Time to Forgive and Forget, Not Whine : Winner Rep. Dornan Should Drop Campaign Complaints Against Judith Ryan

It’s hard to believe that the Orange County Republican Party’s ethics committee went along with Rep. Robert K. Dornan’s recent request to condemn his opponent in last spring’s GOP primary election.

The Garden Grove Republican’s list of 12 complaints against Judith M. Ryan, who lost to Dornan, sounded more like a whine from someone annoyed at being challenged than a legitimate list of wrongdoings.

One of his complaints, for example, was that a Ryan campaign mailer quoted one of her supporters as saying Dornan was “thrown off airplanes.”

Not so, Dornan insisted. He said he was thrown off only one airplane (not, in other words, the plural noun) after a dispute with an airline over seating that he still is challenging.

Come on, Rep. Dornan. Politics is a rough-and-tumble business. When elections are over, most opponents forgive and forget--especially members of the same party.

No question, Ryan’s campaign generalized about her opponent. For that matter, so did Dornan when it came to her. Remember when he called Ryan’s supporters “lesbian spear chuckers”? Whatever that term means, it certainly wasn’t meant as complimentary.

In fact, Dornan is nationally known in the House of Representatives and as a radio personality for his free-wheeling commentary.

After reviewing Dornan’s list of complaints against Ryan, the county GOP’s ethics committee was vague about which charges it was endorsing.

The committee, which nevertheless decided that Ryan had engaged in “character defamation, inaccuracies and distortions,” owed it to Ryan to endorse only those charges it found specifically supportable.

One would think, after reading Dornan’s complaint, that he had lost last June’s primary. It’s clear he knows how to dish it out. But he ought to be able to take it--especially after winning the election.