COLUMN ONE : Burned by Scorched Earth Stand : Gov. Wilson faces a fight for his political life after two years of contradictory messages that have left him seeming indecisive and stubborn. He blames a ‘schizophrenic’ public and unresponsive Legislature.

SACRAMENTO — Running for governor in 1990, Pete Wilson pledged that there was one tax he would not raise and one social program he did not want to cut.

But in his first year in office, Wilson raised the tax--on personal incomes. In his second year, he cut the program--aid to the aged, blind and disabled.

The rest of the major plans Wilson laid for his Administration have gone about as well.

Buffeted by crises, hamstrung by a budget morass and at war with the Legislature, Wilson has yet to realize many of the ambitious goals he set for himself as chief executive of the nation’s largest state.

Halfway through Wilson’s four-year term, the state budget remains badly out of balance. California’s business climate, in Wilson’s view, is a mess. The state-run system for compensating injured workers is broken. Wilson has cut welfare benefits but his effort to restructure the program failed. And some of California’s ancient redwood forests still stand vulnerable to industry chain saws despite Wilson’s pledge to protect them.

These and other high-profile frustrations have masked an impressive list of Wilson’s successes on less prominent matters. From health care to civil rights to the environment, Wilson has begun to make his mark on the state by brokering or blessing compromises to resolve longstanding controversies. In a few cases, the Republican chief executive has quietly reached out to Democratic lawmakers to forge agreement on matters of common concern.

On the major issues of the day, however, Wilson’s record has been marked more by failure than achievement.

Now Wilson finds himself struggling for his political life. After beginning his tenure with a string of rave reviews in Sacramento and Washington, the governor has fallen flat with the critics who matter most--the voters. His job approval rating in the Field Poll has dropped steadily since his inauguration and now stands lower than that of any governor since the issue was first surveyed in 1961.

“Circumstances beyond his or anyone’s control have kept him from accomplishing a lot of what he set out to do,” conceded Dan Schnur, Wilson’s communications director.

To be sure, Wilson did not create California’s stubborn recession, which has cost the state 800,000 jobs so far and shows little sign of ending. And he cannot be blamed for the freeze, the drought, the fires, earthquakes and riots that have rocked the state and distracted his focus since his arrival in the Capitol.

Wilson attributes his troubles to an unresponsive Legislature and a “schizophrenic” public, which he said wants neither tax increases nor spending cuts but does not comprehend the scope of the state’s predicament.

“I have had to make a number of unpopular choices,” Wilson said in an interview last week. “It’s been something of a no-win situation. When you are compelled to make spending cuts that are unpleasant, that does not add to your popularity. We have had to do that . . . and also, frankly, I don’t think the public understands, even though they are aware of the hard economic times, I don’t think they understand why those choices were compelled.”

But some of Wilson’s wounds have been self-inflicted.

Although he says he was provoked, Wilson embroiled himself in a bitter personal struggle with Democratic Assembly Speaker Willie Brown of San Francisco that left neither politician with many policy achievements to claim for 1992. His attack on the Legislature’s powers through a ballot initiative repelled Democrats and Republicans alike. And after pledging to be a consensus-builder, Wilson, particularly in his second year, developed a “take it or leave it” approach to policy-making that left little room for compromise.

Wilson’s positions and his tactics have shifted so often and so strikingly that the prevailing impression is of a man who at times knows neither what he wants to do nor how he intends to accomplish it. In some instances, he has managed to appear indecisive and stubborn at the same time.

Many in Sacramento and around the state are wondering which Pete Wilson will show up to govern for the second half of his term.

Republican Sen. Frank Hill of Whittier, who broke with Wilson during last summer’s budget standoff, complained that the governor did not seem to be following any guiding philosophy or principles.

“If you don’t have that, you’re doing everything on a case-by-case basis,” Hill said. “The decisions don’t fit into any big, broad pattern. You don’t get a sense that there is a consistent direction.”

Indeed, in many respects Wilson’s first two years have been one long mixed message.

