Simon Feeds In His Quarters, but There Isn’t Any Dial Tone
I see that in Bill Simon’s case, just as in mine, the wife is the brains of the operation.
Simon, a political novice with millions of dollars in his pocket and nothing to do, got it in his head to run for governor of California on the strength of his business know-how.
Bad move. Not only are businesses with alleged offshore tax shelters out of favor, but then there’s the small matter of Wednesday’s $78-million judgment against William E. Simon & Sons for fraud and misconduct.
Here’s where the wife comes in:
The judgment against Simon’s company was for defrauding a businessman in the 1998 takeover of a pay phone company in Los Angeles. Did you catch that? A pay phone company.
Forget the fraud for a moment. What kind of boob would invest in pay phones--in Los Angeles, of all places--in 1998? Everybody and his brother has at least one cell phone in Southern California. Second-graders carry them in their backpacks. Prostitutes have them. Even homeless people. Who uses a pay phone?
Asked that question last year by The Times, Simon admitted that his wife, Cindy, had raised the same point.
“Why do you want to invest in a pay phone company?” he quoted her as asking. “Nobody uses pay phones anymore.”
To which he replied:
“No matter how much mobile phones come in, there’s always going to be a need for pay phones.”
I’m guessing that Bill “Swift” Simon, with his finger on the zeitgeist, also plowed money into eight-track tape decks and leather football helmets.
Pay phones. I couldn’t make up a better metaphor for a Republican Party that’s out of step with California. So my question, given the fact that Simon appears to have fallen into a bottomless hole, is this:
What’s Cindy doing between now and November?
I checked with the Secretary of State, and they tell me write-in candidates can sign up between Sept. 9 and Oct. 22. I don’t know much about Simon’s wife, but she at least had the sense to realize pay phones were out.
Come on, Cindy. If you truly care about Bill, do him the favor of his life and lock him in a closet. Not only is he embarrassing himself, but this was already a one-party state without him dragging the tattered remains of the GOP down with him.
Unfortunately, even if Simon quit the race, his name would still be on the ballot. It’s too late for the GOP to substitute a more viable candidate, even though a smoldering Sequoia would stand a better chance at this point.
All the more reason to start a write-in campaign. If not Cindy Simon, how about Dick Riordan or Bill Jones, the GOP primary candidates who have to be wondering how they could possibly have lost to this guy?
No one has ever thrown his hands up in the middle of a race for high office in California, says Kevin Starr, the state librarian. But only in recent years have obscenely rich candidates with no political experience decided they’d like to buy titles such as governor.
“Most of them come up through the ranks, and they’ve been vetted by the press on city councils, boards of supervisors, and other offices,” says Starr. “By the time they run for higher office, both Republican and Democrat, the public has had a look at them for 15 or 20 years.”
The worst part of Simon’s self-immolation is that Gray Davis, if he’s capable of an emotion, must wake up with a smile and go skipping around the house. Almost every day, Simon delivers another gift to the governor’s doorstep.
Davis is the embodiment of the old saying, “I’d rather be lucky than good.” He’s done nothing to distinguish himself other than turn his office into a gold-rush museum. But he’s caught more breaks than Brad Pitt, Laker coach Phil Jackson and the last six lottery winners combined.
He runs for governor, and the GOP throws Dan Lungren at him.
He runs again, having amassed an astronomical state budget deficit, and the GOP offers up a second-rate businessman with a country club agenda, a trail of IRS investigators and a $78-million fraud judgment.
We keep hearing this gospel that big government is the disease and executive know-how the cure. Problem is, all the CEOs are being hauled off in handcuffs.
Simon claims his family is clean, and promises an appeal. But he’s got another court date coming up just before the election, this one involving his family’s $40-million loss in a savings and loan company that tanked.
Next we’ll find out that as a child, Simon swindled playmates out of their lemonade stand and then ran it into bankruptcy.
Maybe Simon has just hit a streak of bad luck, but one could argue there’s a pattern in his family business of taking over companies, burying them in debt, and earning tax write-offs.
Frankly, I’d rather believe the Simons invested in the telephone company knowing it would go south.
What would be more frightening? That he’s a shady businessman, or that he actually thought pay phones were a growth industry?
I made the mistake of looking at the deposition in the case, and my mouth dropped open. At one point, a seemingly addled Simon set a North American record for saying “you know” in one sentence. Like, five times, you know?
Asked at another juncture if he was involved in a meeting about the multimillion-dollar investment in the pay telephone company, he said he couldn’t remember. And then there’s this nugget:
“Question: Has there been an investment philosophy at W.E. Simon & Sons?”
“Simon: No, not to the best of my recollection--I’m, you know.”
Yes, Bill. We know.
Cindy?
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Steve Lopez writes Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. Reach him at steve.lopez@latimes.com
