CALIFORNIA NOT SO GOLDEN FOR BOB DOLE.

Byline: William Endicott

YOU know a campaign is in trouble when it starts holding press conferences to deny it's in trouble, which is what the Bob Dole campaign did last week.

Dole's California campaign manager, Ken Khachigian, and Gov. Pete Wilson, the state cochairman for Dole, insisted to reporters that their candidate is not abandoning or scaling back his California effort and that they are pleased with the way things are going.

That's like saying you're pleased that Hurricane Fran only took off your roof but left a couple of walls standing.

A few days later, at the state Republican convention in Anaheim, Khachigian told the party faithful there is ``no reason to despair.''

I'm reminded of a paragraph in the new book ``Bare Knuckles and Back Rooms,'' a behind-the-scenes peek at politics by GOP political consultant Ed Rollins, in which he writes: ``There's nothing harder in politics than to keep plugging away in a doomed cause. You have to pretend that all's well even though you know better.''

Barring some cataclysmic event, President Clinton can take California's 54 electoral votes to the bank, which history suggests is very bad news indeed for Dole. The last Republican elected president without California was James Garfield in 1880.

The most recent California Field Poll gives Clinton a 22-point edge, 55 percent to 33 percent, among likely voters. But other findings from the poll are even more damaging to Dole's chances.While a majority of those who were surveyed ranked Dole higher than Clinton on personal character, more than six in 10 said a candidate's position on issues was more important to them than character. And they are more in sync with Clinton than with Dole on the issues.

Dole is building his campaign, for instance, around the promise of a 15 percent tax cut, but the poll found that keeping taxes down was not nearly as high a priority with voters as education, jobs, health care and protecting Medicare and Social Security - issues on which Clinton scores strongly.

Dole had counted on getting a boost in California from his choice of native son Jack Kemp as a running mate. But the poll found that a greater percentage of voters have a favorable impression of Vice President Al Gore - 61 percent - than they do of Kemp - 42 percent.

Clinton also is benefitting from the economy. A separate Field Poll found that more Californians are bullish about the economy than at any time since 1993, and that Clinton enjoys substantial support among economic optimists.

``The economy is not stable, but it's growing, and more people are satisfied with what's going on. I'm very much satisfied,'' Steven Bobb, a San Francisco Republican who plans to vote for Clinton, told a reporter. ``When things are going well, you don't want a drastic change. And a drastic change would be Dole.''

Since nothing else is working for him, Dole is expected to soon launch a ``sleaze factor'' TV ad campaign on Clinton, with heavy emphasis on what will be labeled a ``Clinton Hall of Shame,'' featuring pictures of such ethnically challenged Clintonites as disgraced political consultant Dick Morris.

Even that, however, carries with it certain risks for Dole, not the least of which is that such a strategy may very likely backfire. The public has been emphatic in polls and focus groups that it is fed up with campaigns of character assassination.

Furthermore, voters have already passed judgment on Clinton's alleged character flaws and seem to have concluded that if they were not important enough to keep him out of office in 1992, they are not important enough to toss him out of office in 1996.

MEMO: William Endicott, columnist for The Sacramento Bee, is filling in for Rick Orlov, who is on vacation.

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Photo: (color) Bob Dole is expected to launch a `sleaze fa ctor' TV ad campaign on Clinton, with heavy emphasis on what will be labeled a `Clinton Hall of Shame.'