Wilson came into office vowing to build his Administration around the theme of “prevention” and called for greater spending on programs to help children be born healthy and stay healthy through their school years. But he sought to pay for these programs by slashing government aid on which poor children and their parents depend to buy food, shelter and clothing.

He described himself as a compassionate conservative and then suggested that welfare mothers could get by on less by giving up an extra six-pack of beer.

In his first year, Wilson vowed to “break arms” if necessary to win Republican votes for a record tax increase, saying that further cuts in spending would devastate essential services. A year later, he criticized Democrats as “tax and spend” liberals who lacked the guts to make the necessary spending reductions in programs for the poor.

Wilson spent the first 18 months of his Administration preaching the doctrine of “local control” and calling on the Legislature to free local governments to run their own affairs as they see fit. Then he proposed a constitutional amendment that would have tied the hands of county governments by requiring them to provide for public safety before spending a dime on anything else.

He pledged to be an “honest broker” among the environmental, agricultural and urban interests fighting over the state’s water supply. But when the chips were down on major federal legislation affecting the future of California’s water, he sided with the farmers against environmentalists, urban users and the business community.

“My mom taught me that actions speak louder than words,” said Jim Steyer, founder and president of Children Now, a nonprofit group that monitors the government’s performance on children’s issues. “There’s a dramatic difference between the rhetoric the governor has used and the reality of his actions,” said Steyer, whose impression of Wilson was echoed by activists on a wide range of issues.

Wilson’s political hopscotch has left him with a narrowing base of support. By moving back and forth across the ideological spectrum, he has managed to alienate most Democrats and a sizable portion of his own party--its most conservative members. A case in point was his 1991 veto of a gay rights bill he had hinted he would sign.

Gay and lesbian activists were outraged at the veto and some responded with violent protests around the state, accusing Wilson of going back on his word and caving in to religious conservatives who had vigorously opposed the bill. As if anticipating that reaction, Wilson penned a veto message that castigated the measure’s conservative opponents as a “tiny minority of mean-spirited, gay-bashing bigots.” As a result, both sides condemned him, and even those who had no stake in the issue thought less of the governor because of the way he had handled the issue, according to public opinion polls.

Wilson’s mixed message extended beyond his positions on policy to his relationship with legislators. He began his term by courting lawmakers, paying them personal visits, hosting them for dinner and throwing parties on their behalf. But midway through his first year he began offering his proposals with an implied threat of “pass this or else.”

“There are two Pete Wilsons,” said Democratic Assemblyman Phillip Isenberg of Sacramento, who admires the governor. “There is Pete Wilson the ex-mayor, the governor, the problem solver, the guy who understands and gets involved with and shapes government decisions.

“And then there’s Pete Wilson the Marine. He gets his back up. He gets angry. He gets locked into a position. He affixes his bayonet to his rifle and takes on all comers.”

In 1992, Wilson showed more combat than collaboration.

He vetoed a compromise plan to overhaul the state’s regulation of the timber industry, then negotiated his own deal and called on the Legislature to pass it without changing a comma. It was rejected.

After Wilson proposed a sweeping revision of the state’s biggest welfare program--Aid to Families With Dependent Children--his Health and Welfare secretary said the governor probably would veto welfare legislation if it contained only part of what he was requesting. The Legislature gave him little of what he asked for and, when Wilson took the measure to the state ballot, the voters turned him down as well.

The governor identified the state’s troubled workers’ compensation system as the most important issue to the business community, then, after vetoing the Democrats’ approach, he put a proposal before lawmakers in a special session and said he expected them to pass it in one day without change. They didn’t.

And, of course, there was the budget.

Forming an alliance with Republican lawmakers, Wilson for two months this year effectively blocked majority Democrats from obtaining the two-thirds margin needed to pass a spending plan. Although he made several minor concessions along the way, Wilson stood firm until Democrats in the Assembly finally accepted the centerpiece of his budget: a plan to deduct from future education spending $1 billion that the public schools received in 1991-92 in excess of the minimum they were guaranteed by the state Constitution.

