Peter Ueberroth kicked off his long-shot gubernatorial campaign Wednesday, saying new taxes are not needed to return the state to economic health and declaring that he is the clear choice among 135 candidates in the Oct. 7 recall election.

"I'm the one that can do the job," Ueberroth said in an interview with The Bee as he made a series of media appearances. "I'm the person trained for 30 years as an employee and employer in small-and medium-sized businesses throughout the state.

"I think you'll find out that I'm the problem solver. I've taken other jobs that people told me I'd be nuts to take, and some of them are saying the same things now."

But, the former Los Angeles Olympics chief and baseball commissioner added, the state is in desperate need of leadership, and he is ready to serve if Gov. Gray Davis is ousted.

Ueberroth, who received widespread acclaim for his handling of the 1984 Olympic Games and for subsequent businesses and public-service efforts, is a Republican who says his campaign is being run as an independent effort.

Mentioned in past years as a possible candidate for Senate or even president, Ueberroth drew only 5 percent in a Field Poll of likely voters in the gubernatorial race. Commentator Arianna Huffington drew 4 percent, while Green Party candidate Peter Camejo drew 2 percent. The poll results were released last week.

By contrast, Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante and actor Arnold Schwarzenegger topped the poll with 25 percent and 22 percent, respectively.

On Wednesday, as Ueberroth was kicking off his campaign by releasing outlines of his budget plan, Schwarzenegger was drawing widespread coverage for his meeting with his own economic team and a press conference with reporters during which he gave few specifics of his plans.

Political analysts and opponents have questioned whether Ueberroth's fame may be too far behind him for him to mount a credible race.

"Anybody under 40 is not going to remember him," said Wayne Johnson, an adviser to Republican gubernatorial candidate Bill Simon. "He's been out of the picture for a while. He comes into the race as a place holder waiting for someone else to drop out."

Such sentiment has not deterred Ueberroth, who is known for dogged determination.

Ueberroth's campaign has vowed not to criticize other candidates and instead focus on providing its own answers to California's problems, and he said he had not seen any of the Schwarzenegger coverage or Davis' speech Tuesday, in which the Democratic governor alternately blamed Republicans for some problems and apologized for others.

"I didn't watch anything," Ueberroth said.

Instead, the 65-year-old Orange County businessman said his campaign will move steadily forward by focusing on issues and experience as the keys to attracting voters.

As part of that, Ueberroth's campaign said his economic plan will use a variety of steps to balance the budget, including:

* An amnesty on back taxes that could generate $5 billion to $6 billion.

* A 5 percent cut in general fund spending that would provide $1.5 billion to $2 billion.

* A hiring freeze and salary review that could save $200 million to $400 million, as well as renegotiation of state worker contracts that could save $800 million to $1 billion.

* And a crackdown on Medi-Cal fraud that his campaign said could save $1.5 billion, three times the amount Bustamante said Tuesday could be saved with a similar effort.

Ueberroth's public release of his economic plan comes one day after Bustamante released his own budget scheme along with a challenge to other candidates to provide specific proposals.

But while Bustamante suggested raising taxes on the wealthy and rolling back the vehicle tax that was tripled in last month's state budget deal, Ueberroth said he did not believe new taxes are necessary.

"We already have a large tax burden on the wealthy, and there's nothing wrong with that," he said. "I'm one of those."

But, he added, raising taxes could drive more high-paying jobs out of state and further harm the economy. And he added that although he supports rolling back the vehicle tax, he does not believe replacing that revenue with more taxes elsewhere is wise.

"The car tax doesn't make sense; it needs to be rolled back," he said. "But at the same time, it's not the highest priority just to please everybody, because what you want to do is stop spending first."

Ueberroth said he considers the biggest problem facing the state to be "the budget/runaway expenditures" in the budget.

"I think of it as a crisis, and I think the crisis is out of control," Ueberroth said. "Somebody has to be absolutely focused on the solutions and drive the solutions, and this opportunity seems right for me."

He also said he believes that as the weeks tick off toward the election, he will rise in the polls as voters look for a serious candidate to do the job.

"I think through this din of media that people are going to begin to embrace the fact that we need solutions, and when we get close to the sixth or seventh week, people are going to start to say, 'Who can go and make it happen?' "

Ueberroth has said that if he is elected, he will not accept a salary and will only serve the remainder of Davis' term, which expires in 2007.

And he insisted he would not criticize anyone, including Davis, as he tried to capture the public's attention.

"I'm not going to take a shot at anybody," he said. "I'm going to be able to wind my way through this."

Ueberroth said his specific budget plans will continue to be released as he travels the state seeking support for a campaign that will carry the slogan "truth, substance and specifics."

He added that he had read accounts of Davis' speech to supporters Tuesday and that "I was pleased that he apologized and he was gracious enough to do that."

Ueberroth then returned to his background running Major League Baseball from 1984-89 when asked if he thought Davis was at fault for the state's problems.

"It seems to me that we're last of all 50 states in our credit rating, and if you're last as the manager of a baseball team, you can apologize to your fans, but frankly, your job's in jeopardy," he said.