GOP’s Helpful Reminder of Old Democratic Battles

New York is campaigning in California this year, but the new contests are bringing back memories of old battles.

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani came west first, beating the drum for Bill Simon for governor, and last week Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) jetted into the sunset to cut the ribbon on the “women for Davis” campaign in San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Helpfully, the state Republican party--whose symbol is the elephant, an animal with a reputation for a long memory--sent out e-mails citing the 10-year-ago primary battle between Davis and now-Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.).

The blistering Senate primary was notable for a Davis ad comparing Feinstein to haughty hotelier and tax-cheat Leona Helmsley, because of a civil suit alleging that Feinstein improperly reported $8 million in campaign dough. The ad backfired big time, and Democratic women were using words like “despicable” and “desperate” to characterize Davis. Feinstein’s campaign manager zinged back about a “cheap, sleazy ad by a cheap, sleazy politician ... you get the feeling he’s running for grand wizard of the KKK and not the United States Senate.”

(The current GOP e-mail, citing another 1992 slam at Davis, misidentified the group in question, the National Organization for Women, as the National Organization of Women.)

As always happens, everyone made up publicly after that 1992 primary. The Republicans are doing the same thing now, after their own street-rumble gubernatorial primary, where comments like “Republican in name only,” “sanctimonious hypocrite” and “unelectable extremist” were tossed around like confetti, all of which is now being swept up and thrown away.

*

The Directors Guild’s Show of Gratitude

In the headquarters of make-believe, believe it--a Republican being feted by the film world.

Rep. David Dreier, the GOP congressman from San Dimas, was the man of the hour at the Directors Guild of America on Sunset Boulevard last week. A sixth-floor sushi reception with the likes of renowned directors Arthur Hiller and Taylor Hackford lauded Dreier for midwifing HR 3131, a federal income tax credit intended to put a plug in runaway film and TV production that has too often fled to Canada and overseas (like a film about the American Civil War made in Romania).

The bill, whose co-producer is L.A. Democratic Rep. Howard Berman, waits right now in the House Ways and Means Committee, which is under the gavel of California’s own Rep. William M. Thomas, a Bakersfield Republican. At least three of Thomas’ Golden State GOP colleagues and 16 of the Democratic ones are among the bill’s 54 co-sponsors, and as the bill’s supporters like to point out, it has the backing of Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), who probably couldn’t agree on which way north is.

Dreier acted his part with verve, telling a Democrat-disarming joke about a woman with criminals and junkies in the family writing to Dear Abby about whether she should tell her fiance the real family secret: that one of her relatives is a Republican.

And he gave Martha Coolidge, the DGA’s first woman president, a gift: a black-and-white cotton blanket with a pattern of the Capitol dome. And that’s a wrap.

*

Riordan Gets the Presidential Treatment

Still in all the best Rolodexes: former L.A. Mayor Dick Riordan, who lost the GOP gubernatorial primary after holding a comfortable lead for months.

The first chat was with Bill Clinton, calling with “a very pleasant apology for losing the election for me by playing golf with me and jogging with me,” recounted Riordan, who got slammed from the right for his warm relationship with the former president. “I said that I’d supported Republicans pretty much all along, but certainly Clinton was a great friend of L.A.’s, especially after the [1994] earthquake.”

Lest Democrats appear quicker on the keypad than Republicans, Riordan pointed out that President George W. Bush had tried calling two days earlier, but the indefatigable Riordan was off hiking in the Santa Monica Mountains, and finally hooked up with the White House a couple of days later. Bush invited Riordan for lunch, and told him he appreciated the fact that he’d run in the first place.

Before the election, Riordan spent some phone-chat time with former Prez Gerald Ford, thus hitting a commander-in-chief triple.

*

Staying Friends Through Right and Left

It was a very amiable stop on the mea culpa book tour: the home of a scion of the author’s publishing house.

David Brock, the journalist darling of the right-wing Clinton-hating crowd, spent the 1990s savaging Clinton and Anita Hill, and has begun the ‘00s with another bestseller, a penitent 180-degree confessional, “Blinded by the Right, the Conscience of an Ex-Conservative.”

The book is published by Crown Books, and the meet-and-greet was in the Hollywood Hills home of Brock’s friend Ronnie Haft, who has stuck with him through right and left and whose family founded Crown Books, then famously argued over the millions it made.

The conversation we’d most like to have eavesdropped on: between Brock and Tom Hayden.

*

Dispatches From the Poetry Wars

This is a political column--what are we doing writing about poets?

Because not even iambic pentameter and those who pen it are beyond the reach of politics.

Now that the California Arts Council has had its say and selected three finalists for the post of state poet laureate, the art part is over--and the political jockeying has begun.

The finalists, all published and well-regarded poets, are Francis X. Alarcon of Davis, Diane Di Prima of San Francisco and Quincy Troupe of La Jolla.

Santa Cruz poet Morton Marcus, sizing up the finals: “It gets very political. There’s literary and racial politics, a Latino, African American and a woman. Now the politicos come out, the people engaged in poetry wars.”

Gov. Davis must choose one and submit the name to the state Senate for its approval--a lot of public eyeballing for a term-limited two-year title and a spot of cash, up to $20,000 each year.

Legislators haven’t shown much of an ear for poetry, in part because the most memorable of five previous poet laureates--all of them appointed for life, which explains present poet term limits--was a colleague, Assemblyman Gus Garrigus, whose body of work was topped by the classic “Ode on the Groundbreaking for the San Luis Dam.”

*

Points Taken

* Republican congressmen in the trenches: Fullerton’s Ed Royce and Diamond Bar’s Gary Miller will be talking taxes first thing next Monday morning, tax day, outside the Brea post office--free doughnuts to the first 100 comers, and free professional massage.

* Oh those printing deadlines: An invitation to a July banquet for the Southwest Voter Registration education project still lists among the invited speakers Richard Riordan, Republican candidate for governor of California.

* The Washington Post reports that the GOP’s gay group, the Log Cabin Republicans, has taken note in its e-mail newsletter of an L.A. political dust-up, the one where Police Commission chief Rick Caruso supposedly privately called Democratic congresswoman Maxine Waters the B-word (“rhymes with Abercrombie and ... ,” the e-mail noted coyly). “OK, it’s tacky to call a congresswoman the b-word, but still, how many of you didn’t immediately think of sending him a thank-you note?”

* L.A. City Council member Dennis Zine today unveils the sign announcing yet another new neighborhood identity face lift, as part of Van Nuys re-christens itself Lake Balboa, although the lake in question is actually in Encino.

*

You Can Quote Me

“It’s a watershed event.”

That funny, funny Supervisor John Flynn, of Ventura County, after a 4-1 vote renaming the county’s Flood Control District as the Watershed Protection District--a nomenclature shuffle that the supes hope might bring extra grant money for a greener-sounding outfit.

*

Rank has its privileges

That famous showman, San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, takes a ride on a camel after it arrived at City Hall recently to deliver invitations to Brown and other officials for the Asian Art Museum’s biannual celebration, titled “Encounter Asia.”

*

Patt Morrison’s columns appear Mondays and Wednesdays. Her e-mail address is patt.morrison@latimes.com. This week’s contributors include Margaret Talev.