Wilson’s no-compromise stand on these and other issues earned him new respect from some conservatives and representatives of the business community. But others question whether he can solve the state’s major problems if he is unable to compromise.

“There is a very, very hard side to Wilson,” said state Supt. of Public Instruction Bill Honig, who got along with Wilson in his first year but became a bitter foe in 1992. With Wilson, Honig said, “it’s my way or the highway.”

Wilson’s allies say that the governor’s abrupt change in tactics was born of necessity. He tried to work with the Democratic leaders in the Legislature but got nothing but grief for his efforts, his supporters said.

Senate Republican Leader Ken Maddy of Fresno said Wilson learned early that every time he made one concession, Democrats would demand two more.

In Wilson’s first year, facing a shortfall of $14.3 billion, he offered a budget that included a mixture of spending cuts and tax increases, hoping the Democrats would accept it as a legitimate compromise. Instead, the Democrats welcomed the taxes Wilson proposed and pushed for more.

“The Democrats were embracing it but they were also saying, ‘We’ve got him, now let’s kick his brains out,’ ” Maddy said. Even after the deal was done, Maddy noted, Democrats proceeded to criticize the same revenue increases they were so delighted to accept as “Wilson’s taxes.” Later, the governor contends, the Democrats reneged on parts of the budget deal that they had agreed to enact, adding to the deficit the following year.

“That first budget was the most striking of a series of revelations about how much the Capitol had changed since he had been here as a legislator,” said Schnur, Wilson’s top spokesman. “The governor was shocked to find out how partisan and how special-interest driven and how mean a place this had become.”

Wilson does not acknowledge the summer of 1991 as a turning point in his Administration, in part because he rejects the idea that he has changed at all. Nevertheless, from that point forward Wilson appeared to the public as a different sort of governor. His calls for consensus gave way to combat and confrontation. His boundless optimism yielded to a gloomy view of California and its future.

The governor took a hard line with the Democrats on redistricting, the intensely political, once-a-decade redrawing of political lines that can force individual lawmakers from office and change the balance of power in the Legislature.

In a Time magazine issue portraying California as a state in decline, Wilson described the state as a “welfare magnet” and complained about the cost of providing public services to the state’s poor immigrants and their offspring. “There is a limit to what we can absorb,” he said.

Wilson also began talking about something he called the “taxpayer squeeze”--his theory that the state was on the road to insolvency because the number of taxpayers was growing more slowly than the number of people relying on state programs.

These two themes--his war with the Legislature and his bleak view of the future--merged in Proposition 165, a ballot initiative that would have slashed welfare benefits and given the governor sweeping new powers over state spending.

Leading legislators who had tried to overlook Wilson’s decision to back term limits during his 1990 campaign saw his new ballot measure as an open declaration of war. Its unveiling set the tone for 1992, a year in which Wilson and Speaker Brown battled on issue after issue within the Capitol as their surrogates skirmished in elections around the state.

Wilson urged campaign contributors to shun the Democrats and called on voters to throw them out of office. Taking a more active role in legislative races than any recent governor, he recruited Republican candidates and created a united campaign committee to coordinate GOP fund raising and political strategy. He put a Republican political consultant on his public payroll as a deputy chief of staff.

Brown viewed all of this as a direct attack on his power. He vowed not only to rebuff Wilson but to “get even” by driving him from office in 1994.

The first clue of what was to come was the timber bill. With the future of 7.1 million acres of privately owned timberlands at stake, Wilson in 1991 rejected a compromise measure supported by environmentalists and some timber companies, then set out to draft his own bill.

The governor’s plan, which he dubbed the grand accord, drew support from many environmental groups and Democratic lawmakers, but the Sierra Club opposed it vigorously, contending that it contained loopholes favoring a major lumber company. Wilson refused to amend it, and with Brown leading the opposition in the Assembly, the bill failed.

Gerald H. Meral, a lobbyist for the Planning and Conservation League, said the bill, which he supported, would have passed easily if not for the bad blood between the Republican governor and the Democratic leader of the Assembly.

