Can’t Bury the Hatchet? Then Carry Off the Bride

Bedfellows can make strange politics, especially in this city, where Councilman Rick Norton said Friday he hopes that his arch political foe, Councilwoman Patricia McGuigan, will show up at his wedding Sunday.

The reason is that Norton’s bride-to-be is McGuigan’s daughter, Michele.

Norton said he thinks Councilwoman McGuigan will be there for Sunday’s 4 p.m. nuptials (“Bowers Museum; be there or be square; rock and roll,” the bridegroom said), but he admitted that “I haven’t asked her” whether she is coming.

The councilwoman voted to shut down the swap meet that Norton used to run at Santa Ana Stadium and endorsed another candidate in last year’s election, which put Norton in office. Their relations have not improved since Norton was elected to the council, according to those who attend council meetings.

In fact, the marriage grew out of Norton’s attempt to make political peace with the elder McGuigan.

At a Santa Ana Zoo event in October, Norton asked the councilwoman to lunch “to settle our differences.” McGuigan said she couldn’t fit it in her schedule.

“But I met her daughter, a pretty little thing,” he said. “So I asked her out to lunch.” A month later, the couple became engaged.

“I kept saying to myself, ‘Anybody but Pat McGuigan’s daughter,’ ” Norton said.

Yet, he said, “I’m really in love with her. She’s the most exciting woman I’ve ever known in my life.”

Each has been married before, and each has a son and a daughter from a previous marriage.

Norton, 39, said the whole thing gives him “kind of goosebumps. (It makes you) want to get down on floor and rub your belly. You feel warm and fuzzy.”

Michele McGuigan (whose nickname is Tuesday) said the last she heard, her mother plans to attend. But as to her mother’s reaction to the marriage, she laughed: “I’d better not answer that, I’ll get in trouble. I love my mother. I’m caught in the middle.”

Patricia McGuigan could not be reached for comment.

Michele McGuigan, 28, works at Rancho Santiago College, where she is also a student majoring in psychobiology and on the dean’s list, she said. Although her only political involvement there has been in student government, she has learned the art of the political response.

Asked whether she has plans to run for office outside school, she at first said “No,” then quickly amended it to, “Not at this time.”

“With a background like mine and what I’m getting into, I have to be politically inclined,” she explained.