From Dornan, a No-Concession Speech

It was vintage Dornan.

As the lights flashed and the beepers beeped signaling a vote on the floor of the House of Representatives on Wednesday, the bona fide members of Congress fled the room. All cameras, all microphones, all people with notebooks had no choice but to turn to former member Robert K. Dornan--Air Force veteran, Clinton-hater, lesbian-basher, father of five, grandpa of 11.

So what if leaders of Dornan’s own Republican Party were about to dismiss his case contesting Rep. Loretta Sanchez’s victory over him in 1996? Admit defeat? Not this combat pilot.

“I look 10 years younger than my age, and I act 30 years younger,” the 64-year-old Dornan said. “I’ve got a lot of politics left in this Irish body.”

After a 13-month investigation, the House Oversight Committee had not found enough suspicious votes to oust Sanchez and seat Dornan--or even let them tackle one another again in a special election. Dornan, on Capitol Hill Wednesday with his wife and daughter, was supposed to be the big loser. But don’t tell him that.

First he held forth in the committee room, talking about the 1996 congressional campaign and the 1996 presidential campaign--he ran in both, remember?--and abortion and draft-dodging and check-bouncing and all the rest of it. Then he moved the gathering into the hall and turned it into a full-blown press conference.

“I want you to identify yourself,” he told the gathered media, likening the setup to a White House news conference.

But there was little in the way of news.

Would he run against Sanchez this year?

“There will absolutely be a Dornan in the race,” he said, hinting that it might well be his son Mark. “I’d rather be in the Senate.”

Senate then. This year? When?

“In a few weeks I may be on your side of the cameras,” he said. “I was one hell of an investigative reporter.”

Regarding the news of the day, Dornan said simply that he felt “relieved.” He would not concede the ’96 race, he said, unless Sanchez--whom he calls her by her husband’s name, Brixey, which she no longer uses--”would stop saying there wasn’t one single fraudulent vote.”

“The bottom line is, I’m a veteran,” he reminded those who might have forgotten, and “non-Americans . . . voted me out of office.”

And just as surely as Dornan was not giving up, Democrats were bashing him in the building next door.

“When he was in the Congress, people used to call him B-1 Bob,” Minority Whip David E. Bonior (D-Mich.) said at his party’s celebration of the dismissal. “The voters sent a clear message: ‘Be quiet, Bob.’ ”