Wilson Blasts Feinstein for ‘Flip-Flops’ : Convention: He tells GOP she waffled on the death penalty, ethics and parental leave. Her manager disputes accusations.

Moving to solidify his standing within his own party and hoping to attract any waffling emocrats, Pete Wilson lambasted Dianne Feinstein on Saturday as an architect of “election year flip-flops” who had adopted positions to pander to the electorate.

The Republican senator and gubernatorial candidate, addressing delegates at the semiannual state GOP convention, accused Feinstein of three specific changes of heart involving 1990 campaign issues--the death penalty, ethics and parental leave.

To ringing applause, Wilson swiped a line Feinstein had used against her primary foe, Atty. Gen. John K. Van de Kamp.

“California deserves better than a governor who, in an election year, turns against what she is for and for what she is against,” he said.

Feinstein’s campaign manager Bill Carrick immediately denounced Wilson’s comments.

“The three issues are essentially bogus issues,” Carrick said. “Of much more concern to Californians is that the senator is the biggest recipient of S&L; contributions. The campaign is going to be waged on those grounds.”

Carrick was referring to a recent study by Common Cause that showed Wilson had received more campaign donations from officials of the scandal-plagued savings and loan industry than any other senator. Wilson angrily disputed the study, saying it was guilt by association and that he had also raised proportionally more money than other senators from all sources, limiting the impact of the savings and loan contributions.

Though Wilson was the star attraction here, it was Democratic nominee Feinstein who commandeered much of the attention. As delegates began to gather Friday afternoon, a host of prominent Republicans began a drum roll of criticism of Feinstein, particularly highlighting her intention to appoint women and minorities to state jobs in parity with the population.

That recurrent theme, and Wilson’s later attempts to portray Feinstein as a waffling candidate, spoke to Republican concerns that Feinstein is poised to skim off GOP votes, particularly those of women.

To avoid raising an issue of particular sensitivity to women, GOP leaders here also tried to shunt aside discussion of the divisive topic of abortion. Ironically, it arose anyway with word Friday night of Associate Supreme Court Justice William Brennan’s retirement.

Wilson has described himself as an abortion rights advocate, a position that puts him at odds with President Bush, who will select the next justice. Bush is under severe pressure from both sides of the abortion dilemma about his replacement for Brennan, who was the liberal leader on issues like abortion rights.

At a press conference after his speech Saturday, the senator would not say who he favors for the Supreme Court post, other than to say that it should be someone who will “apply the law as it is written and not substitute his or her own values for the written law.”

Pressed as to his druthers, Wilson said he would “probably” feel more comfortable with a judge adhering to Wilson’s own positions. But he added that it would be “unseemly” to try to determine the appointee’s personal positions on abortion before deciding whether to support him or her.

Wilson’s speech, as can be expected at a party convention, was highly partisan. Assembly Speaker Willie Brown’s name was mentioned--derogatorily--14 times. Former California Chief Justice Rose Bird earned Wilson’s enmity 16 times. Democratic Party Chairman Edmund G. Brown Jr. was mentioned nine times.

At one point, Wilson asserted that if Feinstein won the governorship, Assembly Speaker Brown would “exert more power and be a lot more of a governor in fact than Jerry Brown ever was.”

As far as the alleged flip-flops were concerned, Wilson cited past Feinstein reservations about the death penalty, which Feinstein has said she opposed until 1973. Wilson charged that Feinstein in past years has not worked to uphold the death penalty at the state or federal level.

“All she sought to change was her position so she could join the people of California who had voted twice for the death penalty by 70% margins,” he said.

On parental leave, Wilson said Feinstein’s current support for a federal bill giving leave to new parents ran counter to a 1984 Feinstein quote that employers should not have to accommodate themselves to women having children. Feinstein’s primary opponent, Van de Kamp, tried unsuccessfully to use that issue earlier this year.

Feinstein aides, then and now, said that Feinstein had issued a clarification the day after her remarks appeared in a wire service story.

Wilson also accused Feinstein of changing her tune on ethics reform, saying that although she opposed a particular ethics plan in 1986, she now supports it.

Wilson himself has been accused of changing sides, most recently by supporting a bill requiring minors seeking abortions to have the consent of their parents. He has also changed his mind over time on the issue of criminalization of marijuana, which he now supports.

Saturday’s charge against Feinstein was opened by Secretary of Labor Elizabeth Dole, who sharply disputed the notion that women would gravitate toward Feinstein in the general election as Democratic women did in the primary.

Said Dole: “No one can put us in a box and call us ‘hers’ ”