Also-Ran in Diddlys: Does It Get Any Worse?

Twice in a row is good enough to make a tradition, and Mother Jones magazine, published in San Francisco, has awarded, for the second time, its Diddly Awards, for a “rubber-stamp Congress, whose members have found plenty of time to do squat.�

Runner-up in the Celebrity-Mongering award, Escondido Republican Rep. Duke Cunningham, who summoned (but evidently did not subpoena) the Sesame Street character Elmo to testify on the importance of music education. It was left to Elmo, who testified in suit and tie, to declare, in third-person hauteur, “Elmo is not making a mockery of this place.�

Two California congressmen rated runner-up status for the Common Touch award: San Mateo Democrat Tom Lantos, who drove over a 13-year-old boy’s foot just outside the Capitol in 2001 and left the scene; and Vista Republican Darrell Issa, the car-alarm magnate whose own voice of warning is heard on his car alarms. Issa, says Mother Jones, was stopped by the Border Patrol for speeding at 90 mph through a 65-mph zone in San Clemente, and told the officer, “It’s not your job to stop me for speeding.�

And the winner of the Sex in Congress award--Bakersfield Republican Bill Thomas, who heads the House’s health care strategizing and who was reported to have had an affair with a health-care lobbyist. Thomas, the magazine says, “breathes new life into the phrase ‘in bed with industry.’ �

A Gay Old Time for Simon Sub Riordan

With Bill Simon Jr. severely disinvited to last week’s Republican Unity Coalition event in L.A. for Mary Cheney, the lesbian daughter of Vice President Dick Cheney, just who was that Republican millionaire gubernatorial candidate who showed up at the Hancock Park reception?

It was Richard Riordan, who came in second to Simon in the primary, losing GOP support during that campaign in part because he championed issues important to gays. Last week’s Field Poll, which showed Simon trailing Gov. Gray Davis, hypothetically matched the more moderate Riordan against Davis and found that the former L.A. mayor would beat Davis if the matchup were held today.

Can California Afford Seven More Governors?

Joel Fox is, to use the political shorthand, a political and governmental consultant, the ex-president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn., and something of a nut on political history.

Before he ran off to join the circus--which is to say he’s now an analyst and advisor to the San Fernando Valley secession effort--he was looking up the law of succession in California. He found that, in case of a war disaster, government code 12060-63--instituted under Gov. Pat Brown in 1959, when the Bomb hung over Americans’ lives like fog over the Bay Bridge--requires California to have shadow governors waiting in the wings.

The elected governor is supposed to name as many as seven, in different parts of the state, in the event all designated state officials in the line of succession--from the governor through, presumably, the insurance commissioner--get killed off.

Now, Fox suggests that Gray Davis doesn’t know about this law, or he would have “used these appointments as the ultimate big bonanza fund-raiser� to name a fat cat as governor-in-waiting.

Nominees, anyone?

Left High and Dry on Libertarian Front

More than a year ago, Steve Kubby, the medical marijuana advocate Libertarian who ran for governor of California in 1998, took it on the lam to British Columbia to avoid spending four months in a California jail on drug possession charges.

Now he’s been granted the right to grow and smoke large amounts of dope in Canada for medical purposes.

Kubby, who says he smokes weed to control symptoms of adrenal-gland cancer, can now grow up to 59 plants at a time, store up to 2,655 grams of the stuff, nearly 6 pounds, and travel with 360 grams of it. He says he’ll be “cleaning out our garage to start growing.�

But first there’s that little matter of Canadian criminal charges related to 160 plants found in his home in April, and a U.S. request that he be deported from Canada back south of the border.

Closer to home, Gary Copeland, California’s current Libertarian gubernatorial candidate, hasn’t been getting much in the way of “free media,� which is how politicians characterize press coverage, so he’s told Fourth Estaters: Name a charity, go ahead, any charity, and he’ll donate $100 in the reporter’s name.

No strings, but no takers, either. “They think it’s a trap,� says Copeland. “For me, it’s fun. I’m going to donate the money anyway. I’m not going to get press from these people, so I might as well do something worthwhile.�

Copeland’s counting on his ballot statement to do what the press hasn’t: On it he lists his heroes, economist Milton Friedman, philosopher Herbert Spencer and “Star Trek� creator Gene Roddenberry. Watch for a huge Trekkie turnout.

A Captive Audience Even Out of Prison

You’d have thought he was one of their own.

