The Usual Suspects

As we edge from the rainy season into the local political season, I am instinctively taken with the urge to wail in grief, like a paid mourner at a Mafia funeral.

It is a conditioned reflex, because there is usually no one who ever runs for anything that I am inclined to vote for, and that makes me sad. Sadder still, the ones I wouldn’t vote for are usually the ones who win.

But as I study the candidates who managed to meet L.A.’s filing deadline last Tuesday, I am encouraged to believe that this year may be different.

Not only are there candidates who are able to create windstorms with the velocity of their oratory, but we also have the prospect of Latinos wrestling each other to the ground in order to manifest the need for an ethnic mayor. That may seem a little counterproductive, but that’s just the way it is, ole!

Encouraged as I am, however, at the prospect of some real political theater in 2001, I have come to realize that none of the 24 candidates for mayor really fill an essential need, which is to reflect and symbolize exactly who and what we are out here at the edge of the known world.

We need someone with show biz flamboyance, someone with the quality of instant recognition, someone who can say, by word and appearance, “I Am L.A.!”

Might I suggest a write-in campaign for the ageless, relentlessly visible, irrepressibly present Angelyne?

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Those new in town have probably wondered at the occasional billboard that features the baby-doll face of the kewpie-lipped, full-bosomed blond lady who seems to be everywhere for no apparent reason. That’s Angelyne.

Her qualifications as a candidate are that she has no real qualifications other than a desire to be seen, which is not unlike the prime mission of just about every politician I’ve ever known. The big difference is that when Angelyne is seen, there’s something to look at.

“‘I am,” she once remarked, “famous for doing nothing.”

That also qualifies her to succeed Little Dickie Riordan, who is similarly famous for doing, well, not much. Doing nothing is, in fact, probably best for someone in the position of mayor. Doing something usually means disaster for the rest of us.

Angelyne is a perfect metaphor for those who strive with limited talent and remarkable ingenuity to achieve individuality. If that isn’t politics, we’ve all been out of town for the past 200 years.

There is an air of mystery about Angelyne that no one has been able to penetrate, which makes her instantly appealing. Why, for instance, does she appear on billboards? She won’t say. How does she afford the billboards? She won’t say. I asked her once why she calls herself a “love goddess,” to which she giggled and replied quick as a wink, “Because I love God.”

In this age of Temptation Island, loving God and possessing a stunning bustline may comprise the ultimate qualification for a historic landslide victory.

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In various City Council races, there are candidates like Tom Hayden, Art Goldberg and Joe Connolly who will add the political equivalent of cherry bombs in an outhouse to the campaigns in their districts.

Conservatives salivate like dogs at the very mention of Hayden, who continues to possess the rabble-rousing qualities of his Yippie Years. Goldberg, also a ‘60s rebel from the streets of Berkeley, is a one-time Maoist who can have you marching in protest before you know why or for what. And graffiti-fighter Connolly presents a manner of unpunctuated, cyclonic oratory that rattles windows five miles away.

In the race for mayor, Melrose Larry Green will jump up and down a little and online journalist Joe Shea may shake things up, but other than that we are left with the usual suspects, a smattering of old pols and preening unknowns who couldn’t get their mother’s vote if they dragged her in chains to the polling place.

I almost forgot the Latinos. Xavier Becerra and Antonio Villaraigosa are like tag-team wrestlers on the same side who spend their time headlocking each other while their adversaries strut around the ring proclaiming victory. They’ll still be headlocking when the bout is over and everyone has gone home.

That leaves us with Angelyne. She told me once she was orphaned in childhood and raised by foster parents in Idaho. No one paid much attention to her, which is why she craves attention now. Who cares if it’s true? A waif from the Potato State trying to make it in a town that eats its young? That’s Hollywood, dude. That’s show biz. That’s politics.

Someone dry my tears. I think we have a winner here.

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Al Martinez’s column appears Sundays and Wednesdays. He can be reached online at al.martinez@latimes.com