Candidate’s Party Plans Blown Sky High When Bomb Squad Takes Over

All the candidate wanted to do was invite the judge to his party.

But one man’s gimmicky party invitation is another man’s “suspicious package.”

And so it was that sheriff’s arson investigators blew up district attorney candidate Steve Cooley’s talking greeting card to Superior Court Judge Patrick T. Meyers in the parking lot of the Norwalk courthouse.

Law enforcement types who neutralized the potential threat reported only that the packet had been “rendered safe.”

“I can confirm that Mr. Cooley’s fine invitation was blown to smithereens,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. John F. Lynch, who heads the prosecutor’s Norwalk office.

Meyers, who presides over Department H in Norwalk, received the 5-by-8-inch packet July 6. It was one of many mailed to potential Cooley supporters. Cooley is waging a fierce challenge to his boss, Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti.

The judge thought about opening the packet, then thought better of it, according to Lynch’s account. There was, after all, no return address and he didn’t recognize the handwriting.

Better safe than sorry, his bailiff advised, trundling the packet downstairs to the metal detector. Eyebrows were raised when something resembling a battery with a wire was detected.

The sheriff’s arson and explosives experts were summoned and the suspicious package was rendered unsuspicious at 1 p.m.--the height of the lunch break.

The invitation was for a fund-raiser Sunday at the Manhattan Beach home of Tim Clegg, whose company makes the talking greeting cards.

Cooley said he does not know whether the judge made it to his fund-raiser.

He added that he heard about the blow-up “from another deputy D.A., who heard it from another deputy D.A.”

Judge Meyers declined comment, as did Garcetti.

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Times staff writer Patrick McGreevy contributed to this story.