With 51% of the Elvis Vote, Candidate Trump Might Have Won

Gazillionaire developer Donald Trump, as you’ve no doubt heard, has dropped out of the presidential race. And not “to spend more time with his hair,” as comic Jay Leno declared.

Nope, in an op-ed piece in the New York Times, Trump cited several other reasons, including the “fringe element” of the Reform Party.

Trump complained that when he held a reception for that party’s leaders in Southern California, “the room was crowded with Elvis look-alikes.”

Alas, Trump has again betrayed his political ignorance. Elvis look-alikes are so numerous they constitute a powerful, if untapped, interest group.

With their support, Trump would have been a formidable candidate. They would have asked only that Trump become the first presidential contender to take a stand on whether Elvis is dead or working as George W. Bush’s campaign manager.

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CRUISE LINES: I thought the city of Long Beach was being tough on motorists in one upscale neighborhood when it forbade cruising, which was defined as driving past the same point three times “within four hours” (far right).

But Sal Lombardo of West L.A. found a sign in Mission Hills that outlawed driving past the same point two times “within six hours.” Asked Lombardo “How do you go to the market and back?”

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ON THE ROAD: Dr. Kenneth Barrett of Huntington Beach contributed a snapshot (above) from San Francisco, which, he joked, seems “to have stranger parking codes than we do.”

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Steve Harvey can be reached at (800) LATIMES,

Ext. 77083, by fax at (213) 237-4712, by mail at Metro, L.A. Times, Times Mirror Square, L.A. 90053, and by e-mail at steve.harvey@latimes.com.