Clinton Opposes Thomas, Backs Gay Rights Bill : Politics: Arkansas governor, making the first L.A. visit of his campaign for the presidential nomination, attends three fund-raising events.

On the first Los Angeles visit of his Democratic presidential campaign, Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton sailed into two politically polarizing controversies Monday, declaring his opposition to the confirmation of Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas and his support for the California gay rights bill recently vetoed by Gov. Pete Wilson.

“If I had been President, I would not have nominated (Thomas) for two reasons,” Clinton told reporters. “He didn’t have, in my opinion, the requisite background of experience and understanding; and, secondly, he was plainly an ideological appointment trying to move the court too far to the right.”

On the gay rights question, Clinton said in an interview that he told a group of gay activists at a private luncheon that he considered the controversial state legislation prohibiting occupational discrimination against homosexuals “an appropriate thing to do.”

“I didn’t see anything wrong with that bill,” said Clinton, who has often urged the Democrats to more closely reflect middle-class values. “This is a very diverse country and we have to try to . . . reach some accommodation about what choices should be left to individuals, as opposed to the choices that should be made by government.”

Although his larger message was overshadowed by questions about Thomas, Clinton stressed in his two public appearances Monday that the Democratic Party must reform its program to win in 1992. In an implicit criticism of Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin--a competitor for the nomination who contends that the Democrats do not need to change course--Clinton said that “the Democrats cannot just hunker down and say we never did anything wrong.”

Clinton, who attended Yale Law School with Thomas in the early 1970s, was more critical of the federal appellate judge than he had been last week, when he told a New Hampshire audience that he retained “some ambivalence” about the nomination.

On Monday, Clinton declared that he “went to law school with a lot of people of different races and genders who I think would serve with great distinction on the Supreme Court (whom) I would have picked first.”

Clinton said the country “probably . . . will never know” the truth about the charges raised in vivid testimony by Anita Faye Hill, the law professor who has accused Thomas of sexually harassing her when she worked for him at the Department of Education and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. But he chided the Judiciary Committee for failing to resolve more of the dispute in private.

“I question how the whole thing was handled,” Clinton said. “It’s obvious that at first it slid and then it exploded, and I think it has given the appearance of being a process somewhat out of control.”

Clinton’s visit marked also an escalation in the competition among the candidates for Southern California money. During his day and a half in Los Angeles, Clinton squeezed in three fund-raisers, one given by environmentalists, a second by television producers Harry Thomas and Linda Bloodworth-Thomas and a third by Sony Pictures Entertainment Chairman Peter Guber.

Harkin has already raised some funds from liberals in Hollywood; Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey is due in town next week to woo donors. “The lines are beginning to be drawn,” said Los Angeles political activist Robert L. Burkett, Kerrey’s national finance chairman.