Legislative Softball Game: Dems Demand Recount

Oh sure, here they play softball.

Hardball politics stayed in the dugout as legislators scrambled onto the diamond for what was optimistically christened the first legislative softball game.

The charity game brought out team mascots--the GOP elephant and Democratic donkey--and titled fans, some of whom went bare-chested, and a few of whom shouldn’t have.

Assembly Speaker Bob Hertzberg was only joking, really, when he said he had bet the state budget on the score. But GOP Sen. Bruce McPherson, representing Monterey’s vintages, did win a bottle of Napa Valley tipple from Democratic colleague Wes Chesbro when the Republicans won, 7-3.

Jock quote du jour: A game commentator asked Glendale Democrat Dario Frommer what he saw as the key to victory. Frommer replied, “Winning.”

The hourlong game lasted only four innings. Maybe the other five will be refunded to taxpayers.

A Bolt From the Red, White and Blue

Remember the Gloria Marina preelection phone calls, the female voice doing its best to sound like L.A. County Supervisor Gloria Molina, warning voters not to vote for Antonio Villaraigosa for mayor?

Even if you don’t remember, someone evidently does. . . .

Scott Nunnery, Bubba to his friends, was one of the two operatives in the Xavier Becerra campaign who decided to green-light the Gloria Marina phone calls. The D.A.’s office said the calls did not rise to the level of a crime, but they certainly sank civic politics to a different level altogether.

Then, about three weeks after the June 5 mayoral election, Bubba Nunnery--the same man, a wise source attests--was playing golf at a fund-raiser in Broomfield, Colo., when he was struck by lightning and hospitalized briefly.

Freak weather? Or karma?

The Bay City’s D.C. Log-Rollers

Sometimes the way politicians play politics with one another is a lot more interesting than the way they play politics with the country.

Nancy Pelosi, the San Francisco Democrat who wants to get California back in the leadership saddle in Congress, now reportedly leads her Maryland rival in the vote count for the job of minority whip; “whip” is each party’s No. 2 honcho, a metaphorical title that involves no actual whipping, we are assured.

The weekly publication the Hill reports 90 votes for Pelosi--many of which she has in writing--against 71 for Maryland’s Steny Hoyer. It takes 108 to be elected in the secret-ballot voting this fall.

California’s humongous delegation has helped: 30 of Pelosi’s supporters are fellow Golden Staters. One California name on Hoyer’s list, though, is Walnut Creek’s Ellen Tauscher.

Tauscher is working her own angles. Roll Call’s “Heard on the Hill” column reports that Dianne Feinstein may be thinking of stepping up to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. come 2004, and Tauscher is right behind her, sending out e-mail suggesting that a Feinstein PAC could be “a preliminary step” in that direction. If Feinstein were to win, who knows what other Bay Area woman with the initials E.T. might have a run at her Senate seat?

The Curse of the Gang of Five?

A dozen years ago they were Sacramento’s Gang of Five, the Democratic dissidents trying to topple the uber-speaker of the Assembly, Willie Brown. History records that they failed, and for a time were exiled to the outer darkness before some were recalled to favor and restored to the right hand of Willie.

But things have still not gone well for the five:

Rusty Areias, although he is now Gov. Gray Davis’ director of parks and recreation, saw his family’s longtime Los Banos dairy and champion herd auctioned off to the bank.

Gerald Eaves became a San Bernardino County supervisor. Last month he pleaded no contest to official misconduct, including not revealing three trips to Canada paid for by an attorney working for a firm that got millions in county contracts. Eaves can’t run for another public office for four years, when his supervisorial stint expires.

Charles Calderon and his wife were recent victims of identity theft.

Steve Peace, still in the state Senate, is getting heat for being one of the fathers of deregulation. In another life, Peace produced the cult film “Attack of the Killer Tomatoes,” whose cast of extras included Peace’s friend and fellow Gang of Fiver, Gary Condit, a congressman whose current reversal of fortune is being well-chronicled.

Reporters awaiting an interview with California’s chief energy negotiator in the D.C. offices of Gov. Davis were shown into a room whose walls were adorned with 8-by-10 color glossies of the state’s congressional delegation. Among all 54, only one framed face was missing: that of Gary Condit.

Turns out it’s up to the lawmaker to send the photo, and Condit’s people hadn’t yet done so. They must have other things on their minds these days.

Coals to Newcastle, Cash to Issa

He’s the second-richest man in Congress, the car-alarm king with a fortune that wanders somewhere between $56 million and $203 million. And yet there he was, at his own fund-raiser.

Carlsbad Republican Darrell Issa, whose district lies partly in San Diego County and partly in Orange County, contented himself with a seat in Congress after losing a shot at the U.S. Senate in 1998. The candidate, who could finance his own campaign and probably a few others, even lured former Gov. Pete Wilson to his Orange County fund-raiser. Wilson was the event’s star, joshing and joking that losing his doomed run for president “was probably the best thing that ever happened to me.”

Quick Hits

* To everyone who’s been asking, LAPD sergeant and newly elected City Council member Dennis Zine says he does not pack heat at council meetings, and he’s on leave of absence from the force until his retirement takes effect in January and he becomes a reserve officer.

* Long Beach Democrat Gerrie Schipske, who came within 2,000 votes of unseating Republican Rep. Steve Horn last time around, wants a rematch in what she hopes is a more Dem-friendly redrawn 38th Congressional District.

* The L.A. law firm Manatt Phelps & Phillips--a traditional Democratic powerhouse--opens its Orange County branch next month with conservative ex-Republican Assemblyman Scott Baugh and moderate Republican rainmaker Christine Diemer Iger in two of the six chairs.

* Remember us saying that Edison Miller was the last Democratic supervisor to serve in Orange County? He wasn’t--it was Ralph Clark. Miller was the last Democrat appointed to the job.

* Gov. Davis’ press office inadvertently e-mailed confidential data about daily electricity prices to reporters, and then compounded the mistake by “recalling” the e-mail, which only served to get people reading what they might otherwise have ignored.

Word Perfect

“May the fiercely independent spirit of the Scots be visited on Sen. McPherson on the next budget vote.”

--State Senate President Pro Tem John Burton to colleague Bruce McPherson, a Santa Cruz Republican who showed up on the Senate floor in kilts and Balmoral cap. The Senate voted unanimously to add an official state tartan to a list that already includes an official state dance, fossil and soil. The “independent” was Burton’s way of reminding McPherson that Democrats need at least one Senate GOP vote to kick the stalled state budget out and onto the governor’s desk.

Columnist Patt Morrison’s e-mail is patt.morrison@latimes.com. This week’s contributors include Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, Mark Z. Barabak, Tina Daunt, Jean Merl, Dan Morain, Jean O. Pasco and Jenifer Warren.