Some Last-Minute Thoughts on the Recall Election

You won’t have the recall to kick around anymore after Tuesday -- to paraphrase Richard Nixon’s famous farewell press conference at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in 1962 after he lost the governor’s race to Pat Brown. (You may remember that he did get elected president six years later).

So here we are, batting cleanup:

* In the heart of Hollywood, a Hollywood vote: At the local Chamber of Commerce’s 15th annual business expo late last month, a straw poll on the recall and the candidates drew ballots from about a quarter of those in attendance. They lined up 55% in favor of recalling Gov. Gray Davis, 45% against. And 38% of them voted for Arnold Schwarzenegger, 15% for Tom McClintock, 12% for Cruz Bustamante and 3% for Arianna Huffington.

Angelyne, whose vote was negligible, got the biggest round of applause -- this was in Hollywood, remember.

* The California Governor’s Conference for Women, the 17th annual, is still scheduled for Oct. 22 -- but with which governor? Both First Lady Sharon Davis and her husband are scheduled to speak at the event -- as is actor and children’s book author Jamie Lee Curtis, a Schwarzenegger co-star who in 2001 joined three of his other co-starring women to protest a Premiere magazine article alleging Schwarzenegger’s boorish conduct on movie sets. Since a Times story last week on the same subject, Schwarzenegger has acknowledged that he acted inappropriately toward some women and apologized.

* With Tuesday’s voting promising to bring about a quarter-million first-time voters to a drastically reduced number of polling places, perhaps the GOP gubernatorial candidate could couple his pledge to end the state’s high-occupancy vehicle carpool lanes with a pledge to institute an HOV lane in polling places -- for “high-occasion voters” who know the ropes.

* If the votes “trend” the way the polls have, to use the pundits’ verb, news readers nationwide will have to learn how to pronounce the name of the new governor of California -- four syllables, “SHWARTZ-EN-EGG-ER.” Many of them have been sliding into the easier-to-pronounce “SWORTZ-NEG-ER,” or even just falling back on “Arnold.”

* The Santa Monica restaurant that what’s-his-name founded, Schatzi on Main, and where he still maintains an upstairs office, was cited in August for a health code violation for “unsafe food temperatures” and “serious/repeated violations or interfering with inspector.” The candidate hasn’t operated the restaurant for about five years, but click on his face on the restaurant Web site (www.schatzi-on-main.com) and it sends you to his campaign site. In July, the restaurant was downgraded from an A to a B in the health department’s equivalent of movie ratings. (Schwarzenegger’s “Terminator” movies carry an R rating.)

Hollywood Politicians Are Not So Liberal

Voters are accustomed to hearing Republican candidates rousing the faithful by railing about the liberal politics in Hollywood, but it’s the Republican actors who have actually run for office: Schwarzenegger is the latest in a line that stretches to Republican actors Ronald Reagan and George Murphy, Congressman Sonny Bono and ambassador and onetime Republican congressional candidate Shirley Temple Black.

Fred Thompson was a Republican senator from Tennessee before he returned to acting in “Law & Order,” and “Love Boat” Republican actor Fred Grandy served in Congress. Now, comedian Dennis Miller is being bruited about as a GOP candidate to take on Sen. Barbara Boxer.

Among the few Democratic elected actors was Helen Gahagan Douglas, the congresswoman who lost to Richard Nixon for a California Senate seat in a fabled campaign in which Nixon accused her of being “pink” -- as in a Communist sympathizer -- “down to her underwear,” stamping her with the epithet “Pink Lady.”

Points Taken

* Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s office may soon be hearing from Gray Davis aides if the governor loses in Tuesday’s election; California’s senior senator has an opening for a speechwriter/deputy press secretary.

* Among the anti-endorsements lining up against Proposition 54 is Los Angeles Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley, who says the initiative’s exemptions for law enforcement are “vague” and the measure has “the potential of undermining law enforcement, harming our ability to provide public safety.” And endorsing Prop. 54: the Log Cabin Republicans of California, an affiliate of the national group representing gay GOP membership.

* Who says there’s no good government in Washington, D.C.? The entire 35-person staff of St. Genevieve High School in Panorama City, including teachers, receptionist and custodian, is traveling to D.C. to receive the National School of Character Award -- California’s first high school and the nation’s only Catholic school to get the honor, a spokesman said.

* Franz Wisner, once an operative to Gov. Pete Wilson, has a new book coming out next year, about the politics of -- love. Wisner was all ready for marriage and moving up at the Irvine Co. when his fiancee balked at the altar four years ago. So Wisner took his brother, Kurt, on the prepaid honeymoon to Costa Rica, and they’ve just kept going, traveling the globe and sending along chatty e-mails now being compiled in “Honeymoon With My Brother.”

* Rep. Grace Napolitano (D-Norwalk) threw a little Capitol Hill do for one of her Pomona constituents, Sugar Shane Mosley, the 2003 super-welterweight world champion boxer.

You Can Quote Me

“When Arnold first mentioned five or so years ago he was thinking of running, I bet there were a lot of quiet chuckles. I bet in the [Kennedy] family pool you could’ve gotten some real good odds and made some real good money.”

Bill Dal Col, a Republican strategist remarking on the fact that of all the Kennedy men of Schwarzenegger’s generation, by birth and marriage, Schwarzenegger the Republican was the one to make it big.

Patt Morrison’s columns appear Mondays and Tuesdays. Her e-mail address is patt.morrison@latimes.com. This week’s contributors include Mark Z. Barabak and Patrick McGreevy.