Budget Talks May Require Many Cigars on the Patio

At the Sacramento news conference where Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger spilled the beans from his bean-counters apropos of the state budget, he was asked how he expected to persuade the Democrats to go along with his budget cuts.

Said the governor: “Well, I don’t have a specific plan on how I’m going to deal with each one of the legislators and how many cigars I need to smoke with them, and when I get together with them, all of those kinds of things.”

Breaking tobacco with the governor has become the gauge of Capitol insider political trading. Being invited down to the patio outside the governor’s office to chew the legislative fat and puff away on such choice cheroots as the Casillas No. 1 is, for Republicans and even some Democrats, a coveted call.

But where now to puff away? A new state law, AB 846, the Statewide Smoke-Free Entryway Law, prohibits smoking within 20 feet of the entrance to a public building. The old law only extended the zone to five feet.

Violators may have to cough up $100 as a fine -- enough to buy about 18 of the $5.50 Casillas cigars.

Marin Misses Out on Two Endorsements

Earlier this month, Rosario Marin was disappointed, and said so.

The former U.S. treasurer and candidate for the Republican nomination to run against Sen. Barbara Boxer had seen her old boss, former Gov. Pete Wilson, endorse her chief rival, Bill Jones, the former California secretary of state who ran for governor in that other election, the one that didn’t feature Arnold Schwarzenegger.

She was disappointed again last week -- the sitting Republican governor also endorsed Jones, leaving Marin “not surprised but deeply disappointed.” She had been “assured” that Schwarzenegger would keep out of the primaries, and “I took that to heart.” To the good, she has gotten the endorsement of the state’s Republican women legislators -- all five of them.

And on the subject of the Republican Senate primary: If you were making out your check to Tony Strickland’s campaign, stop right there. This Space was wrong when it said last week that Strickland was in the race, along with Jones, Marin and former legislator Howard Kaloogian. He is not.

Just 7 Cameras at Governor’s Event

Living in the shadow of Michael Jackson can be tough, even when your name is Arnold Schwarzenegger. The governor drew just seven cameras for his endorsement news conference with Bill Jones at the Westin LAX on Friday. Schwarzenegger was asked about a report in The Times that his staff is concerned about the impact of celebrity trials on his communications strategy; the governor answered rhetorically, asking if he looked like a guy who was starving for attention.

But after the news conference, John North of KABC-TV in Los Angeles received the following instructions via pager: Unless the governor said something about Michael, his piece would be just a voice-over.

L.A. Officials Head to Far East

While it was back to yellow alert in America, it was green-light time in the Far East for a sizable hunk of Los Angeles officialdom.

Orange had just returned to yellow when the clutch of city officials took off for the Far East -- Hong Kong, Shanghai, Singapore -- on a fact-finding excursion to learn more about operating airports and harbors and protecting them from terrorists.

The passenger manifest: City Councilman Tony Cardenas, Airport Commissioner Miguel Contreras, Deputy Mayor Troy Edwards, who is the airports department’s executive director, and three other folks.

The airfare was picked up by the city airport department and came to $5,943 each -- and that was for coach (you’d think that airport people could find a better deal ... ).

High on Cardenas’ agenda, said spokeswoman Stacy Bellew: finding “great alternatives to ship-docking procedures” to cut pollution, and learning from even bigger cities than L.A. -- such as Shanghai with 13 million -- just how they do it.

Points Taken

* Does the governor know? San Francisco Democratic Assemblyman Leland Yee is backing two measures to control the sale and marketing of violent video games to minors. The first would expand the definition of “harmful matter to children” to extend to human injuries that are “especially heinous, atrocious or cruel,” he said, and the second would require mature-rated games to be kept from small children’s eye level, and away from other video games. (The video game of Schwarzenegger’s “Terminator 3” film is rated “teen,” for 12 years and older.)

* After more than two years of driving all the way out to Dulles International Airport in Virginia to fly home, Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer are asking their fellow Californian, Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta, to allow nonstop flights to California from Washington Reagan National Airport. The Democratic senators are asking for, “at a minimum,” two takeoff-and-landing slots for the cross-country flights. The last airline to hold those slots was TWA, which went bankrupt, and then the Sept. 11 attacks altered airline flight patterns.

The senators asked Mineta to “consider the important benefits that nonstop service would bring to the millions of travelers who fly between California and our nation’s capital each year.” Not least among them -- the 57 members of the state’s Capitol Hill delegation.

* Fifteen California women have been named “scholars” in the Marian Bergeson Excellence in Public Service series, funded by Republican donors, to encourage GOP women candidates. California is the 11th state to adopt the training program. Bergeson, a former Orange County legislator who was education chief under former Gov. Pete Wilson, launched the series in Newport Beach last week. She was the first woman to serve in the state Senate and Assembly.

* Huntington Beach Mayor Cathy Green got her Warholian 15 minutes in the spotlight, appearing on “The Sharon Osbourne Show” to present a key to the city to actor Peter Gallagher, who stars on the Fox show “The O.C.” Green admits she’s never watched the show, but she honored Gallagher anyway, as members of the Huntington Beach High School marching band stood behind the sofa and tootled away. (“The O.C.” is actually set in Newport Beach, HB’s neighbor to the south.)

You Can Quote Me

“It would be great someday to have astronauts in a rover on Mars. But just about anyone except an oil company executive would say it’s more important to have 50 million solar-powered vehicles in the United States.”

-- Sherman Oaks Democratic Rep. Brad Sherman, a member of the House Committee on Science, on the White House proposal for human exploration of Mars.

Patt Morrison’s columns appear Mondays and Tuesdays. Her e-mail address is patt. [email protected] This week’s contributors include Times staff writers Patrick McGreevy, Joe Mathews and Jean O. Pasco.