Public’s Reaction to Bork, Like Senate’s, Seems Evenly Split Between Pros, Cons

By the dozens in line at the hearing room door, the hundreds in telephone calls and the thousands via the mail, Americans have begun registering their verdict on Supreme Court nominee Robert H. Bork. And, like the Senate, the public seems split down the middle.

“I’m pro,” said Jerry Hawley of Winchester, Kan., as he waited in the noontime heat Thursday for his half-hour chance to watch the Senate Judiciary Committee’s proceedings. “I’m anti,” said the woman behind him in line.

“Don’t know,” declared Craig Diamond of New York.

Sen. Howell Heflin (D-Ala.), a member of the committee, is receiving “one call about every 45 seconds,” his staff said. Down the hall, “the only thing we’ve seen as heavy was during the worst of the Panama Canal” debate, said Jamie Ridge, press secretary to committee member Dennis DeConcini (D-Ariz.), who has received more than 10,000 pro- and anti-Bork letters.

Receptionists on Automatic

Both of those offices have been outdone by Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Arlen Specter’s, where receptionists were answering the telephones: “Good afternoon, Arlen Specter’s office, are you calling with regard to the nomination of Judge Robert Bork?”

In the last three days, 9,000 people have answered that question in the affirmative, about equally split between those who favor Bork and those who do not.

The heated summer-long debate between the Reagan Administration and its critics over the controversial conservative’s suitability for the high court has helped make Bork the most publicly supported and opposed court appointee in decades.

Specter, Heflin and DeConcini are the prime targets for the outpouring of opinions because they are considered the only undecided members of the committee now meeting to determine whether Bork should be recommended to the Senate for confirmation.

“It’s by far the most reaction we’ve ever gotten on a single issue in the seven years we’ve been down here,” said Specter press secretary Dan McKenna, who has tallied 40,000 letters and postcards on the subject.

But it would go too far to call the onslaught a spontaneous expression of the vox populi. Many comments appear to have been prompted by the scores of interest groups that have lined up on both sides of the debate. “We were getting some ‘readers,’ that’s what the receptionists call them,” said Jerry Ray of Heflin’s office, referring to people who call to read a prepared statement.

A number of callers are not from their state, Ray added, noting that, after the Alabama calls, the largest single group has come from California. That state’s partisans have also sent 5,000 letters in the last three days to one of their own senators, Republican Pete Wilson, who is not on the committee. “We can’t even count them, they’re arriving in such large numbers,” said Bill Livingstone, Wilson’s press secretary.

Finds Way to Celebrate

The people standing in line waiting to watch the hearings, by contrast, appear to have more personal reasons for coming. “I work for the government in New York and took the day off to come down with my friend and watch this,” Diamond said. “What better way to celebrate the anniversary of the Constitution?”

As a further indication of the sensation the nomination has caused, several senators who are not directly involved have been dropping by the hearings, a rare act in an institution whose members seldom have the time or the inclination to watch proceedings before someone else’s committee.

With the 60 seats set aside for senators’ personal guests--wives, children, staff members and friends--and the 128 seats for press, the huge Senate caucus room had only 40 seats available for the public.

Discussion ‘Rather Arcane’

The lines were often long, and the discussion is “almost like being back in law school . . . some of it has been rather arcane,” Sen. Alan K. Simpson (R-Wyo.) said.

But the customers, on the whole, seemed satisfied. “It was worth it,” said Bork supporter Hawley as he left, “definitely worth it.”