CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS / GOVERNOR : Van de Kamp Flails Away at Feinstein but She Hardly Mentions Him

Democratic gubernatorial candidate John K. Van de Kamp continued to aggressively denounce opponent Dianne Feinstein on Friday, but on the heels of a massive display of negative ads by the two candidates, Feinstein virtually ignored the attorney general.

Friday brought both campaigners to Southern California and traditional pre-election venues, but their tone could hardly have been more different.

Shaking hands at a retirement center in Reseda, Van de Kamp criticized both Feinstein’s support of a ballot proposition that could lead to pay raises for elected officials and her statements that she would consider cuts in the cost-of-living raises for the aged, blind and disabled.

“Some people seem to think there’s enough money in the budget to give big salary increases to politicians, but not to provide decent benefits to senior citizens,� Van de Kamp said.

“If I am governor of this state, we will never balance our budget--and we will never raise legislative pay--at the expense of the poor, the blind, the disabled or the elderly.�

The dispute centered on Prop. 112, which would enact ethics reform laws and would eliminate the current cap on elective salaries, giving a newly formed commission the power to set salaries. Van de Kamp is pushing a different ethics measure for the November ballot which would also put limits on the terms elected officials can serve.

Feinstein’s spokesman, Dee Dee Myers, said the former San Francisco mayor does support Prop. 112 because of its ethics reforms, which would prohibit honorariums and would limit gifts to elected officials.

During the first of two debates between the candidates, Feinstein said she would consider cuts in raises to the aged, blind and disabled. Afterward, however, she said she would seek to protect such benefits even though they would be part of the negotiating mix.

“He’s grasping for straws,� Myers said of Van de Kamp.

Van de Kamp has persisted in criticizing Feinstein recently; on Thursday, after refusing to discuss the matter for days, he took issue with her pledge to reserve half of the jobs in her administration for women and to appoint minorities in direct measure to their percentages in the state population.

Feinstein has said that the system would guarantee democratic representation for all people, particularly those who have been under-represented in the past. She has not specifically used the word quota, although her pledge has implied that terminology.

“You have goals for your administration to reflect California’s population,� Van de Kamp said, “But you don’t have quotas. Quotas imply limits.�

In contrast to Van de Kamp, Feinstein has spent recent days barely mentioning her opponent, making direct appeals for unity among Democratic voters. The in-person message thus stands in contrast to Feinstein’s current television campaign, which includes two commercials that heatedly denounce Van de Kamp’s handling of the Hillside Strangler murder case.

On Friday, Feinstein worked the crowd at the grand opening of a four-story parking garage at the Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center in South-Central Los Angeles. Hundreds--drawn by Feinstein and two local politicians popular in the black community, County Supervisor Kenneth Hahn and his son, City Atty. James K. Hahn--gathered on the garage’s first floor.

In her address there, Feinstein expressed concern about crowded conditions in public hospitals and the high drug rate afflicting newborns in many areas. She also vowed to sit doctors, insurance providers and patients down together to work out a solution to the spiraling cost of health care.

“Let’s march together and talk together to keep health, to keep life,� said Feinstein, who won enthusiastic applause.

Feinstein has kept to the same upbeat approach in recent days. On Thursday, she had breakfast with church leaders in Oakland, visited a day care center there, lunched with 400 women in San Francisco and then traveled to two housing projects to tout her plan to increase the amount of affordable housing for Californians.

Rarely did she mention Van de Kamp, even though that very day her campaign was launching the television ad.

“What I want very deeply and meaningfully to do is not drive wedges between people,� Feinstein told the ministers gathered in Oakland.

Feinstein reiterated Friday that she decided to run the Hillside Strangler ads because Van de Kamp had aired an ad featuring critical remarks about her by consumer advocate Ralph Nader.

“We said all along we wanted to end this campaign, conduct this campaign, on a high road,� she said. “You have to respond. I can’t be like a Dukakis with no response to charges that are made.�

The former mayor was referring to 1988 Democratic presidential nominee Michael S. Dukakis, who saw his once-promising lead over George Bush dissolve when Bush began running anti-Dukakis ads. Dukakis was criticized--by Democrats--for not responding to the Bush move.

A separate flutter of controversy was raised about the Hillside Strangler ad Friday when television station KNBC asked the Feinstein campaign to withdraw the ad because it uses several seconds of footage that KNBC said was copyrighted to the station. KNBC’s Bill Emerson, manager of broadcast standards, said the station has substituted another ad, which also mentions the murder case but does not use the footage.

Feinstein campaign director Bill Carrick denied KNBC’s assertion that the use of the tape was a copyright infringement. “This stuff is in the public domain,� he said.

Times staff writers Kenneth Reich and Gary Libman contributed to this article.