Moore Clears Her Calendar

Moving up? Westside Assemblywoman Gwen Moore made news last week by announcing tentative plans to seek election next year as California’s secretary of state.

It could happen.

However, observers say a more likely scenario--if state Sen. Diane E. Watson gets the diplomatic appointment she expects from President Clinton--is that Moore will seek Watson’s Senate seat.

“It’s hard to see Gwen risking a run for statewide office when she could win the Senate seat in a blink of an eye,” said one Sacramento political operative.

Moore’s 47th Assembly District covers the western half of the newly redrawn 26th Senate District, which Watson or her successor will represent after next year’s election. The overlapping areas include Rancho Park, Culver City, Palms, Mid-City, Baldwin Hills and Crenshaw.

Moore, chairwoman of the Assembly Utilities and Commerce Committee, has been in the Assembly since 1979. Under the state’s term-limits law, she would have to leave the Assembly by 1996. Watson’s time in the Senate would be up in 1998.

Watson is believed to be a finalist for the job of U.S. consul general to Bermuda.

One person in Moore’s corner, should Watson leave and Moore decides that she wants the Senate seat, is Watson.

“Oh yes, I would definitely support her,” the senator said last week.

Moore’s office, meanwhile, remains circumspect. “We’re focusing our attention on the secretary of state possibility,” spokeswoman Joy Atkinson said.

*

Hollywood to Nassau: Speaking of diplomatic appointments, Sidney Williams of Los Angeles has been named ambassador to the Bahamas by President Clinton.

Williams, 41, the husband of Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles), is a Mercedes-Benz salesman in Hollywood and a former Cleveland Browns football player. He also worked as a Los Angeles City Hall aide to former Councilman David Cunningham.

While he could not be reached for comment about his appointment, Williams told The Times in May when the appointment was already in the works that a job in the Bahamas might make it easier for him to see his wife on weekends. Nassau, the Bahamian capital, is closer to Washington than Los Angeles, he noted.

Waters, it should be remembered, was co-chair of Clinton’s California campaign last year. And that campaign was no small victory for Democrats--it was the first time their candidate carried the state since Lyndon Johnson’s landslide in 1964.

*

Such a hoot: Get ready, Westwood Village. Here comes Hooters, the politically incorrect restaurant whose stock in trade includes chesty waitresses in tight T-shirts and orange athletic shorts.

Atlanta-based Hooters plans to open the first of several Los Angeles-area establishments early next year at the Glendon Avenue spot once occupied by the Charthouse restaurant.

If it goes over, expect other Hooters to blossom soon in Beverly Hills, Century City, Santa Monica and Marina del Rey.

Some folks aren’t happy.

“The welcome mat is out for sleaze,” says Laura Lake, president of Friends of Westwood, who derides the chain’s send-up of the female anatomy as flagrantly sexist. She wants to prevent Hooters from getting a beer and wine license.

Hooters, whose logo features an owl whose eyes resemble breasts, serves beer, wine and spicy chicken wings in 31 states.

But its big draw are its waitresses, known as Hooter Girls. The restaurants do a brisk business in Hooter Girl calendars and trading cards. There’s also a Hooters magazine.

As for the food, one menu item is described as “a conglomerate of shrimp and fishies that, when water is added, doubles as high quality concrete and stucco patching material.”

“We try not to take ourselves seriously,” says Mike McNeil, Hooters’ vice president for marketing.

And his thoughts on the restaurant’s foes? “They’re a handful of political correctness fanatics with nothing better to do,” he said. “But we love them. They help us with publicity wherever we go.”

*

Immigration clash: Since early 1992, Rep. Anthony C. Beilenson (D-Woodland Hills) has been the most outspoken Democrat in the House about the need to curtail illegal immigration.

But he drew the line recently when Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach) sought to bar the National Endowment for the Arts from dispensing money to illegal immigrants.

Beilenson, whose district includes Malibu and Topanga, rose on the House floor to castigate the proposal as duplicating existing law and trivializing the effort to prevent undocumented residents from obtaining public benefits.

Rohrabacher’s proposal was prompted by an incident near Carlsbad last August in which three San Diego performance artists, who were indirectly funded by the NEA, handed out $10 bills to day laborers. The NEA later ruled that the $5,000 grant had to be reimbursed.

Referring to Rohrabacher, Beilenson said: “He is trivializing a very important issue. He is correct that billions of dollars of benefits paid for by American taxpayers get into the hands of people who are here in this country illegally.

“But for him to speak out about a few thousand dollars which were not paid for by federal funds against and, contrary to, the law and to regulations of the endowment itself . . . makes it more difficult to deal with the serious problems.”

Rohrabacher’s proposed ban lost by a 210-204 vote.

*

Council meetings this week:

* Beverly Hills: no meeting. (310) 285-2400.

* Culver City: 7 p.m. Monday. Interim City Hall, Trailer 1, 4095 Overland Ave. (310) 202-5851.

* Los Angeles: 10 a.m. Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. 200 N. Spring St. (213) 485-3126.

* Malibu: 6:30 p.m. Monday, regular meeting; 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, special meeting on Civic Center. Hughes Laboratory, 3011 Malibu Canyon Road. (310) 456-2489.

* Santa Monica: 6:30 p.m. Tuesday. 1685 Main St. (310) 393-9975.

* West Hollywood: 7 p.m. Monday, West Hollywood Park Auditorium, 647 N. San Vicente Blvd. (310) 854-7460.