Dornan in Row on House Floor : Confrontation: Words fly after colleague interrupts his attack on Clinton, whom he calls womanizer, draft dodger.

Never one to shrink from a fight, Orange County Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove) got into a verbal sparring match on the House floor Wednesday after he attacked Democratic presidential nominee Bill Clinton as a draft dodger and womanizer.

The incident began when the loquacious conservative exceeded the one-minute time limit on his speech attacking Clinton, who, Dornan said, is suffering from a self-inflicted “bimbo eruption.”

As Dornan continued, Rep. W.G. (Bill) Hefner, a North Carolina Democrat and 18-year House veteran, decided he had had enough. In an unusual move, Hefner strode across the House chamber to the table where Dornan was speaking. Standing in front of Dornan, Hefner demanded that the Speaker cut off Dornan’s speech.

As Dornan walked away from the microphone, he and Hefner began a conversation that some onlookers described, with obvious understatement, as “animated.”

“It wasn’t much of a chat,” Hefner recalled later. “I was more or less listening, which is always the case with Bob Dornan.”

Dornan recounted, “I said to him: ‘Get out of my face. Don’t you ever do that to me again. The last guy who did that to me was on cocaine,’ ” a reference to a former member who had admitted cocaine abuse.

Hefner said that, in the private colloquy that was not picked up by House microphones, he called Dornan’s attack on Clinton a “cheap shot.” Then, Hefner said, Dornan went on to describe the Arkansas governor as a “goddamned, womanizing, draft-dodging son of a bitch”--three times.

Others said they could not hear the exchange.

“I couldn’t believe it,” said Hefner, who underwent quintuple heart bypass surgery seven weeks ago. “Here’s a guy who is always talking about the family and Christian values talking like that.”

But Dornan said Hefner got it all wrong.

“I said, (Clinton) is a womanizer, and it was a cheap shot for you guys to nominate a womanizer and a draft dodger, and you’re stuck with it,” Dornan said.

“That doesn’t sound like son of a bitch.”