Padberg Wins Unanimous Endorsement : Appointment: State Senate panel ignores Dornan’s ire, backs foe for Commission on Status of Women post.

Despite opposition from Rep. Robert K. Dornan, Orange County political consultant Eileen Padberg easily won a state Senate committee’s endorsement Wednesday of her appointment to the State Commission on the Status of Women.

The Senate Rules Committee voted unanimously to recommend that the full Senate confirm Padberg’s appointment by Gov. Pete Wilson after Dornan, who had asked for a hearing on the issue, failed to show up.

“His plane probably was delayed or something,” Sen. William A. Craven (R-Oceanside) said tongue-in-cheek as a crowd of Padberg supporters broke into applause.

Dornan, an outspoken conservative who is still bitter over Padberg’s role in the campaign of an opponent, complained in a letter to the Senate committee that she had spread “vicious lies” about him and his family, demeaned his Catholic faith in a political mailing and hired campaign workers who “trespassed” on his property in order to take photographs of his house.

Padberg had been a chief architect of former Superior Court Judge Judith Ryan’s unsuccessful attempt to unseat the congressman in the Republican primary. Dornan (R-Garden Grove) defeated Ryan with 60% of the vote after an unusually mean-spirited intraparty rivalry.

Dornan had urged the committee to reject Padberg’s confirmation and asked permission to testify against her.

Craven said the panel learned a short time before the hearing that Dornan might not be able to attend due to other commitments.

In a replay of some of the bitter invective that characterized the campaign, an elated Padberg accused Dornan of trying to “scare and bully” those who don’t agree with him. She said he made harsh public statements but then “turned tail and ran” when it came time to officially back them up.

“He ought to be working his district to help the people in his district get food on the table and find jobs but he’s still picking on me,” she said. “He’s just a bully. He ought to be ashamed of himself.”

Calling Padberg a “pimple on the nose of the Republican Party,” Dornan scoffed at her accusations, saying he had decided not to appear at the hearing after Wilson’s staff assured him that budgets constraints would soon force the Legislature to do away with the Commission on the Status of Women.

He said the vote by the committee was “no surprise” since most of the members were “liberal Democrats.” Two of the members who voted for the appointment--Craven and Sen. Robert Beverly of Redondo Beach--are Republicans.

Approval by the Rules Committee, even though a vote of the Senate must follow, virtually assures Padberg’s confirmation.