Delegation from O.C. Heeds Call : GOP: Pro-choice and anti-abortion delegates alike quickly embrace Gov. Wilson’s plea to end abortion debate and rally behind President Bush.

Orange County delegates to the Republican convention, pro-choice and anti-abortion alike, wasted no time Sunday embracing Gov. Pete Wilson’s call to end the debate over abortion and rally behind the Bush campaign.

“I feel very, very strongly that abortion should not be part of the platform,” said Victoria Jaffee, a former Mission Viejo councilwoman and an alternate delegate. “But the message we need to send to the public is that there are many, many other important issues they need to base their selection of President upon.”

Ravi Mehti, an at-large delegate from Orange, predicted that “splinter groups” would pop up in the 201-delegate California contingent, but not cause problems. “As a whole I think the delegation will do as the governor requested,” said Mehti, who is Wilson’s deputy appointments secretary but shares the President’s anti-abortion beliefs. “Our primary concern should be to get George Bush elected.”

Wilson’s declaration that the issue should be set aside for now to avoid a contentious floor debate when the convention opens today in the Astrodome drew particularly sharp praise from anti-abortion advocates from Orange County. But many of those same advocates expressed anger that the governor boldly predicted the Administration’s current anti-abortion stance would give way to a pro-choice platform by the 1996 presidential race.

“I think he did a fabulous job of bringing the troops together, but he went a little too far,” said Harold Ezell, an anti-abortion supporter from Newport Beach and the former Immigration and Naturalization Service western regional commissioner during the Reagan Administration.

The Rev. Louis P. Sheldon of the Anaheim-based Traditional Values Coalition went further, calling Wilson’s prediction “a political blooper.”

“Everything was fine until he said we would never again see an anti-abortion plank in the Republican platform,” Sheldon said. “My reaction to that was: over my dead body.”

Some pro-choice advocates, meanwhile, suggested that the continued anti-abortion message from the Bush campaign and in the party platform could bleed the Republican ticket in Orange County and California, where polls indicate two of three people embrace abortion rights.

“California is a pro-choice state, and the anti-choice plank will hurt in California,” said Dana W. Reed, a Costa Mesa attorney and honorary delegate attending his eighth convention.

In Orange County, “the question isn’t whether Bush can carry the county, but by how much,” said Reed, who is pro-choice. “For him to get the 200,000- to 250,000-vote margin he’ll need to offset the Democratic vote elsewhere in the state, it’s going to require a lot more activity like we saw this morning; more calls to arms by the governor and other key people.”

But other delegates suggested that the abortion debate will not be in the forefront as voters in Orange County and across the country step into the polling booth in November.

“We’ve got to be united,” said alternate delegate Marcia Gilchrist, Orange County GOP party treasurer. “This whole issue is minor compared to the job issue, the economy, the quality of leadership in this country. Those are the issues that will be key for this coming campaign.”