Arizonans Support O’Connor

WASHINGTON – Arizona politicians rallied around Sandra Day O’Connor today before the Senate Judiciary Committee as an antiabortionist from Scottsdale attacked her nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court. Gov. Bruce Babbitt called the Arizona Court of Appeals judge a “nominee for this season in our constitutional history,” and Phoenix Mayor Margaret Hance said Judge O’Connor has “unimpeachably good character.” James McNulty, Board of Regents member from Bisbee, described for the panel Judge O’Connor’s legislative efforts to have alcoholics treated as sick people, rather than as criminals. REP. TONY WEST, R-Phoenix, said the nominee has gone through a “conversion process” since voting for an ill-fated attempt in 1970 to repeal Arizona’s law against abortion. But Dr. Carolyn Gerster, vice president of the national Right To Life Committee Inc., disagreed with West. “I wish, with all my heart, that I could support the nomination of this fellow Arizonan,” she said. She said Judge O’Connor’s record on abortion was misrepresented to President Reagan and has not been cleared in the three days of confirmation hearings before the Senate committee. Misrepresentation , evasion and distortion of fact have no place in this confirmation process,” she said. The committee will vote Tuesday, and the full Senate is expected to decide whether to confirm the nation’s first woman high court justice the same day. “WE FEEL THAT if the Senate confirms you, you will make an outstanding associate justice of