Vendor’s Dogged Pursuit Pays Off : Laws: After 8 1/2 years, hot dog seller Mort Diamond of Canoga Park is making headway in his battle to revamp regulations.

Call it the great hot dog crusade. And call 63-year-old Canoga Park resident Mort Diamond a hot dog warrior nonpareil.

The way Diamond tells it, all he ever wanted to do was sell hot dogs.

Frankly, he had no interest in pleading with the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors for the right to sell his franks on the street. He didn’t want to have to twice run for the Los Angeles City Council to try to settle his beef. And he didn’t relish taking on the top dogs in the state Legislature.

But he did.

And after 8 1/2 years of battling to ply his chosen trade, Mort Diamond is finally winning. In fact, if everything remains on track, by this time next month he’ll be the co-author of new state legislation that will allow hot dog vendors to store both their carts and their wieners at home.

The existing law, a thick and hard-to-understand document called the California Uniform Retail Food Facilities Law, regulates restaurants and other facilities that serve food. That is the law that dogged Mort eight years ago before forcing him out of business. That is why Mort hasn’t sold one of his All-American, all-beef hot dogs since June 30, 1988--and why he fought back.

“A county health official told me, ‘If this is the regulation, then you need to go out there and change it,’ ” Diamond said, happy to retell the story. “I told him, ‘You just said that to the wrong person.’ ”

Diamond’s collision with the powers-that-be is a testament, he said, to all the little guys who were ground into submission by arcane rules and the government bureaucrats who enforce them.

Mixing frankfurter facts with snatches of populism, Diamond comes off as kind of a cross between Huey Long and Oscar Meyer.

“Hot dogs,” said Diamond, “are an American tradition. And it’s a shame people feel they have to put a stop to it. Americans eat an average of 80 hot dogs a year. I don’t know why they’re trying to get rid of the little hot dog guys.”

For Diamond, the trouble started in the mid-’80s after he opened a hot dog stand at Sherman Way and Owensmouth Street to feed the hungry passersby. And for awhile, things went well.

But his downfall was storing his wienies in a local market and parking his cart in his front yard. That, he learned, was a violation of the law.

He was written up by a county health inspector. His operating permit was revoked by county officials. He was about to take a descent into the depths of bureaucracy that would forever change his life.

For years, he attended public hearings, traded letters with politicians, ran in--and lost--elections, campaigning on a “free the wienies” platform. Finally, he found two champions, Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich--who backed a change in county regulations that Diamond found did not quite solve his problem--and state Sen. Richard G. Polanco (D--Los Angeles), who is sponsoring the hot dog deregulation bill in the Legislature.

The bill is now steaming through the Senate Health and Human Services Committee. There is no guarantee though that someone will not cook up opposition to Polanco’s bill, which, presuming it clears the committee, still must pass the full state Senate, Assembly and win the signature of Gov. Pete Wilson.

“It’s going to be tough because of the restaurant associations who think the vendors might be getting an unfair advantage,” said Polanco aide Yen Nguyen.

And, she admitted, not even Diamond’s political operatives are entirely sold on the product.

“Everyone knows me as the ‘hot dog bill person,’ and the ironic thing is that I don’t even eat meat,” Nguyen said.

Even if he does win this battle, Diamond said he might never take his cart on the road again. “After fighting this for 8 1/2 years, my doctor said I can’t do any more heavy lifting because I hurt my back,” he said.

Still, he is not ready to sell his pride and joy--the little, red cart--where, in simpler times, he sold hot dogs without realizing that was a gateway to revolutionary politics.

“I’ve had many offers to sell it,” he said. “But I wouldn’t sell it. It’s a symbol of the plight of the small businessman.”