For Lieutenant Governor, Secret’s All in the Acting

When the cat’s away, the mice cut loose, but the top rodent doesn’t seem to be having much fun. With Gov. Gray Davis out of state, Government Code Section 12058 dictates that the lieutenant governor, Cruz Bustamante, steps out of his understudy job to become “acting governor.”

In the past, the No. 2 stand-ins have used their fleeting powers to appoint judges and sneak in pet programs. Mike Curb--the Republican lieutenant governor to Jerry Brown’s Democratic top billing--took advantage of Brown’s absence to roll back pollution controls, and he once sped to the Capitol to appoint a judge before Brown reentered California airspace.

But perhaps the most inventive use of absentee chief executive fiat came in 1999, when Senate leader John Burton briefly held the reins while both Davis and Bustamante were gone. Burton grandly issued a proclamation declaring Feb. 4 to be “Keely Smith Appreciation Day.”

The fax that arrived last week in Sacramento newsrooms from “Cruz M. Bustamante, Acting Governor” urgently reported that he had appointed a panel to study “issues involved in the labor dispute between the North [San Diego] County Transit District and Teamsters Local 542.”

Hurry back, Gray; the excitement could be too much.

Now You See It, Now You Don’t

First, Time Warner Cable in Garden Grove produced a 30-second campaign spot opposing Tuesday’s reelection of Hawthorne Councilman Steve Andersen. Then it yanked the ad from its own airwaves.

Time Warner said it pulled the ad on a lawyer’s advice, but wouldn’t spill the beans on the nature of the problem.

The ad showed footage of Andersen at a council meeting while a voice in the background--called a “growl” in campaign parlance--accused him of wanting to raise the city utility tax, opposing competitive bidding on the city’s trash contract and “working hard to keep the nude strip club open.”

The ad also said Andersen supports closing Hawthorne Airport, the subject of an advisory measure on Tuesday’s ballot--all data derived from public records, according to campaign consultant Frank Caterinicchio, who wrote the ad.

Andersen said he knew nothing about the ad but was happy to hear that it didn’t air. He was particularly miffed about the nude club reference. “It was a last-minute, cheap hit,” he said.

The slate that already put up $5,000 to run the ad, a slate including the incumbent mayor and two council hopefuls, has had to settle instead for polite, civic-minded ads urging Hawthorne residents to get out and vote.

Roguish Humor From Jim Rogan

It’s been a two-strike season for Jim Rogan. He lost his congressional seat last November. His nomination to be undersecretary of Commerce came just hours before Vermont Sen. Jim Jeffords jumped from the GOP to the independent ranks, handing the Senate to the Democrats and making for tougher sledding for Rogan’s confirmation hearing, which is set for this week.

So Rogan is covering all his bases. Hosting an event for California’s GOP gubernatorial candidates large and small, Rogan told them all to observe the 11th Commandment: Thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Republican.

In his comic turn, Rogan said he was really there to kiss up to the Big Three--Bill Jones, Dick Riordan and Bill Simon--in hopes that if one of them wins, he can “use their juice” to get back his old job on the Glendale Muni Court bench. Then he turned to Danney Ball, one of the below-radar gov-runners, and--entwining his index and middle fingers together--declared, “If you get there, Danney, remember--you and me.” And he tendered Ball a thumbs-up.

No Westward Ho for This Kennedy

As the threats and warnings and anthrax cases keep coming, other things had to go--in this instance, a fund-raiser in Los Angeles scheduled last week for Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, who is the daughter of the assassinated Robert F. Kennedy, the lieutenant governor of Maryland and the odds-on favorite in next year’s election for the crab cake state’s top job.

Townsend was here in January for a meet and greet, and Tuesday’s event was to have been hosted by a quartet of powerhouse women: Carol Biondi, Linda Resnick, Cheryl Saban and Nancy Daly Riordan, who said last week’s event “seemed somewhat out of sync with the timing of the moment.”

People were willing to contribute, but there was reluctance to attend the event, and a note to contributors said that although the “do” was canceled, Townsend would call donors to thank each of them.

Nancy Daly Riordan, incidentally, is supporting the Maryland Democratic gubernatorial candidate at the same time she’s backing a California Republican gubernatorial hopeful--her husband.

Quick Hits

* Steve Kuykendall, the Republican moderate who went round and round with Democrat Jane Harman before finally losing his South Bay congressional seat to her last year, is now, according to the political newsletter Hot Sheet, looking into whether he should take on hardball GOP congressman Dana Rohrabacher in the newly redistricted 46th District, which now includes Kuykendall’s Palos Verdes Peninsula home.

* Rep. Barbara Lee, the Oakland Democrat, was the only member of Congress to vote against using military force against terrorists. A Web site “dedicated to ousting Barbara Lee from Congress” was put up five weeks later by the campaign of Audie Bock, the Green Partier-turned- Democrat whose own Web site link to the anti-Lee site proclaims, “It’s OK to Love America.”

* The archives of all 1,504 shows from polemicist William F. Buckley’s television program “Firing Line” have a new home at the Hoover Institution of War, Revolution and Peace.

Word Perfect

“People may not open or handle something that comes from Washington, D.C., or a congressional office, even though we’ve been told that it’s safe.”

--Bryan Wilkes, an aide to Fullerton GOP Rep. Ed Royce, explaining why an invitation to a town hall meeting on terrorism was mailed from California, not the nation’s capital.

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If it Looks Like Gerrymander...

The every-10-year redistricting ritual always provides political meat to chew on, like big chunks of Gary Condit’s congressional district getting redrawn right out from under him. Now there’s the redrafting of a Los Angeles state Senate district whose new lines came within a hairsbreadth of altering the political map for Antonio Villaraigosa, the former Assembly speaker and Los Angeles mayoral candidate. By half a block--six houses--Villaraigosa’s home is still within the 22nd state Senate district, which will be opening up with the departure of termed-out Richard Polanco. This keeps Villaraigosa in the same district as his friend Gil Cedillo, an assemblyman and longtime labor leader. Speculation is that the two popular Democrats would run against each other, bloodily, with some name advantage to Villaraigosa. If the map had been half a block off, Villaraigosa would be living in the 21st Senate district held by well-regarded Democrat Jack Scott, whose district includes much less of the city of Los Angeles, Villaraigosa’s base. The close call fueled some speculation that line-drawers had tried to shift the boundary in order to make life harder for Villaraigosa, but had missed by a tad. That theory was bolstered by the fact that among those involved in the Legislature’s redrawing effort was political consultant Kam Kuwata, who worked on the James Hahn side of the Hahn v. Villaraigosa mayor’s race. Where will Villaraigosa look to land next? Congress? State controller? State senate? The private sector? He may announce his plans soon. *

Columnist Patt Morrison’s e-mail address is patt.morrison@latimes.com. This week’s contributors include Mark Z. Barabak, Tina Daunt, Jean O. Pasco, Rich Simon and Jenifer Warren.