USA Today Casts a Paul Over Simon’s Big Day After

Beltway myopia strikes again: The morning he woke up as the Republicans’ nominee for governor of California, Bill Simon showed up at a unity breakfast with other GOPsters.

He told his fellow breakfasters that the results had him pinching himself to believe it. So it must have been deflating to hear from a friend who had called earlier that morning to tell him that he was on the front page of USA Today under the headline “Paul Simon Jr. gets the nomination.� Simon passed this along to his wife, Cynthia, whose response was: “I think you need to do a little more work on your name ID.�

Or just get Art Garfunkel to run for lieutenant governor.

(The error was evidently corrected for the newspaper’s Web site, but for the sheer “duh� factor when it comes to things Californian, it was reminiscent of a New York Times headline several years ago about the space shuttle landing at Edwards Air Force Base: “After Detour to California, Shuttle Returns to Earth.�)

If the nominee had been Paul Simon, he would have been serenaded on election night with “Kodachrome� or “Graceland,� rather than the tunes that greeted the blue-eyed Simon in a hotel ballroom--like “Brown-Eyed Handsome Man,� written by rockmeister Chuck Berry. Come November, Gray Davis hopes the song Simon will find himself humming will be “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain.�

Don’t Touch the Hair of the Head of State

Meanwhile, over on the Democratic side: On the victory plane from Los Angeles to San Francisco the morning after the election, Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer, who won his primary without breaking a sweat, mentioned to Gov. Gray Davis, ditto, that it might be a good idea to let a San Francisco deejay who’s been harping on Davis’ hair just go ahead and muss the governor’s silvery helmet and get it over with.

Davis, who has been known to beg off wearing hard hats--the press jokes that that’s because his hair is already up to code--did not appear much taken by the idea.

No. 2 GOP primary finisher Richard Riordan liked to joke about Davis’ careful coif, telling one voter, “I’m going to outlaw hairspray; that’ll make him move out of California.� Riordan’s own locks sometimes look to be casually styled by the Santa Ana winds.

Higher Office, Maybe, but Not a Bigger One

Not so fast: Orange County Supervisor Todd Spitzer was doing a victory dance last week after Orange County voters said “yes� to his plan for a new charter for the county. That’s inside-baseball talk, but it does mean that if someone quits the board before the end of the term, the empty chair will be filled by a special election--meaning probably a Republican--instead of by a gubernatorial appointment--meaning probably a Democrat.

Spitzer has every intention of vacating his own supe seat in December, when he expects to be sworn in as a Republican in the state Assembly.

But Dems all but promise that the party will be over for Spitzer when he gets to that big marble dome in Sacramento.

Gray Davis--whose reputation is not so much for getting mad as getting even--will not forget how Spitzer campaigned for his charter change by trashing Davis’ leadership.

“Todd shouldn’t be surprised if he sees the janitor has a bigger office,� was the word from Democratic consultant Bob Mulholland. “I’m not sure he’s going to get any breakfast meetings with the governor.� Unless he buys a ticket to a fund-raiser.

Marathon Critics Running for Cover

If you think the sight of thousands of thundering runners is something, imagine thousands of runners’ e-mails.

After a Times story detailed how the city of L.A. is putting a magnifying glass to the dollars and cents it takes to stage the L.A. Marathon--nobody seems to be certain what the final figure is--the marathon organizers sent out thousands of e-mails to runners in the recent race, advising runners to contact certain city officials and sounding the alarm that “the future of your Los Angeles Marathon may be in jeopardy�--never mind the fact that the present marathon contract is good until 2010.

Marathon mucky-mucks point out that the event brings good money to L.A., and anyway, the city waives fees at other TV-intense events like the Academy Awards (although no one sends out Joan Rivers to do fashion commentary on the marathon; “Who did your T-shirt?� is not a question the nation is waiting to have answered.)

Two city officials who had the temerity to express their cost-benefit concerns about the marathon have been spammed like mad, with more than 1,000 e-mails and phone calls jamming the lines to City Controller Laura Chick and Councilman Jack Weiss, who helped to trigger this e-valanche with the simple point, “We are not paying attention to the overall amounts of money that are going out for these things.� One e-mailer suggested to Weiss that he run the marathon himself and then see what he thinks of it.

One mass e-mail from the marathon folks gave a wrong phone number for Weiss, and so some poor city worker’s phone was ringing like mad all day with complaints from the short-pants-and-panting set.

Sweating Out a Win Over a Noncandidate

Between the big-money race for district attorney and a big-mud supervisorial race, nobody in Ventura County was expending much attention on the contest for treasurer-tax collector.

Nonetheless, the assistant treasurer-tax collector, Larry Matheny, was sweating right up to the end. First he was the front-runner, and then he was the only-runner, but that didn’t put him at ease.

His challenger, former Thousand Oaks council member Mike Markey, had dropped out of the election too late for his name to be yanked from the ballot. Suffering from the sort of political paranoia only a candidate can understand--inattentive voters have sometimes elected dead candidates--Matheny fretted over what he would do if he were beaten by a man who wasn’t even running.

Markey did get 16% of the vote, but Matheny won handily. “You realize if I lost to him, I’d have to leave the area permanently.�

Points Taken

* Still seeking spellcheck: a Bill Simon press release laid out his “tenative� schedule for the day after election.

* A day or two before the election, with his prospects fast fading, Richard Riordan was still getting contributions--$91,000 and change on Monday, including $25,000 from someone at the Goldman Sachs brokerage house, and $199,000 on March 3 from Paula J. Brooks of Park City, Utah, who had already donated $75,000 to the former L.A. mayor.

* Orange County is sending two Republicans to play in the majors: Fullerton state Sen. Dick Ackerman flew solo in the primary and will take on Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer, and Anaheim’s Katherine H. Smith, buoyed by conservative turnout, will be on the November ballot for the job of superintendent of public instruction against Democratic state Sen. Jack O’Connell.

* The Riordan campaign, in dismantling its operation after March5, shut down its internal e-mail so quickly that folks trying to send out congratulatory or commiserating e-mails (or maybe job inquiries) were getting them bounced back.

You Can Quote Me

“We’re the only trailer park in Sausalito.�

--Police Capt. Jim Hyatt’s comments after Sausalito voters turned down a measure to build a new $7.8-million police and fire building so public safety workers could move out of waterfront trailers and a seismically unsafe building. Opponents said the building wouldn’t fit the town’s look or scale and violated its feng shui.

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A cutout, a cut-up and a kid: A cardboard cutout of President George W. Bush wearing a Riordan-for-governor sticker, Audrey Rattan doing a Charlie Chaplin thing, and Sylmar 8-year-old Hector Padilla getting a kick out of the combination, at the Republican primary election-night conclave near Los Angeles International Airport.

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Bill me later: Just in case California’s new Republican nominee for governor, Bill Simon, needed more motivation to resume campaigning, an item on the front page of USA Today on the morning after his big win in the state primary referred to him as Paul Simon Jr.

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Columnist Patt Morrison’s e-mail address is patt.morrison @latimes.com. This week’s contributors include Tina Daunt, Dan Morain, Jean O. Pasco, Margaret Talev and Jenifer Warren.