“The forestry package was waylaid in the Legislature because they were fighting with the governor over other issues,” Meral said. “The Legislature threw the spear but we (environmentalists) got the shaft.”

Many of Wilson’s other environmental priorities, which would have been expected to draw support from the Democrats who control the Legislature, also went down to defeat. Things got so bad, Meral said, that on one measure to overhaul the regulation of toxic products, the Wilson Administration kept its support for the bill almost a secret so as not to trigger opposition from Brown.

“Anything that had Wilson’s name on it was anathema,” Meral said. “You could see the antennae, especially among the Assembly Democrats. Something that was really Pete Wilson’s was not going to fly.”

There is other evidence to support Meral’s contention. Brown, for example, threatened to scuttle Wilson’s creation of the California Environmental Protection Agency. He blocked Wilson from making his secretary of child development and education an official state agency. Democrats, after initially embracing Wilson’s “prevention” agenda, in 1992 reduced funding for several Wilson programs intended to keep children healthier and help them do better in school.

“He (Brown) was bound and determined to prevent things happening if they were my initiatives or if I had some significant interest or stake in it,” Wilson said.

Brown could not be reached for comment. But others, including Senate Leader David A. Roberti (D-Van Nuys), who has enjoyed good relations with Wilson, said the governor provoked the hostilities by playing “the blame game” and accusing those who disagreed with him of corruption or cowardice.

Wilson often charges that the Democrats who block his programs do so not out of devotion to principle but in service to the special interests who donate to their political committees. But the governor is the state’s most prolific fund-raiser and has been known to shade his positions to favor his contributors.

“He’s a politician too,” Roberti said. “His supporters aren’t saints and ours sinners. Everybody’s a little bit of both.”

The antagonism reached a peak in late June when Wilson took to the airwaves to accuse Democrats of leading the state down a path to “disaster.” Negotiations on the budget broke down and did not resume for more than a month. Meanwhile, the state paid some of its bills with IOUs and withheld payment from many vendors who had supplied the government with goods and services.

But even as Wilson engaged in a war of words with legislative leaders on the budget and other high-profile issues, he was working with rank-and-file members to put together deals on a range of smaller matters.

Wilson, in evaluating his own performance, said he did fine as long as Democratic lawmakers were working as individuals and not voting as a bloc.

“We’ve been able to work with any number of Democrats,” he said. “The people who want to pass legislation and who work at it, who come down and work with our legislative staff and work with me, have gotten a number of bills signed, some pretty good ones.”

Many of the bills implementing Wilson’s prevention agenda were sponsored by Democratic lawmakers in the governor’s first year in office. With their cooperation, he created a program to provide health care for uninsured pregnant women and their infants, and he expanded treatment and rehabilitation for pregnant and parenting women who abuse drugs or alcohol.

In education, Wilson doubled the number of low-income children in preschool, created a program to integrate the provision of health and social services in the schools, and expanded school-based mental health counseling for students in kindergarten through third grade.

This year, Wilson signed a gay rights bill that was designed to meet the objections he listed when he vetoed a similar measure a year before. He also signed legislation to restore the Fair Employment and Housing Commission’s power to award punitive damages in discrimination cases, authority the courts had ruled that the commission did not possess.

After meeting with the Legislature’s Latino Caucus, Wilson agreed to a compromise that ended the state’s controversial plan to build a prison near downtown Los Angeles.

“His role was crucial,” said Assemblyman Richard Polanco (D-Los Angeles).

The governor also fashioned a coalition with Democrats to stave off conservative Republican attacks on the family planning program, which provides government subsidies for birth control.

“He’s stood by his attempt to add money, not to cut us back, when other people were getting cut and slashed,” said Norma Clevenger, executive director of the Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California.

One of the Administration’s most significant accomplishments, and one that has received little attention, was a deal intended to make it easier for small companies to buy and retain health insurance for their workers. The agreement came after months of quiet negotiations involving members of both parties and a host of special interest groups.

