He Walks the Walk and Talks the Talk, but He Can’t Sign a ‘Bill’

President Clinton has been spotted in recent days fawning all over Rep.-elect James E. Rogan.

He has been seen giving the Glendale Republican advice, arranging the young congressman’s schedule and bending over backward to help him adjust to the ways of the nation’s capital. In fact, records show, the president is even on Rogan’s payroll and, like Rogan, is registered with the GOP.

Confused? So are the many Washingtonians who swear they saw President Clinton at Rogan’s side this week.

Welcome to another day in the life of Greg Mitchell, a 29-year-old congressional aide who has brought his Clinton look-alike act to Washington from California, where it played to rave reviews.

Mitchell is such a dead ringer for the president that he has moonlighted in recent years as a Clinton look-alike, earning between $250 and $1,500 each time he turns on a fake Arkansas accent, throws out some political humor and poses for unofficial White House photographs.

Since 1992, Mitchell has worked as a staffer in retiring Rep. Carlos J. Moorhead’s Glendale office. Last week, after being named Rogan’s chief of staff, he came to Washington, where his resemblance is being noticed even more among the city’s political junkies than it was back home.

But for all his celebrity, Greg Mitchell thinks he looks like Greg Mitchell.

“I can see the resemblance sometimes when I see Clinton at certain angles, but I really don’t see us as being dead ringers,” he said.

Other people certainly do. His friends have taken to calling him Bill. Asked about his aide by a Capitol Hill reporter, Rogan quipped: “I always say that Greg’s a wonderful guy and a great chief of staff, but there’s just something about his face I don’t trust.”

After watching Clinton over and over on C-SPAN to learn his gestures and speaking style and cutting his hair to resemble the president’s, Mitchell signed on with a handful of celebrity look-alike firms and has made an estimated 100 appearances as the president over the past year and a half.

Mitchell has even met the man from Hope himself.

As the president--the real one--shook hands with admirers after a speech at Glendale College earlier this year, he came across his body double. When Mitchell told the president that some people consider them look-alikes, Clinton studied Mitchell’s face for a moment, then shook his head.

“Naw,” he told Mitchell. “You’re young and handsome.”

Green Fees

Now that the city Planning Commission has approved the controversial 18-hole golf course for the environmentally sensitive Big Tujunga Wash (story on B1), it is only a matter of time before the decision ends up in the lap of the Los Angeles City Council.

The project has long been criticized by environmentalists who argue that it will disturb the plant and wildlife habitat along one of the last “untamed” rivers in Los Angeles County.

It is still unclear how the project will fare in the council. What is clear is that the backers of the project have invested a lot of cash to make sure the project moves ahead.

According to recent reports filed with the city’s Ethics Commission, Kajima Engineering & Construction, the firm that plans to build the course, has spent more than $89,000 on lobbyists to get permits approved for the project.

In the past four months alone, Kajima ranked second in spending on lobbyists behind Union Oil, which is trying to get permits approved to open mini-markets that sell liquor in several of its gas stations.

City Hall insiders expect the lobbying to begin in earnest as the council prepares to consider the project and council members and hopefuls gear up for the April elections.

The lobbyists hired by Kajima, Planning Associates Inc. and Mark Armbruster, have already contributed to the political campaigns of Ted Stein, a candidate for city attorney, and City Council President John Ferraro.

VOICE Vote

When election volunteers for the community group VOICE got together Wednesday to celebrate their successful get-out-the-vote effort, several Valley elected officials dropped by to say thanks.

One of them, Rep. Howard Berman (D-Panorama City), said a look at precinct voting patterns showed both a massive increase in voter registration and voter turnout, attributable to the group’s efforts.

“‘I wanted to congratulate them on implementing what is part of the American dream,” Berman said in an interview.

Other elected officials at the recognition dinner: newly elected Assembly members Bob Hertzberg and Tony Cardenas and Los Angeles City Councilman Richard Alarcon.

All are Democrats, the party most likely to benefit from increased voter participation in heavily Latino communities.

The group’s activities were centered around three Catholic parishes in the northeast Valley. A Unitarian church in Studio City and a temple in Valley Village also took part, said Gary Smith, an organizer for VOICE (Valley Organized in Community Efforts).

In addition to a voter registration drive, the group identified 16,800 occasional voters, who were urged to vote.

Smith said 637 people, including 140 precinct captains, participated in phone calls and door-to-door canvassing of targeted voters.

Not surprisingly, the sales pitch to Latino voters focused on the need to participate in the electoral process in the wake of Proposition 187.

For other voters, many of them working-class, the issue used to motivate them was the minimum-wage proposition.

Smith said the group hopes to make the precinct operation permanent.

“Politics is what happens between elections,” he said.

Rubs Him the Wrong Way If nothing else, Councilman Nate Holden will go down in the annals of Los Angeles history as one of the city’s most persistent politicians.

Evidence of this came this week, when the council approved tough, new regulations for massage therapists to help draw a clearer line between legitimate businesses and brothels.

Holden didn’t have strong opposition to the regulations, which would require therapists to have up to 500 hours of training at a state-certified school.

In fact, he seemed happy to hear that the law would also impose a dress code on massage therapists “so they can’t have some skimpy dresses,” as he put it.

But he worried that a recently approved ordinance that legalizes home-based businesses would open the door to massage parlors in every neighborhood in the city.

For months, Holden has railed against the home-based business law that was proposed by Councilwoman Laura Chick, saying it will ruin the character of single-family-home neighborhoods.

Now, he argued, the ordinance will allow massage parlors next to homes and schools.

“The people should rise up and protest this thing,” he shouted during a council meeting. “It’s going to get completely out of control!”

Chick’s staff concedes that the home-based-business law will allow massage therapists to operate in residential areas. But her aides argue that it won’t get out of control because the law only allows licensed therapists to have one customer at a time at a home.

The law also gives the city the authority to fine therapists or any other home-based business if the business creates a neighborhood nuisance that actually does cause people to “rise up and protest.”

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QUOTABLE: “I’m surprised to hear VICA propose more than doubling the number of elected officials.” --Councilwoman Ruth Galanter, on a Valley Industry and Commerce Assn. proposal that would boost the number of council members from 15 to 35