Wait--now he is, almost.

Don Novey, recently retired as president of the California Correctional Peace Officers Assn.--the prison guards union--has just been named by Senate leader John Burton to a $114,000-a-year job on the state Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board.

The Assembly, not to be outdone, even as it strove to pass a budget, took a chunk of time to laud Novey to the heavens a couple of Saturdays ago. The doors opened, the call went out, “Mr. Speaker,� and the resolution honoring Novey, sponsored by Cerritos Democrat Sally Havice, was announced.

The place went churchly quiet. Novey, with his signature fedora, walked in. Most Assembly members gathered about him, going on for more than 20 minutes about his wonderfulness. Novey made a few remarks about some legislators, talked about how his family came to California in the 19th century, and fought in every one of the nation’s wars, and accepted his framed resolution.

A day earlier, the CCPOA gave Gray Davis’ campaign another $253,000, bringing to $1.3 million the total of its contributions to Davis since he’s been in office (on top of the $2 million it gave to help get him there).

Don’t Make Us Send Our People to Collect

If they’d had to wait this long in Vegas for someone to pay up on a bet, there’d be some broken legs.

But L.A. Mayor Jim Hahn is not only waiting for the hot dogs bet by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg on the outcome of the Sparks/Liberty WNBA championship--the Sparks won--but there’s a grocery cart full of other sports bets he’s won that remain uncollected.

The mayor of Charlotte, N.C., still owes honey from a bet when the Sparks beat the Sting last year. The mayor of Sacramento still hasn’t ponied up the promised bottled water after the Lakers beat the Kings. And the mayor of East Rutherford, N.J., is still holding out on the Jersey tomatoes bet against Hahn’s Valley strawberries from the Lakers’ defeat of the Nets.

Does anyone ever pay up on these wacky food bets? Or is it just PR?

Points Taken

* Haim Saban is a big guy with a big house, but it wasn’t big enough for the ever-growing Bill Clinton-Tom Harkin fund-raiser last week for the Democrats’ Senate Victory Committee, so the event was moved to the Beverly Hills Hotel. The next morning, Clinton had the top billing at a fund-raising breakfast for Gray Davis at the estate of grocery magnate Ron Burkle, where seats started at $2,500 per, which is a lot of scrambled eggs.

* In case you were worried about that special-label wine the new Los Angeles cathedral sells in its gift shop, the church can even ladle out vodka if it wishes to, because it holds--in partnership with Patina Group, which operates a number of chic L.A.-area restaurants--a full-range liquor license for the six-acre cathedral and conference center. Drink up.

* Oh sure, $1,000 got you in to the George Bush-Bill Simon Jr. event in Dana Point recently, but on Sept. 20, a mere $10 will get you in to a “light vegetarian repast and wine bar� fund-raiser at the GEM Theater in Garden Grove for Peter Camejo, the Green Party candidate for governor.

* Must be an election year: Gov. Gray Davis showed up in El Monte to praise labor groups and Caltrans for being two months ahead of schedule on a new carpool lane on the San Bernardino Freeway--a lane not scheduled to open until 2004.

* Garden Grove Democratic Rep. Loretta Sanchez is front and center in a 30-second Spanish-language ad for Gray Davis; “When it comes to health care,� she says, “Gray Davis has been our best friend.�

* It’s not easy being ... right. The California chapter of the Young Americans for Freedom, the GOP’s youthful shock troops, is looking for temporary help to coordinate YAF chapters on new campuses. Requirements, says California chairman Chad Morgan, include the ability to “work well with others�--presumably others of like political mind.

You Can Quote Me

“I really don’t want the press to get this.�

-- Bill Simon Jr.’s youngest son, Griffith, age 9, as he frantically tried to mop his shirt front clean of the bright red smears from his dripping cherry snow cone during a Labor Day appearance at the Nixon Library with his family.

*

Taking bids: Challenger Bill Simon Jr.’s campaign, playing off his “pay-to-play� and “coin-operated-governor� gibes at Gov. Gray Davis’ fund-raising, has launched “EGray,� a sendup of the Internet auction site EBay, portraying Davis as seeking donations in exchange for “favorable government action.�

*

Patt Morrison’s columns appear Monday and Tuesday. Her e-mail address is [email protected]. Contributors include Matea Gold, Hugo Martin, Jean O. Pasco and Jenifer Warren.