Reagan Sees Bork Victory; Hearings End : Nominee’s Views Obnoxious, Carter States in Letter

President Reagan predicted that “common sense will prevail” and ensure the confirmation of Judge Robert H. Bork as a Supreme Court justice as the Senate Judiciary Committee completed three weeks of hearings Wednesday.

The hearings ended soon after committee Chairman Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) read a letter from former President Jimmy Carter declaring opposition to Bork and saying that, “as a Southerner who has observed personally the long and difficult years of the struggle for civil rights,” he found Bork’s opinions on those issues “particularly obnoxious.”

Action on the nomination now shifts to the full Senate, where questions about how Bork might rule on civil rights protections, as well as on cases involving personal privacy, free speech and equal protection of the laws, are expected to dominate the debate.

Both Sides Maneuvering

With the committee’s adjournment, Bork’s supporters and opponents began maneuvering for advantage. Leading Democratic opponents, feeling that momentum is on their side, began pushing for a vote early this month on the nomination. Bork supporters, who once had hoped to have Bork confirmed in time to join the court for its October session, are talking of a vote sometime in November, to give President Reagan’s newly intensified pro-Bork lobbying campaign time to have maximum effect.

Activities of the final day of hearings and senators’ lingering uncertainty about Bork’s suitability for the high court reflected a widespread opinion on both sides of the fight that, although Bork appeared to lose ground during the proceedings, the battle over the crucial nomination is far from ended.

Bork Talks With Specter

Bork, for his part, met at his request Wednesday afternoon with Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), a key undecided member of the Judiciary Committee, which will vote on whether to recommend that the Senate confirm or reject Bork.

Bork pressed his case with Specter, who said in an interview that he plans to make a Senate speech in the next few days announcing how he will vote.

Bork, who has been sharply criticized as a conservative ideologue who would work to overturn Supreme Court rulings on key social issues, has also scheduled a series of private meetings with dozens of other senators who are not on the committee, asking, as one supporter put it: “Why are you afraid of me?”

Bork has strived to convince skeptics that he has moderated some of his controversial views on constitutional protections and is now in the judicial mainstream.

White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said that Reagan, too, eventually will meet personally with senators on Bork’s behalf. But, for now, he said, the President will press the cause in a series of speeches, similar to that which he delivered Wednesday to a group of supporters at the Old Executive Office Building.

He told the group that Bork “is not the conservative or liberal nominee; he is America’s nominee to the United States Supreme Court.”

Reagan criticized the lobbying campaign aimed at his nominee, saying: “We will not be satisfied with allowing special interests to determine the qualifications to serve on our country’s highest court.”

‘Noisy, Strident Pressures’

He said that the Senate is at a “crossroad of conscience” and stated: “Let us insist that the Senate not give in to noisy, strident pressures and that elected officials not be swayed by a deliberate campaign of disinformation and distortion.”

After Reagan’s talk, the Rev. George Lucas of Petersburg, Va., who was in the audience, got up and gave a brief but emotional impromptu talk to Reagan, his aides and an audience supporting Bork.

Lucas, who had been invited to hear Reagan, said that “America needs to get back to the word of God so that we can do what’s right.”

Reagan stood expressionless before his lectern but listened with increasing interest as Lucas said that black people “do support you” and complained that “we allow certain black leaders who are not really black leaders” to speak for blacks.

“I think that the Judge Bork nomination is indicative of the times that we have, that we as Americans need to get back to revival, to the word of God and to the traditional things that we have in our society.”

Reagan is to speak about Bork again today at the public ceremony in which William S. Sessions will be sworn in as the new director of the FBI.

The Judiciary Committee is scheduled to vote on Bork’s nomination Tuesday. Strategists for the opposing sides predicted again that, with the 14-member panel apparently still deadlocked and with three or four members undecided, members will opt to give the nomination a “neutral” recommendation--one that neither endorses nor rejects him.

At the White House, Chief of Staff Howard H. Baker Jr. disputed a count of prospective Senate votes announced Tuesday by Sen. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.) that showed 49 senators likely to vote against Bork, with 11 undecided.

Cranston, said Baker, a former Senate majority leader, “is the worst vote counter in the United States Senate today.” Cranston, as assistant majority leader, conducts such tallies for the Senate Democratic leadership.

“I love him,” Baker added, “I just don’t believe him.”

When told of Baker’s remarks, Cranston said that Baker has “lost touch with the Senate.” Baker estimated that there were only “30 plus” senators firmly against Bork, about 40 for him and the rest undecided.

Swing Votes From South

Strategists said that the swing votes in the Democratic-controlled Senate will be mostly conservative Southern Democrats. One of them, Sen. Terry Sanford (D-N.C.), said he will give a Senate speech on the issue today. Congressional staff members said that they expect him to declare his opposition to Bork, and anti-Bork activists hope to get a similar statement soon from Sen. Lloyd Bentsen (D-Tex.).

Wednesday evening, Sen. John Glenn (D-Ohio) announced that he would vote against Bork, as had been predicted. He said the nominee’s views “do not reflect the feelings and values of most Americans.”

The final day’s hearings largely reprised the themes that have dominated the debate through the more than 80 hours of testimony--assertions that Bork is a respected mainstream legal scholar and charges that he is a radical extremist with narrow constitutional views.

Biden, who opposes Bork, introduced Carter’s statement, and other critics produced letters against the nominee signed by 1,925 law professors, nearly 40% of the full-time teachers at all the accredited law schools in the country. Supporters countered with the testimony of Herbert Brownell, who was attorney general during the Dwight D. Eisenhower Administration, and Beverly LaHaye, the leader of a conservative women’s organization.

Doubts Unresolved

The new evidence did nothing to resolve the doubts many senators say they have about Bork. Chief among them is whether he would respect judicial precedent on rulings that he has disagreed with, as he has pledged he would.

“It’s been a wearying process,” said Specter, who grilled Bork--and other witnesses--more intensively than any of the other committee members. “I still have more questions.”

Staff writer James Gerstenzang contributed to this story.