Vote Will Split California Senators : Politics: Seymour says he will still vote for Thomas while Cranston remains firmly opposed. Candidates for their seats break along party lines.

WASHINGTON —  As Sen. John Seymour struggled over the weekend to sort out the conflicting testimony of Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas and law professor Anita Faye Hill, he relied on advice from his pastor--the Rev. Robert H. Schuller--to help him decide that the embattled judge was not guilty of sexual harassment.

At the same time, Sen. Alan Cranston, sitting in front of a television set in Palo Alto, Calif., as he recovered from a hernia operation, listened to Hill’s graphic testimony and increasingly doubted that Thomas was telling the truth.

Much like the full Senate itself, California’s two senators--and those seeking to replace them in 1992--remain deeply split along partisan lines in the “he said, she said” debate that has captivated the nation. Cranston, the liberal Democrat, said that he will fly to Washington today to vote against Thomas. Seymour, the moderate Republican, said that he will support Thomas in what he calls “my second most risky vote” of his brief Senate tenure, following his support of the Persian Gulf War.

Both said they approached the extraordinary three-day hearings with an open mind. And, while some doubts were raised along the way, each dug his heels in deeper on his own stand during interviews Monday.

Seymour, who is running to keep the seat to which Gov. Pete Wilson appointed him, said that he had been prepared to vote against Thomas if the hearings proved he had engaged in sexual harassment. But, after talking with Schuller and listening to some testimony, Seymour concluded that neither Thomas nor Hill was necessarily lying.

“Adding it all up, I don’t believe that Judge Thomas sexually harassed Prof. Hill,” Seymour said. “I don’t think there was any credible evidence to suggest that he did.”

As the televised showdown began Friday morning, Cranston was wheeled into the Stanford University Medical Center. Cranston said the wife of his surgeon, Dr. Harry Oberhelman, gave her husband strict orders: “Make sure you get him in shape to go back to Washington and vote against Thomas.”.

For the 77-year-old Democrat, the hearings provided him with yet another reason why Thomas is not qualified to serve on the high court. “After watching virtually all of the hearings, I find myself doubting Judge Thomas’ veracity,” he said.

Cranston, who announced earlier that he would not seek reelection in 1992, was the first senator to announce his opposition to Thomas. He watched Friday’s session of the hearings from his hospital bed and later watched at his sister’s Palo Alto home.

“It appears to me more likely that she (Hill) is telling the truth than he (Thomas) is,” Cranston said. “The fact she told four people about this long ago is rather convincing.”

The witnesses who corroborated much of Hill’s account had no such influence on Seymour, who first heard Hill present her allegations Friday while he listened to a car radio between campaign stops in Riverside County.

“I’m thinking: ‘Golly, she is a very credible witness,”’ Seymour recalled. “She is very straightforward; she is a professional woman. This evidence is fairly damning. . . .”

But on Saturday, as he filmed campaign television commercials in Orange County, Seymour said he became convinced of Thomas’ truthfulness as he watched parts of the judge’s powerful rebuttal. “That was absolutely moving . . ,” he said. “The character of the man and (his) strength really came out.”

Seymour said he played “couch potato” in his San Clemente home on Sunday. He resolved the contradictory testimony with the help of Schuller, the televangelist and pastor of the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, he said. Schuller, a marriage counselor for 25 years, told him that in sexual matters, the gap between perception and reality can be so great that both sides believe that they are being truthful, Seymour said.

While they cannot vote, those seeking Seymour and Cranston’s jobs likewise broke along partisan lines.

Four of the five Democrats running for the two Senate seats said that they opposed Thomas before Hill’s allegations surfaced; nothing during the weekend changed their minds. The fifth Democrat, U.S. Rep. Barbara Boxer of Greenbrae, could not be reached Monday, but she was among several women representatives who had demanded that the Senate hear Hill’s allegations.

“He essentially lost me when he said he had never discussed Roe vs. Wade,” said Dianne Feinstein, the former mayor of San Francisco, speaking of the landmark 1973 abortion rights case. “I find that hard to believe. . . . His credibility, I think, has been impugned.”

State Controller Gray Davis, who is expected to run against Feinstein for the chance to challenge Seymour, said that he based his decision on what he considers Thomas’ “rapid retreat from settled law on choice and civil rights.”

Lt. Gov. Leo McCarthy, running for the Cranston seat against Boxer and U.S. Rep. Mel Levine of Santa Monica, said that he tends to believe Hill’s allegations. He said of Thomas: “I ended up wondering if he had a set of basic values which would give him a sense of direction.”

Levine could not be reached, but administrative assistant Bill Andresen said that the congressman opposes the nomination because of Thomas’ ideology.

Republicans castigated Senate Democrats and Hill for the way the hearings were run.

Former television and radio commentator Bruce Herschensohn, who is seeking Cranston’s seat, called the hearings inexcusable. “What has been done to Clarence Thomas is unworthy of the greatness of this nation,” he said.

Neither of his announced GOP opponents, U.S. Rep. Tom Campbell of Palo Alto and Palm Springs Mayor Sonny Bono, could be reached for comment. Both had expressed support for Thomas.

Seymour’s GOP opponents, U.S. Civil Rights Commissioner Bill Allen and U.S. Rep. William E. Dannemeyer of Fullerton, also supported Thomas but in vastly different tones.

Allen, a black conservative and a friend of Thomas, called Hill’s statements “a fabric of falsehood woven out of lies.”

But Dannemeyer said he supports Thomas because of what he considered inconsistencies in Hill’s account. “There are two people in this world who know . . . who said what to whom,” Dannemeyer said.

Bunting reported from Washington and Decker from Los Angeles.