A Center Fielder and Team Player : Wilson picks Orange County politician John Seymour for Senate

Gov.-elect Pete Wilson threaded the eye of a political needle on Wednesday by naming state Sen. John Seymour (R-Anaheim) as his successor in the U.S. Senate. If Seymour will not strike many as an utterly inspired choice, he is a more than solid, middle-of-the-road selection. He passes muster on a number of qualifications, such as Wilson’s interest in finding someone who favored abortion rights but who also had a fighting chance of holding the seat for the Republicans.

For that will take money, and the one certainty facing Wilson’s successor is having to go hat in hand for not one but two brutally expensive campaigns--the first just ahead in 1992, to allow state voters a say on Wilson’s choice, and the second in 1994, when the seat would have come up anyway. Seymour has vast experience raising money as past chairman of the Senate Republican Caucus, a former president of the California Assn. of Realtors and as one of three elected office-holders in the state to belong to “Team 100”--the group that contributed $100,000 each to President Bush in the 1988 election.

While these credentials make Seymour a solid choice among political insiders, his record as a state legislator since he won his seat in a special election in 1982 suggests that Californians will be getting something more in the bargain than a “gone fund-raising” sign in Washington.

Seymour has earned a reputation for working with both sides of the aisle to advance education and transportation, and he has done much as chairman of state Senate’s Select Committee on Drug Abuse. He also has a backbone--he withstood the heat in his own party when he changed to a position supporting a woman’s right to choose an abortion.

Seymour, a former Anaheim mayor, did lose the Republican primary for lieutenant governor earlier in the year, so he must prove that he can win statewide. But for Wilson he is an agreeable choice. His challenge now is convincing the rest of California that Wilson made the right choice.