political writer Cathleen Decker contributed to this article.