O’Connor seems a certain bet

WASHINGTON -In the end, the hearings were so bland that even the presence of television cameras couldn’t keep the U.S. Senators in the room. And the lack of controversy surrounding Sandra Day O’Connor should continue right through Tues day, when the ~izona judge is expected to have her Supreme Court nomination confirmed by the Senate Judiciary Committee. Like all current justices except .William Rehnquist – her fellow Arizonan and old Stanford Law School classmate who received 26 ne~ative votes a decade ago – O’Connor can anticipate opposition by fewer than a dozen of the 100 senators. O’Connor had met and was interviewed by all in advance. She received enthusiastic support at the hearings from women’s groups, the customary bipartisan home-state delegation and most of the committee’s senators. In a minor historical footnote to President Reagan’s precedent-breaking decision to nominate a woman, she also became the first female endorsed for the Supreme Court by the establishment oriented American Bar Association, which in 1971 told President Richard Nixon that the two woman judges on his “short list” of six possible nominees were wiqualified. Embattled labor and civil rights groups for the first time in decades remained neutral, not bothering to testify. O’Connor’s strongest opponents, the anti-abortion activists, were split by President Reagan’s hardball politics. In a letter widely circulated in Right to Life circles last month, he bluntly charged (without offering proof) that