Kim Belshe, Wilson’s undersecretary for health and welfare and the lead Administration official on the issue, cited the health insurance deal as an example of Wilson working closely with the Legislature to address a major problem. Although lawmakers have been wrestling with the issue for years, Belshe said, it was not until Wilson joined the fray that a solution emerged.

“The governor,” Belshe said, “got on the playing field and said, ‘This is critical, these are the reforms we need to realize, and I’m committed to working with the Legislature to accomplish them.’ ”

Wilson’s critics say the governor ought to take a similar approach to all the major matters confronting California. It’s not enough, they say, to work around the edges, cutting deals to address minor issues while offering only take it or leave it positions on the major problems.

“What has angered the public and threatens the future of our state is the gridlock on the major issues,” Assemblyman Terry Friedman (D-Encino) said. “Historically, that’s how he will be judged and how all in office will be judged.”

But as Wilson approaches the second half of his term, he said he intends to chart the same course that got him where he is today, despite the voters’ rejection last month of his ballot initiative and his failure to win a Republican majority in the Assembly. He said he is willing to negotiate with the Democrats in the Legislature, but he remains as confident as ever that he knows what’s best for California.

“I am going to do what I’ve been doing in terms of operating in what I think to be the public interest,” he said. “I am going to do what I believe to be right and let the chips fall where they may.”

Pete Wilson’s Record

An issue - b y- issue look at Pete Wilson’s first two years as governor:

TAXES: Wilson in his first year supported and signed into law a record $7.5-billion tax increase that hiked levies on incomes, alcoholic beverages, motor vehicle registrations, and retail sales and expanded the sales tax to cover snack foods, newspapers, magazines, bottled water and ship fuel. In his second year, Wilson opposed new taxes but agreed to some higher user fees to support special programs such as day care regulation and the enforcement of pesticide use laws. He signed legislation repealing the sales tax on magazine subscriptions and ship fuel, and the tax on snacks and candy later was repealed by a ballot initiative.

SPENDING: Wilson’s first budget increased general fund spending from $40.3 billion to $43 billion, a boost of 6.7%. In his second full fiscal year, the budget calls for spending to drop back to $40.8 billion. That was the first reduction in general fund expenditures in 50 years. Wilson also has argued that the state should set spending priorities each year based on how much revenue is available, rather than assuming that every program that existed the year before should continue and grow to accommodate inflation and population.

GOVERNMENT WORKERS: Wilson implemented a government-wide hiring freeze and called for a 5% across-the-board pay cut for state workers. The pay cut was rebuffed by employee unions, the Legislature and the courts. Instead, Wilson settled for a deferral program in which workers will forfeit one day’s pay per month for 18 months and then get the money back in vacation time or cash. Wilson also pushed for reduced retirement benefits for new state workers, a move expected to produce substantial future savings.

WELFARE: A family of three on welfare now has about 15% less to spend than they would have had without changes made since Wilson took office. In 1991, Wilson sought to eliminate automatic cost-of-living increases for welfare grants and cut the stipends by 8.8%. The Legislature agreed to suspend the yearly increases and cut the grants 4.4%. In 1992, Wilson, in a ballot initiative and in the Legislature, proposed cutting grants 10% immediately and another 15% for families with an able-bodied adult still on welfare after six months. The Legislature adopted a 5.8% reduction, and the voters rejected Wilson’s initiative. A family of three on Aid to Families with Dependent Children now receives $624 a month. That figure would have been $732 monthly if the cost-of-living raises had been left in place and the grants had not been cut.

HEALTH CARE: Wilson has tried to cut spending on the Medi-Cal program for the poor while creating or expanding programs to prevent disease, particularly among young people. The Legislature rejected his efforts to eliminate dental care for poor adults and a range of other Medi-Cal services that the state provides but is not required by the federal government to do so. Wilson created the AIM program, to provide state-subsidized insurance for pregnant women and their infants. He also expanded mental health counseling for schoolchildren and drug treatment and rehabilitation for pregnant and parenting women and their children. The Legislature rejected Wilson’s proposed program to subsidize preventive care for low-income children who are uninsured but not poor enough to qualify for Medi-Cal.

