By William Booth and Ben White
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, September 7, 1998; Page A11

In California, Republican gubernatorial nominee Dan Lungren began running new television ads in which he makes an issue of "character" and gets in a dig at the White House, and by extension, his Democratic opponent, Lt. Gov. Gray Davis.

The script for the 30-second spot has Lungren, the state attorney general, saying, "Compromise does not surpass principle with me, because if that occurs, you're nothing but a hollow figure. You can't tell people to do one thing while you do another. From the White House to the schoolhouse, from parent to principal, that's what we ought to be talking about."

The ad ends with Lungren and his wife, Bobbi, strolling into the sunshine, with Lungren intoning, "Character is doing what's right when no one's looking."

Ho-hum, says Davis campaign director Garry South: "It's a diversionary tactic." While Lungren has hammered away at Davis, insisting that the onetime aide to former governor Edmund G. "Jerry" Brown Jr. is a wishy-washy politician who avoids "the tough choices," most voters retain a generally favorable impression of Davis.

In the most recent statewide poll, conducted in late August by the nonpartisan Field Institute, Davis has opened up a 12-point lead over Lungren. Davis is rating higher than Lungren among both men and women, and creaming the Republican among Latinos and blacks. Davis is even taking about 15 percent of Republican likely voters.

The Field pollsters, however, caution that in California, early leads in the polls are not an infallible predictor for election day success. In 1994, early in the race, Democrat Kathleen Brown was 23 points ahead of Gov. Pete Wilson (R), who won reelection by a 14-point margin.