Centerfold Seeks Exposure for GOP Run

Patricia McClain visits the Reagan Presidential Library for inspiration at least once a week, sleeps with a teddy bear named George W. Bush and casts herself as a good, old-fashioned, family-values conservative. In fact, you might call her positions a little right-of-centerfold.

A former Playboy Playmate--Miss May of 1976--McClain has announced her intention to snag the Republican nomination for Congress from Rep. Elton Gallegly.

To say this will be some trick is to say that the ocean is somewhat moist. Gallegly, a former mayor of Simi Valley, has represented most of Ventura County in Congress for nearly 14 years. McClain has held no office, appointed or elected; beyond her Playboy photo spread, she has had little public exposure.

“But just because I did Playboy 20-some years ago, doesn’t mean I can’t handle the issues,” she said. “It doesn’t mean that I’m not the brightest wick on the candle.”

In a less interesting day, McClain’s effort would have been dismissed as a publicity stunt.

But in a time when voters are mortally bored, and Warren Beatty can be mentioned as a presidential contender, and Jerry Springer can be touted for the U.S. Senate, and the biggest, baddest meanie in the World Wrestling Federation can leap into the Minnesota governor’s mansion, who’s to say McClain can’t make a showing?

Stranger things have happened, though not many.

Jesse “The Body” Ventura did persuade Minnesota voters that he’s more than a loudmouthed lunk, and maybe--just maybe--McClain can persuade Republicans that she’s more than a blond who pouted for the camera 23 years ago in nothing but knee-high snakeskin boots.

“If Jesse Ventura hadn’t won, I would have thought I wouldn’t have a chance,” she said.

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A legal assistant to an Oxnard criminal-defense attorney, McClain lives in a modest home a few blocks from Oxnard’s Silver Strand Beach. It’s also her campaign headquarters, although at this point she has no staff, no handouts, no budget, nobody but herself to handle a flurry of media calls about the ex-Playmate, wannabe politico.

A political newcomer at 43, she insists she can win. She has a portrait of Ron and Nancy on her coffee table, and she cries on her frequent pilgrimages to the Reagan library.

“He said, ‘You can do it, America! You can do it!’ ”

McClain is quick to point out, though, that her background has not been a conventionally Republican one.

In her earlier years, she gave Grand Old Party an entirely new meaning.

As a teenager, she met Hugh Hefner in a Los Angeles nightclub. He asked her to dinner, and the next thing she knew, she was living in the Playboy Mansion.

“I dated every movie star in the world, and everything was at my beck and call,” she said. To her deep regret years later, she indulged in cocaine.

“It was an extravagant and decadent lifestyle,” she said.

She settled down eventually but experienced her share of trouble. She married and divorced twice, and had a son, now 16, who lives with her ex-husband near San Francisco. She was fired from her job as office manager for an exterminator but sued, contending that the dismissal stemmed from her appearance in a Playboy coffee-table book. The case was settled out of court.

For solace in recent years, she has frequented the Reagan library. She said she was a “celebrity campaigner” for Reagan in both of his presidential bids.

“I go there for strength,” she said.

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So with such devotion to Reagan and such ardor for Republicans in general, why is McClain looking to unseat a popular Republican congressman whose home is in the heart of Reagan country?

“This is not about Elton,” McClain said. “I don’t want anyone to think I’m dissatisfied with Elton--because I’m not, at all. It’s just that he’s been there so long. People want new things, and I’m afraid this county is ready to go Democratic. I’m fresh, I’m tenacious and I’m a pistol.”

Like politicians with decades more experience, McClain deplores the moral vacuum she sees on the streets and in the movies. Recently, she walked out of “Eyes Wide Shut.”

“Why are the politicians afraid to attack Hollywood?” she asked. “I’m a product of Hollywood; I’m not afraid of those people.”

Asked what she would do about such films, she was taken aback.

“That’s what aides are for,” she said. “Reagan didn’t do it all alone. He had his aides, his kitchen cabinet.”

Gallegly said that until last week, he’d never heard of Patricia McClain. He wouldn’t speculate on her chances.

“In my particular chosen field, there’s not a lot you can do about other folks’ ambitions except to encourage or discourage,” he said. “Whatever her ambitions might be, that has to be her call.”

Michael Case, Gallegly’s Democratic rival, also wasn’t willing to count McClain out.

“There’s something about wrestlers and Playboy bunnies that piques people’s interest,” he said. “But I’m content to run against Elton. He’s a known quantity.”

Steve Chawkins can be reached at 653-7561 or by e-mail at steve.chawkins@latimes.com.