CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS / GOVERNOR : Feinstein Attacks Wilson on Abortion Rights

Opening a general election battle for control of the state’s largest voting bloc--women--Dianne Feinstein sought Friday to chip away at Pete Wilson’s record on abortion rights and simultaneously to control controversy over her own proposal to reserve more than half the appointive jobs in her administration for women and minorities.

Launching her first major assault on Wilson since she won the Democratic primary earlier this month, the former San Francisco mayor chided the Republican senator for compiling a record that she said reflected “half-hearted commitment, contradiction and all-out flip-flops.”

In particular, Feinstein cited Wilson’s U.S. Senate votes against government funding for abortions, insurance coverage of abortions for federal workers and reproductive rights for women in prison.

“Sen. Wilson, you aren’t pro-choice if you opposed abortion for poor women,” Feinstein said to repeated applause from delegates gathered for the annual convention of the National Organization for Women, which has endorsed her.

The effort to raise suspicion about Wilson’s self-definition as an abortion rights advocate is similar to Feinstein’s earlier--and ultimately successful--attempt to portray her Democratic opponent John K. Van de Kamp as a weak ally on the issue of abortion.

Wilson, like Van de Kamp before him, has firmly placed himself among abortion rights advocates. And, like Van de Kamp, Wilson contends that Feinstein is no more forceful an advocate than he. Wilson’s aides have said that the Senate votes are not germane to Wilson’s abortion rights stance.

Feinstein on Friday used absolute terms to describe her commitment to abortion rights. Gone was the vacillation she evidenced during the primary campaign, when she briefly contended that she would consider signing legislation outlawing abortions for the purpose of sex selection.

“Let there be no doubt: I am personally and politically pro-choice and . . . I will veto any infringement on the right to choose,” she said.

But while Feinstein was on the offensive on the subject of abortion Friday, she was also defensively fending off Wilson’s criticism of her controversial pledge to reserve half of the appointed jobs in her administration for women, and to appoint minorities in proportion to their percentage of the state’s population.

Wilson on Thursday sent Feinstein a letter urging that she “rectify a serious lapse in judgment” and recant her support for what he called “quotas.”

Wilson called Feinstein’s pledge “unfair and indeed insulting” to women and minorities hired on the basis of merit.

Feinstein, speaking to reporters before her NOW address, tartly turned aside Wilson’s criticism.

“Mr. Wilson has never known a quota,” she said. “I know what a quota is.”

The Democrat’s spokeswoman, Dee Dee Myers, said later that Feinstein was referring to her exclusion as a child from a private school which would not admit her because of her Jewish parentage.

Feinstein said her program was not a quota system, which she defined as “an absolute number at a specific point in time”--for example, reserving a specific set of jobs for women.

Rather, she said her proposal would allow for percentages to be attained “over time” by appointing women and minorities who have “earned their way.”

“A quota is an arbitrary number attached to a class, as it was when some of us applied for school,” she said. “It was used by many to keep people out or to have tokens. That’s not what I’m talking about.”

Asked whether white males might construe her proposal as one that would keep them out of government jobs, she replied: “That’s nonsense.”

Polls have shown the notion of quotas is unpopular with voters. In a Times Poll published earlier this month, voters emphatically disagree with the notion of gender balance.

Asked if “government ought to see to it that there is an even balance between the number of men and women in public office,” voters by a 5-2 margin said it should not.

The appearance before the NOW convention was only Feinstein’s second public address since the day after the June 5 primary.

Since then, she has spent much of her time raising money toward a goal of $10 million she aims to spend in the general election. Her hard-fought primary against Van de Kamp left her campaign coffers virtually empty, while Wilson was able to coast through an unchallenged primary with $3.5 million in the bank.

Four Feinstein fund-raisers this week, including a belated 57th birthday party in San Francisco Thursday night, have earned the campaign an estimated $1 million, spokeswoman Myers said. Most of that money came from former Van de Kamp supporters.

California campaign law allows Feinstein and Wilson to receive $1,000 each from individual contributors each fiscal year. Thus, with a new fiscal year beginning Sunday, each will be able to return to their most ardent supporters and ask for another check.

Most of the money collected by both sides is expected to be carefully hoarded until the fall, when expensive television campaigns will flood the airwaves.