McCarthy and Wilson Make Grab for Late Press Coverage

With national attention focusing on how the presidential vote will go in California, both of the state’s U.S. Senate candidates are seeking to share in the media spotlight on last-minute presidential campaigning here.

It is the kind of media attention that neither Republican Sen. Pete Wilson nor his Democratic rival, Leo T. McCarthy, have been able to generate in what has until now been a campaign starved for coverage.

In a rare joint appearance, Wilson stood on the same California stage in Covina Sunday with Vice President George Bush and a gathering of other Republican politicians, confidently predicting that he will “smash the hell” out of the “jinx” that has limited previous occupants of his Senate seat to a single term.

The Covina event was a colorful multi-ethnic appeal, complete with Latin and Asian singers and dancers, designed to celebrate party unity two days before the election.

McCarthy’s hopes in the final days of campaigning are closely tied to the prospects of the Democratic presidential ticket. On Saturday, the lieutenant governor took the stage with Democratic vice presidential candidate Lloyd Bentsen in San Francisco. And today, he plans to join his party’s presidential nominee Michael S. Dukakis for rallies in San Francisco and Los Angeles.

“I am proud to be on the ticket with Michael Dukakis and Lloyd Bentsen, who are showing such courage and tenacity,” McCarthy told enthusiastic supporters at a rally in San Diego on Sunday.

Get-Out-the-Vote Drive

McCarthy has campaigned with Dukakis and Bentsen every time they have come into California since the Democratic convention, and the lieutenant governor is banking on sharing in the fruits of a $4.5-million California get-out-the-vote drive that Democrats are staging to promote both Dukakis and McCarthy.

McCarthy climbed on the Dukakis bandwagon last summer immediately after the Democratic National Convention in July. At the time, Dukakis’ campaign was soaring on the strength of a rousing convention speech. McCarthy, on the other hand, needed a jump start. He did not have nearly as much money as Wilson, and his own polls showed that, despite 20 years in public life in California, he was not well known by voters.

Like Dukakis during much of his campaign, McCarthy has not touted himself as a liberal. In an interview Sunday, he explained that he has not embraced the term because Republicans have successfully “redefined it as an ugly word.”

McCarthy’s longstanding eagerness to appear at the side of his party’s standard-bearer contrasts sharply with the independent course Wilson has steered in relation to Bush’s California campaign.

Wilson has taken pains to run on his own, carrying a message to voters that is aimed less at bashing liberalism than at appealing to a broad segment of California voters who may be conservative on one issue and moderate to liberal on another.

“All you had to do was look at the 1980 election to know that coattails don’t mean much to California voters,” said Otto Bos, Wilson’s campaign manager. “1980 was the year Reagan crushed Carter, so you would think the Republican Senate candidate might do well. Instead, Alan Cranston, the Democrat, clobbered Paul Gann.”

“Californians want someone who can stand on their own two feet, not someone running on an umbilical cord to the national ticket,” Bos said. “We think McCarthy made a strategic error by tying himself so closely to Dukakis.”

Wilson had another reason to separate himself from Bush.

At an earlier point in the campaign, when Bush was not seen as a favorite, the McCarthy camp sought to portray Wilson and Bush as two peas in the same exclusive pod. McCarthy aides took to calling Wilson “Pete Bush.” It was all part of their effort to cast Wilson as a country club Republican who doesn’t have a feel for the struggles of ordinary people.

In making comparisons between Bush and Wilson, the McCarthy campaign had plenty of material to work with.

Wilson may lack Bush’s venerable New England lineage. But he, too, is the product of upper-middle-class privilege--private schools, including Yale, where Bush went. They even speak with a similar earnest, well-bred lilt. “Their voices sound like money,” said one Democratic consultant.

Yet Wilson has never been entirely comfortable with Bush. He worries that the vice president does not share his commitment to the Strategic Defense Initiative, the controversial anti-missile system. Wilson also battled the Reagan Administration over its desire to expand oil drilling off the California coast. Wilson found more to his liking in Republican Sen. Bob Dole’s campaign for the presidency. So, instead of picking up on Bush’s anti-liberal blitzkrieg, Wilson began describing himself as a “compassionate conservative,” the same label Dole used to describe himself during his successful campaign to win the Iowa caucuses.

By emphasizing that message in California, Wilson hoped to take the sting out of his opponent’s claim that he is a senator for the rich.

Since Labor Day, polls have shown Wilson leading McCarthy by a wider margin than Bush has held over Dukakis.

Wilson’s aides read the polls as evidence that their candidate has done a better job than Bush of locating the pulse of California voters. With bows to the right and the left, Wilson has made personal safety and national security his main priorities, but he has given almost equal time to talking about the environment, and to the care of children and old people.

“We need to understand that we are all an extended family, that there are obligations that one generation owes the preceding generation as simple compensation for what we have received,” Wilson told a group of senior citizens in Torrance over the weekend.

“If I am reelected, the first bill I introduce will be one on long-term health care,” he said.

Wilson himself says he has talked more about social issues than Bush has, and while he has not hesitated to deride his Democratic opponent, recently calling McCarthy “a bag man” for special interest--Wilson believes he has managed to keep the attacks from becoming a focal point of the campaign.

As a result, Wilson believes he has avoided making his opponent into the kind of underdog who evokes voters’ sympathy. Wilson believes that Dukakis’ recent resurgence in the polls is the result of a wave of sympathy aroused by Bush’s unrelenting attacks.

“People like to root for the underdog, and that, I think, is what is happening right now in the presidential race,” Wilson said.

But McCarthy, like Dukakis, likes to see the recent polls as evidence that the Democrats have survived the darkest days of Republican liberal bashing and are enjoying increasing support as their message sinks in with voters.

McCarthy even says he is “comfortable” with the label, explaining that he defines a liberal as someone who feels deeply about building a strong economy, creating more jobs, providing children with a good education, cleaning up the environment, fighting crime, protecting consumers and building a strong defense while working for arms control.

His beliefs on these issues, McCarthy said, are what separate him from his opponent. “These are not subtle differences,” he said.