THE POLITICAL LANDSCAPE:O.C. GOP’s man in 2006: Mayor Allan Mansoor

Costa Mesa Mayor Allan Mansoor was named the Orange County GOP’s local elected official of the year this week for his support of the party and his policies, GOP Chairman Scott Baugh said Wednesday.

The county party’s executive committee chooses the honorees, and they chose Mansoor for several reasons, Baugh said.

“He was deputy chair of he party, and he stepped up to the plate and organized all the precincts for Costa Mesa on behalf of the party,” Baugh said. “In many precincts we had triple coverage” for get-out-the-vote efforts, he added.

Baugh said Mansoor also was honored for being “very courageous on issues of illegal immigration, and he’s been very articulate in demonstrating that the issue of enforcement of immigration laws is not about race but is about the rule of law.”

County Republicans also gave Baugh two more years as chairman, a post he’s held since the April 2004 resignation of Tom Fuentes. Fuentes served as party chair for two decades — any chance Baugh will try to stay in that long?

“I can assure you I will not,” he said.

COMMITTEE ASSIGNMENTS

State legislators apparently got their committee assignments this week, as shown by the statements promptly sent out Wednesday by Costa Mesa Assemblyman Van Tran and Huntington Beach Sen. Tom Harman, who represents Newport-Mesa.

Tran was named vice chairman of the Assembly judiciary committee, and Harman will serve as vice chairman of the Senate judiciary and human services committees.

Harman also noted he got seats on the business and professions, local government and revenue and taxation committees.

HEARINGS ON (657)

A public hearing on possible area code changes for people with the 714 area code will be held Jan. 25 in Huntington Beach. It’s one of three public meetings around Orange County to talk about the future need to either add an “overlay” area code, 657, for new phone numbers issued in parts of Orange County, or to split the 714 zone and give half of the customers the 657 area code.

No one with a 949 area code would be affected by the change, and California Public Utilities Commission officials don’t expect the new code to be needed until 2008. The hearing is from 7 to 9 p.m. next Thursday in the Huntington Beach City Council Chambers.

IN ROMNEY’S CAMP

And a local woman recently made good, politically speaking.

Newport Harbor High School graduate Sarah Pompei will start a new job Friday as a deputy press secretary for former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s 2008 presidential bid.

Pompei, 25, will be based in Boston. Before graduating from Newport Harbor in 1999, she interned at former Newport Beach Rep. Chris Cox’s office, and her other political jobs include a stint as deputy communications director for the California GOP and a campaign staffer for former Montana Sen. Conrad Burns, who lost in November.

Pompei said she’ll be part of a communications department of at least 10 people, but she doesn’t know all the specifics of what she’ll be doing.

“Gov. Romney is someone that I believe in,” because of his fiscally responsible policies and balanced budgets, she said by phone Wednesday.

Politics can be an unstable business, but Pompei said she’s not even thinking about what happens if Romney doesn’t get the GOP nomination.

“Gov. Romney, as far as I’m concerned, is the best man for the job,” she said.