Flap That Rocks N.J. Barely Stirs California : Controversial aide worked for Wilson almost unnoticed, but his past raised a storm back East.

TRENTON, N.J. — When Larry McCarthy worked for Pete Wilson’s victorious California gubernatorial campaign in 1990, no one seemed to care that he had produced the controversial Willie Horton commercial that helped defeat Democratic presidential nominee Michael S. Dukakis in 1988.

“It was very occasionally mentioned in the press, but it was no big deal,” McCarthy said.

But when McCarthy signed on last month as media consultant to Republican Christine Whitman’s gubernatorial campaign in New Jersey, his connection to the Horton ad stirred up such a storm that he was forced to quit.

No one has a simple explanation for the contrast, but an assortment of journalists and politicians attribute it largely to what they say is a less-than-intense interest in politics in California.

“There are certain parts of the country where politics is part of the culture,” said Fred Sipple, a California-reared GOP consultant who worked as a media adviser to Wilson’s campaign. “I think of Boston, Chicago and New York City. But in California, it’s not on the radar screen.”

McCarthy’s commercial helped make Horton--a black convict who raped a woman while on a weekend furlough from a Massachusetts prison--a metaphor for the Republican charge that Dukakis, then the state’s governor, was soft on crime. But because the commercial showed Horton’s face and referred graphically to his crimes, it outraged many Dukakis supporters, who charged that the ad exploited racial prejudice.

In enlisting McCarthy to help her drive to unseat incumbent Democratic Gov. James J. Florio, Whitman considered the mild treatment McCarthy had received in California. But from the moment McCarthy’s appointment was announced, Whitman was subjected to relentless questioning from the press and a flurry of protests from black leaders.

Carl Golden, Whitman’s press secretary, says much of the reaction from press and minority leaders was spontaneous. “This state is incredibly sensitized to that kind of issue,” he said. “The New Jersey media seized on this issue immediately, and they weren’t going to let it go.”

Keith Jones, head of the New Jersey NAACP, issued a statement denouncing the hiring: “All of us in the black community remember how all that (the 1988 Horton commercial) was perceived and how the national NAACP took a strong position against it.”

To make matters worse for Whitman, New York City television stations, which generally ignore New Jersey politics, joined in the inquisition, hectoring the candidate on a campaign bus tour.

But in California, television stations showed scant interest in McCarthy’s Horton connection. “Our people don’t care much about stories about campaign commercials,” said Linda Breakstone, who covers politics for KABC-TV in Los Angeles. Breakstone wrote the Los Angeles Times opinion page article that contained the paper’s only mention of McCarthy’s connection to the Horton ad.

All this was frustrating for Bill Carrick, campaign manager for Dianne Feinstein, Wilson’s Democratic opponent. “We made quite an effort about stirring it up,” Carrick said.

In comparing the coverage in California and New Jersey, Carrick said he found it striking that McCarthy ran into trouble in New Jersey even though five years had passed since the commercial was shown. “Back during the Feinstein campaign, Willie Horton had happened just the day before yesterday,” he said.

Many journalists and politicians say they believe that the California media’s generally passive approach to politicians both reflects and reinforces public apathy, which they trace back to the early reformist tradition that shaped state politics.

“This state and the political system were started by people who came here to get away from traditional politics,” said Bill Boyarsky, a Times columnist who has covered California politics for nearly 30 years.

Josh Mankiewicz, a Los Angeles-based correspondent for the Fox TV network, said he sees the California outlook on politics as part of the state’s relaxed lifestyle.

“Politics and political coverage are as laid back as everything else in California,” he said.”

Sipple said he sees an analogy with the notorious tendency of Californians to leave Dodger games in the seventh inning if the home team trails by a few runs. “The passions which Californians pursue are neither sports nor politics,” he said.

Times researcher Pat Welch contributed to this story.