Mittermeier Could Use Dramatic Touch

Sacramento has the Quackenbush Affair, which recently landed the state insurance commissioner on the hot seat before a Senate committee.

Orange County has the Mittermeier Matter, which will force our chief executive officer back to the hot seat next week before the Board of Supervisors.

An aside: Whatever happened to embattled pols with short names that fit neatly into headlines? These two should be thankful they’re not working in New York. They’d see themselves identified in the tabloid press as Quack and Mitt.

The Mittermeier Matter might be hurtling toward a climactic finish. Word has it that a majority of supervisors has decided to remove El Toro airport planning from airport expert Mittermeier and give it to someone else.

Not themselves, one hopes.

Jan Mittermeier has dodged the no-confidence bullet before and has insisted anew she won’t stand for such a significant reduction in duties. Her logic is flawless: What self-respecting CEO would settle for shifting the corporation’s biggest project to someone else’s supervision?

Unlike Chuck Quackenbush, however, Mittermeier has not yet stormed out of a meeting with her panelists. Whether that stems from her fundamental ignorance of the elements of good theater or merely a genuine lack of motivation is unknown.

But stay tuned. She’s being advised by local attorney Wylie Aitken, who once helped Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez battle Bob Dornan in public and, therefore, knows how to work a room.

Conspiracy Theorizing

Quackenbush needed a smoking gun to wave at the senators. Instead, he found a smoking e-mail.

He produced a rather dated electronic exchange between a couple of Democratic staffers in which one suggested that Democrats needed to “ambush” Quackenbush, a Republican, to gain maximum political advantage.

Mittermeier has had no such prop. What she needs is a tape.

Where’s Linda Tripp when you need her?

It may be too late, but Mittermeier needs something like the following, a late-night, somewhat garbled phone conversation between Supervisors Chuck Smith and Jim Silva.

Silva: What should we do about the Jan thing?

Smith: Well, let’s not vote her a raise.

Silva: Very funny. She’ll never give up El Toro. It’s her baby. Besides, the public will wonder why we’re taking El Toro away from the one person who knows the most about airports.

Smith: Jim, sometimes you really disappoint me. It’s very simple. We simply give her additional duties.

Silva: Additional duties? I thought the whole idea was to--

Smith: Duties like requiring that she buy gifts for our secretaries on all major holidays. Duties like making her read the paper aloud to us every morning at 9. Duties like requiring she give us haircuts every other Thursday.

Silva: I didn’t know she had barbering skills.

Smith: Good grief, man, you really don’t get it, do you?

Silva: Wait a second. Are you saying that we give her bogus jobs so she quits in a huff?

Smith: Exactly. How do you think she’d feel if we sent her out every noon to buy hot dogs from the street vendor?

Silva (excitedly): We could really mess with her mind and tell her we wanted ketchup on the dogs and then when she comes back, we tell her we wanted mustard.

Smith (chuckling): Good one. That’ll drive her nuts.

Silva: Will it play with the public?

Smith: Most of them are working people. For the money she makes, they’ll be surprised she doesn’t already make hot dog runs for us.

Silva: Count me in. Let’s do it.

Sly foxes that they are, Silva and Smith--with help--could definitely cook up something like this.

Mittermeier can only hope.

If she produces such a tape, I don’t know how the Orange County papers would play it, but I can see the tabloid headlines now:

“Mitt to Supes: Drop Dead!”

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by calling (714) 966-7821 or by e-mail to dana.parsons@latimes.com