K-14 EDUCATION: The state this year is spending less on public education than it was when Wilson took office, but the governor helped negotiate a plan to make up the difference by shifting more local property tax dollars to the schools. As a result, state and local revenues for education have climbed from $19.9 billion to $21.8 billion, and per-pupil spending has increased 2.2%, from $4,093 to $4,185, according to Administration figures. Part of that boost, which has not kept pace with inflation, is the result of a loan that the schools will have to repay by accepting less state aid in the future than is required by the Constitution. Community colleges have had their state funding substantially reduced but have stayed afloat through a similar loan and shift of property tax money. Wilson tried to raise student fees from $6 to $20 a unit but settled for an increase to $10 per unit.

HIGHER EDUCATION: Since Wilson took office, state support for higher education has dropped from $4 billion to $3.6 billion, a 10% reduction. At the same time, student fees have risen dramatically. Since 1990, fees charged University of California students have risen from $1,624 to $2,824 per year, and California State University student fees have gone from $780 to $1,308 annually. Wilson supported the fee increases. In 1992, Wilson advocated and signed into law a 24% reduction in the Cal Grant student aid program.

ENVIRONMENT: Wilson has created the California Environmental Protection Agency to consolidate environmental programs, boosted enforcement powers for the Coastal Commission, created two ocean sanctuaries, and restructured the state’s regulation of toxic wastes. He vetoed a compromise forest protection plan, then developed his own proposal, which the Legislature rejected. He signed legislation creating a regional government to oversee development on the islands that dot the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. He promised to propose a statewide growth management plan but did not deliver in his first two years.

WATER: Reacting to the drought, Wilson led a successful conservation effort and created a water “bank” to transfer water from parts of the state that had a surplus to communities that had a shortage. Wilson also proposed a comprehensive strategy for managing the state’s water supply. As part of that plan, he has appointed a task force to perform a long-term study of conditions in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta and pressured the state Water Resources Control Board to adopt new standards to protect the delta from environmental harm until a permanent plan is put into place. Wilson has sought to transfer from federal to state control the Central Valley Project, which supplies about 20% of California’s water. He tried but failed to block federal legislation that will shift water from farms to the environment and to urban districts.

SOCIAL ISSUES: Wilson in 1991 signed a Democrat-backed bill to require private companies to give employees leave without pay to care for adopted or newborn children and sick parents. He vetoed a bill to ban employment discrimination against homosexuals, then signed a similar measure the following year. Wilson vetoed an omnibus civil rights bill this year but signed a dozen narrower measures which, among other things, protected the rights of AIDS victims and restored powers to the Fair Employment and Housing Commission that had been voided by the courts. Wilson has been a champion of government-subsidized birth control and a strong supporter of abortion rights, at one point pledging to make up with state funds any money lost by family planning clinics that violated a federal ban on abortion counseling.

LOCAL GOVERNMENT: Wilson each year in office has presided over a major change in local government finance. His first year, Wilson advocated a one-half-cent sales tax increase and higher motor vehicle registration fees, both of which were transferred to county governments along with the responsibility to run $2.1 billion in mental health and public health programs. In his second year, Wilson and the Legislature transferred $1.3 billion in property tax revenue from local governments to the schools as a way to help balance the state budget. At the same time, he advocated and won passage of legislation to make it easier for counties to cut health and welfare services for the poor.

BUSINESS AND LABOR: Wilson appointed a Council on California Competitiveness, chaired by former Baseball Commissioner Peter Ueberroth. The council recommended new tax breaks, regulatory relief and an overhaul of the workers’ compensation system to improve the state’s business climate. To date, the report’s recommendations have been largely ignored by the Legislature. Wilson developed his own workers’ compensation plan similar to the council’s and presented it to the Legislature in a special session. It was rejected.