CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS / U.S. SENATE : Seymour, Feinstein Duel in Orange County : The candidates attack each other from afar as they address local groups. The appearances illustrate the importance both are placing on the county.

Unable to agree on a face-to-face debate, Republican U.S. Sen. John Seymour and Democratic opponent Dianne Feinstein took cross-city potshots at each other Friday, disagreeing over crime, debates and support of women as they competed for votes in conservative Orange County.

Seymour, seeking to protect his home-county base and undermine Feinstein, went after his opponent with his strongest attack yet.

Keying on Feinstein’s campaign slogan that “2% is not enough,” a reference to the two seats held by women in the 100-seat Senate, Seymour circulated figures showing that Feinstein and her husband, investor Richard C. Blum, made heavier financial contributions during the 1980s to male candidates for federal office than they did to female candidates.

“It’s a double standard, it’s hypocrisy,” Seymour said during a news conference on the steps of the old Orange County Courthouse in Santa Ana.

The Republican senator, hoping to hold onto the Senate seat Gov. Pete Wilson appointed him to in 1991, announced the endorsements of the California Police Chiefs Assn. and the California Police Officers Assn.

During the news conference for Seymour, Orange County Dist. Atty. Michael R. Capizzi chided Feinstein for supporting former California Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird, who lost her seat on the court in 1986. Bird, Capizzi said, “did to law enforcement in California what Hurricane Andrew did to Miami.”

Feinstein, who gave speeches to the Orange County Women Lawyers Assn., the Orange County Urban League and FHP Inc., called Seymour’s claim about the contributions “nonsense.”

At one point, she stared into a television camera and said: “John Seymour, you should be ashamed.”

The former San Francisco mayor attributed the tilt in contributions to male candidates to the simple fact that more men were running for various offices during the time surveyed by Seymour.

Seymour said more than 20 groups had invited the Senate candidates to debate. He said he had accepted every invitation, but had been unable to get a commitment to any of them by Feinstein. Feinstein, questioned by reporters, said she intends to debate Seymour, but declared that now was too early in the campaign. “October is the time for debates,” she said.

Harriet Alexson, president of the women lawyers’ group, said she had invited Seymour to debate Feinstein at one of the group’s monthly meetings, but that the senator had never responded to her inquiries.

The spirited exchange, which jumped from Garden Grove, to Santa Ana and then to Orange and on to Newport Beach, illustrates the importance both candidates are placing on Orange County, which has the heaviest concentration of Republican voters in the state. A Los Angeles Times Poll published Thursday showed that Seymour, the former mayor of Anaheim and onetime state legislator from Orange County, was leading Feinstein by a 52% to 39% margin. But, because Republicans hold a 54% edge in voter registration, the poll showed that Seymour was not even holding his own with members of his party. Statewide, Feinstein, by various polls, has led Seymour by 18% or more.

Kam Kuwata, a spokesman for Feinstein’s campaign, said Seymour was in trouble in the county. “It’s his base and he hasn’t got it. He’s nowhere near the numbers he needs to catch up,” he said.

“If I lose by 5% or 6% in Orange County, that’s great,” said Feinstein, who has visited here up to a dozen times during this campaign and plans to make it one of her target areas during the fall.

During her appearances at the Urban League in Garden Grove and later during a luncheon speech to about 150 lawyers in Orange, Feinstein stressed her support for abortion rights. She criticized Seymour for voting to confirm an anti-abortion jurist, Clarence Thomas, to the U.S. Supreme Court, and questioned Seymour’s commitment to abortion rights.

Feinstein told the Urban League that Seymour put up “a lot of talk and no action” in his unsuccessful efforts to get the Republican Party to remove strongly worded anti-abortion language from the party plank at the GOP National Convention in Houston last week.

Women voters, she told the Urban League, know “their right to choice is going to be better protected by a pro-choice woman who understands.”

In Santa Ana, Seymour once again said he was proud of voting for Thomas, and criticized Feinstein for wanting to expose jurists to a litmus test on abortion. Seymour said Feinstein had told a police association in 1990 that she was opposed to litmus tests for judges.

But Feinstein said several times Friday that she thinks the current judicial climate, with one vote hanging in the balance on the abortion issue, makes a litmus test appropriate. Seymour also accused Feinstein of once advocating legalized prostitution, an apparent reference to a news story published years ago in San Francisco.

Responding, Feinstein said: “I said something in a speech that was misunderstood. I later recanted. I do not support the legalization of prostitution.”

Times staff writers Gebe Martinez and Jodi Wilgoren contributed to this story.