Boy, You Just Can’t Take Those San Diegans Anywhere

First the bash. Now the backlash.

A discordant note is being sounded from Sacramento.

Not so much about Pete or Gayle, but rather those people they brought with them. Those hometowners, those middle-aged, middle-of-the-road madcaps, those SAN DIEGANS.

“The city of San Diego is a little different,” the Sacramento Bee told its parishioners via a blind quote. “They’re all weird.”

Callers to a popular Sacramento radio talk show were puzzled by these prosperous people who came to town wearing furs and brown shoes, bubbling about America’s Finest City and gushing about Wayne Newton.

The talk show host fanned the callers’ doubts about these exotic people from so far away:

Who is this Pete Wilson fellow who looks down his nose at Sacramento and can only have fun by importing a bunch of goofy people from San Diego?

And what’s this about him shipping in Mexican food from a restaurant in San Diego? Is our carne asada not good enough?

That aside, the Wilson camp was not oblivious to culture clash.

The Chicken was asked, politely but firmly, not to appear at any inaugural events other than the San Diego-theme party Saturday night. The rationale: The Chicken is a kind of humor best kept within the family.

KFMB’s Mac Hudson and Joe Bauer, recruited to host the Saturday party, joked that Sacramento and San Diego have something in common: Neither has a professional basketball team. The San Diegans laughed themselves silly. The Sacramentans were stony. The Sacramento Kings, though cellar dwellers, are the local pride and joy.

Next day, Wilson tried to put things right. He predicted an NBA championship for Sacramento before his administration is over.

It was a BIG applause line.

It was played repeatedly on radio news as a sign that maybe the new governor is OK, even if he does have odd friends.

From the Elephant’s Mouth

Republicans and other outrages.

* Not everybody is mourning that San Diego won’t be hosting the 1992 Republican convention.

Among those celebrating: the Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers, the National Urban League, the International Assn. of Auditorium Managers and the SPJS jewelry show.

Those are the groups whose 1992 conventions would have been bounced from the San Diego Convention Center to make way for the Republicans.

* Lost opportunities.

San Diego lost the convention to Houston when the latter put up $3 million in public money.

San Diego could have raised that much by upping the hotel-motel tax by a penny or a penny and a half. Paid by tourists, not residents.

But no City Council member wanted to risk the wrath of the Hotel-Motel Assn.

* Sore losers.

There’s talk of San Diego buying billboards for August, 1992, in Houston when the temperature there is over 100 and the humidity not far behind.

The boards would show a beach scene from sunny but mild San Diego: Wouldn’t You Rather Be Here?

* One big-time Republican fund-raiser from San Diego, who attended the showdown meeting Monday in Sacramento with White House Chief of Staff John Sununu, is so mad that he’s talking of T-shirts: Let the Republicans Fry in Houston!

* Disgruntled Republican: “So much for Pete Wilson’s clout.”

Dear Saddam . . . STOP . . .

The home front.

* Students at Oceanside Christian School will send a telegram Friday to Saddam Hussein urging him to “do whatever is necessary to avert war.”

Two dozen of the students are children of Camp Pendleton Marines deployed in Saudi Arabia.

* Proof that the ‘60s are returning.

A rally and “teach-in” on the Persian Gulf crisis is planned today at UC San Diego. Sponsored by the student-run Committee for World Democracy.

Other topics to be discussed: racism, the media, the environment, the economy, U.S. policy in the Middle East and domestic social programs.