Cox, departed and missed

Notice something missing as the House Republicans debate who the next majority leader will be?

That’s right, no rumors or guesses or hopes or wild fabrications about Chris Cox lining up support for an even higher GOP post than he already held. (Or, more to the “truth” of all those stories, that support was lining up behind Cox, who was playing the whole thing pretty cool.)

For almost the past decade, such stories have been a happy staple of Orange County political reporting, including items that had Cox seeking a U.S. Senate seat and his name being tossing around as a possible vice presidential candidate.

Now a Google search for John Campbell and Congress is so thin that the first page pulls up a Daily Pilot story from Dec. 8.

Where’s the fun in that?

(Cox, for those who care, did make news this week over at his new post as the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission. According to news reports, Cox said during a lunch with reporters that the SEC next week would propose an overhaul of how companies disclose their pay to top executives. The goal is to make it easier for investors to see how much compensation company leaders get. Businesses are expected to begrudgingly go along with the changes.)

Instead we are left with the wrangle in Costa Mesa over enforcing illegal immigration and what I only can assume is the quiet before the storm in Newport Beach.

Whether the storm will be blowing in 2006 from the direction of Newporters for Responsible Government in the form of its ballot measure to give residents more control over large city spending or from the prevailing Greenlight direction via that group’s proposal for new development restrictions is the question.

And, as mentioned last week, there also should be storms around the seat Newport Beach City Councilman Tod Ridgeway is leaving, Dick Nichols’ seat, and the seat being left by Costa Mesa City Councilman Gary Monahan.

But all those won’t become hot until summer and then not really hot until fall. For now, we all can just watch the jockeying in Washington, D.C., with a wistful sigh -- it’ll be some time before we can expect a party leader to be calling Newport-Mesa home.

Still, Campbell’s about the only GOPer in the House who surely can claim no ties to the scandal involving lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Campbell can say he wasn’t even elected when Abramoff (and old friend of Costa Mesa’s Rep. Dana Rohrabacher) was trolling through the Beltway.

So maybe he’s got a long shot, after all.

(No, I won’t count on it.)

* S.J. CAHN is the editor. He may be reached at (714) 966-4607 or by e-mail at [email protected].

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