Feinstein Heaps Praise on Bush : Politics: A chill falls over state Democratic convention as she says there aren’t enough yellow ribbons and flags at meeting. She is running for Sen. Seymour’s seat.

Declaring that she is proud of America and its new-found sense of patriotism, Dianne Feinstein on Sunday again defied California Democratic Party orthodoxy by giving Republican President Bush “accolades” for his prosecution of the war against Iraq.

Feinstein said that in retrospect, she would have voted to support Bush’s actions if she had been a member of the U.S. Senate in January. In interviews in January, the 1990 Democratic gubernatorial nominee said she favored giving economic sanctions more time to work before launching the desert war.

Unofficially kicking off her 1992 campaign against Republican U.S. Sen. John Seymour, Feinstein told Democratic State Convention delegates that she was disappointed not to see more yellow ribbons and American flags on the convention floor in honor of “an historic victory.”

Feinstein’s comments cast a chill on the floor of the party’s state convention, dominated by peace-oriented activists who have groped for a way to blunt the political popularity the war has generated for Bush and his Republican supporters.

But Feinstein so far faces no opposition within the party in her June, 1992, primary quest for the two-year Senate term. And she demonstrated Sunday that she clearly has her eye on the broader electorate. Polls have shown strong public support for Bush among Democrats as well as Republicans.

Noting that “the land is awash with victory,” Feinstein told reporters after her speech that she was troubled the Democrats were not more willing to show their pride, focusing instead on support for the troops and ways to gain political capital from domestic issues that have been pushed aside during the war.

“I see nothing wrong with Democrats saying to President Bush, ‘We think you’ve done a good job.’ Because he has done a good job,” Feinstein said.

“So I’ve got no problem saying I’m very proud. I’m proud to be an American. . . . And I’m extraordinarily proud of the sense of patriotism and I think we ought to share it.”

Feinstein’s position contrasted with the field of declared candidates for the other California Senate seat up in 1992 for a full six years, that of retiring Sen. Alan Cranston. Generally, they had sought a further effort to let sanctions against Saddam Hussein work and favored combat only if American troops were directly threatened.

The full 2,215-delegate Democratic State Central Committee closed its two-day meeting by debating resolutions that supported the American fighting men and women and talked of winning the peace with negotiations to resolve new and historic conflicts in the Middle East.

There was nothing new in Feinstein, the former San Francisco mayor, going her own way. At the state Democratic convention in Los Angeles just one year ago, she was booed from the floor for expressing her support of capital punishment. Delegates endorsed her Democratic primary opponent, then-Atty. Gen. John K. Van de Kamp.

But Feinstein won the primary and used videotape of the booing to demonstrate her independence from party positions that often are not shared by the general electorate.

In ordinary times, this convention would have been relegated to handling routine insider business, rehashing the outcome of last November’s state elections and perhaps listening to early contenders for the presidency. But two events combined to add unusual interest: the war and the prospect of California choosing two new U.S. senators for the first time since it became a state.

When California Republicans gathered in Sacramento a week ago, they rejoiced at the prospect of a quick victory in the Middle East and in the political good fortune they could reap from it. Wilson and Seymour both took delight in scorning Democrats who were hesitant about going to war against Iraq, charging them with being out of sync with the majority of Americans.

This weekend in Oakland, Democrats fell back on a familiar position--emphasizing domestic problems that they claimed had been neglected in the nation’s 10-year military buildup.

That posture was seized dramatically by Jesse Jackson in an address Sunday that brought the convention to an emotionally unifying moment.

Jackson called the delegates to their feet in prayer, exhorting the nation not to offer the returning troops “symbolic gestures, cheers and parades as substitutes for job security, education, health care, housing, the removal of all barriers of discrimination based on race, sex and religion.”

“This morning in our country there is a euphoria of war and an ecstasy of military conquest,” he said. “Lurking beneath these feelings is an anxiety born of unraised and unanswered questions.”

Jackson was cheered when he said President Bush and the Democrat-controlled Congress “must put a yellow ribbon around a comprehensive GI bill and the 1991 Civil Rights bill.”

Jackson then turned to an issue that energized the delegates and provided the first concerted Democratic attack on Gov. Wilson. That was Wilson’s threat to void pay raises in the San Francisco Bay Area’s largely black Richmond school district as a condition of state aid for the near-bankrupt system.

Alluding to the 1954 Supreme Court desegregation issue, Jackson said, “Today, the most potent educational showdown in America since 1954 is Wilson versus Richmond.”

Jackson pledged to rally national support for the teachers’ union and launch a march from Richmond to Sacramento in protest of Wilson’s proposals. “We must protect these schools and save our children,” he said. “I’ll march every step of the way with you.”

In a fiery speech earlier, Chairman Delaine Eastin of the Assembly Education Committee called Wilson a “knucklehead” and decried the lack of financial support for California education. Eastin, from nearby Union City, said conditions are so bad that “my (auto) key chain has more computer technology than the average California classroom.”

While Wilson made education a priority in his winning campaign over Feinstein, he has since proposed suspending constitutional school finance guarantees because of the massive state budget shortfall.

On Saturday, Assembly Speaker Willie Brown of San Francisco criticized Wilson as “the ultimate of insincerity on substantive issues.”

“He wants to break the labor movement in this state,” Brown said. “And he wants to start with the teachers. Not even (former Gov.) George Deukmejian--as brain dead as he was on public policy--ever attempted that kind of frontal assault on what is basically a human right in America, the right to collective bargaining.”

In some internal business, the convention agreed to study an idea promoted by grass-roots party activists to give California a two-tier method of selecting delegates to the 1992 presidential nominating convention. A series of caucuses would be created in early March to choose 30% of the delegates. The rest would be picked on the basis of the regular primary election results in June. The party has attempted to move the June primary to March to give state Democrats more influence in picking the nominee, but prospects for approval of such legislation appear dim.

On Saturday, Democratic National Chairman Ron Brown opposed the idea, saying it likely would violate national party rules. Nevertheless, the convention called on the state party’s executive committee to devise such a plan for public review by May 15.

The delegates voted 1,355 to 676 to elect Phil Angelides, 37, a Sacramento real estate developer and energetic fund raiser, as party chair to succeed former Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr. Brown resigned after two years to run for the U.S. Senate. Angelides defeated Mitch Fine of San Francisco, the party controller who was backed by activists. Angelides had the support of party leaders, including Feinstein and Speaker Brown.