Will Only Return for Key Senate Votes, Wilson Says

Republican Sen. Pete Wilson said Monday he will return to Washington to cast any Senate votes that might tip the balance on important issues, but that generally it is more important for him to be in California campaigning for governor against Democrat Dianne Feinstein.

Trying to blunt criticism of his Senate attendance record during the campaign, Wilson announced that he supports the nomination of David H. Souter to the U.S. Supreme Court, but there seemed to be no need for him to go to Washington for today’s confirmation vote because Souter appeared to be “a lopsided winner.”

“This is a very important campaign,” Wilson told reporters after a statement on education policy at Cal State Dominguez Hills. “I regard it as worthy of sacrificing what has been a superb attendance record.

“When you go back is when you can make the difference, when you’re in a campaign as important as this one,” he added.

Wilson’s statements were in response to questions raised after Feinstein criticized him for failing to attend Senate sessions after the Labor Day recess. Feinstein opposes Souter’s nomination because the New Hampshire jurist has refused to say whether he believes a woman has a constitutionally protected right to an abortion.

“I say, ‘Pete Wilson, do your job. Go back there and cast those votes,’ ” Feinstein said Monday in an exchange with reporters after testifying to a state legislative committee in Los Angeles on energy matters.

Wilson, who supports a woman’s right to choose to have an abortion, said he was pleased that Souter acknowledged during his confirmation hearings that there is an inherent right to privacy in the U.S. Constitution even though the jurist declined to say whether that guarantees the right to an abortion. It would have been inappropriate for Souter to have told the Senate how he would vote on an abortion case, Wilson said.

If Feinstein is so opposed to Souter’s confirmation, “Why doesn’t she go back and sit in the (Senate) gallery and make known her displeasure?” Wilson said.

Feinstein also criticized Wilson for failing to vote to shut off Senate debate on a bill sponsored by Sen. Richard H. Bryan (D-Nev.) to impose more stringent fuel economy regulations on the auto industry. The cloture vote fell three short of passage, killing the bill for this year.

Wilson refused to respond directly to the criticism but said, “If Mrs. Feinstein could even begin to approach the record I have in terms of clean air, then I would be interested in what she has to say.”

Wilson talked to reporters after receiving the endorsement of a number of educators, including Maureen Di Marco of Garden Grove, president of the California School Boards Assn., and Roberta Weintraub, a member of the Los Angeles Board of Education.

The senator also toured the Dominguez Hills campus of the California Academy of Mathematics and Science, an experimental high school in its first year. The school gets funding from the state along with support from the California State University Foundation, Educational Foundation of America, state Department of Education and TRW Inc.

“What I’m seeing here gives me enormous hope,” Wilson said after visiting a ninth-grade biology class.

Times political writer Cathleen Decker contributed to this story.