Davis vs. C. Montgomery Burns: The Gov Has More Hair

Who knows--by now they may have been pink-slipped by the reportedly poll-slipping Bill Simon gubernatorial campaign, which has laid off two dozen of its employees. But before they left--or didn’t leave--some of them circulated a comparison between Gov. Gray Davis and C. Montgomery Burns, the malevolent nuclear power plant owner and onetime candidate for governor on the “The Simpsons.”

Comparisons include:

Source of wealth: energy company (Burns); energy companies, other special interests (Davis).

Favorite saying: “Excellent.” (Burns); “Implement my vision.” (Davis’ still-stinging description of the role of Democratic legislators).

Qualities: greed, malice (Burns); greed, blind ambition, low handicap (Davis).

Burns’ gubernatorial campaign, it notes, was “derailed by Blinky the three-eyed fish,” a terato-genetic horror from nuclear-polluted waters, and it hints of other Blinkys “in waters polluted by Gray Davis,” a reference to a San Jose Mercury-News report that a board with Davis appointees approved the release of refinery toxins into San Francisco Bay after the refinery donated $70,000 to the Davis campaign.

Kid Hears Radio Ad, Tells Dad to Pass Budget

No wonder politicians spend so much money on electronic media “buys”--they work.

Paid radio ads have been airing around the state urging listeners to call Republicans in the state Assembly and lean on them to pass a budget.

Why, four children not even old enough to vote were in the car with their mother when the ad came on telling listeners to call Republican Assemblyman Abel Maldonado right away and tell him to vote yes. One of the boys turned to his mother and told her to get on the phone at once.

She did: Laura Maldonado called her husband, the Republican assemblyman, and relayed her son’s demand: “Call Dad right now and tell him to vote for the budget so then we can go on vacation.”

Maldonado “just had a great laugh,” he said, but didn’t budge on the budget.

The GOP is naysaying the $99-billion bill, which is now more than six weeks overdue, because of $4 billion in new taxes and revenues.

Maldonado said he tried to explain the situation to his kids --”the budget has a horrible structural problem that doesn’t help the state down the road”--but his argument was evidently no more persuasive with his offspring than it has been with his Democratic colleagues.

Billboard Bimbo Calls Anti-Secessionist a Guru

Is she really a double agent, the Mata Hari of Hollywood secession?

Angelyne, Los Angeles’ freakishly blimp-breasted billboard bimbo for more than 20 years, has declared herself a candidate for the Hollywood City Council, if such a thing ever comes into existence.

Naturally, there was speculation that her candidacy would hurt secession more than help it, and now she has admitted that among the community activists who urged her to declare her intentions are two vehement anti-secessionists: John Walsh of the Hollywood Project Area Committee and Chris Schabel, president of the Hollywood Highland Democratic Club, who formed a group called Divided We Fall. Walsh got a postcard from Angelyne with the message, “To John Walsh, My political guru.”

He thinks Angelyne would make a good council member, but admitted, “It might hurt secession and I’m not going to do anything that helps secession.”

If Hollywood does manage to divorce L.A., he added, he wanted “to make sure we have somebody on the council I like.”

Some pro-secessionists, like Laura Dodson, nudged Angelyne into filing candidacy papers, because “she is not an airhead. You can take her seriously, even though she is in pink.”

Among the other company-town candidates on a Hollywood wanna-be slate: Neal Jano, occupation actor; William McGovern, occupation actor/director/councilman; Richard William Eastman, costumer; Eric DeYoung, union propmaker; and Tad Davis, film director whose credits include a short film, “I Am Not a Lesbian,” which, as a campaign slogan, might not be a winning formula in his part of town.

You of All People Should Know That Seat’s Taken

Not ... so ... fast.

On a City Hall visit nearly two weeks ago for a fund-raiser and meetings, Panorama City Democrat Tony Cardenas hung out around council members’ desks, jawboning and schmoozing--the same thing council members often do during a council session, even as citizens are earnestly pitching and pleading for attention.

Cardenas, who got beaten in his campaign for council earlier this year by Wendy Greuel, got a little too comfy too soon.

Chatting up council member Janice Hahn, he plopped down in the empty leather chair next to her--one of the 15 off-limits chairs reserved for council members, and this one in particular reserved for Greuel.

A city aide told him he had to find himself another perch.

Picture That: Politicians Eager to Strike a Pose

Vanity, thy name is politician.

According to a tally prepared for The Times, Los Angeles’ chief legislative analyst found that councilman Nate Holden orders the most photographs of himself posing with constituents, city employees and visitors to City Hall--500 in the first six months of 2002.

Not far behind is Tom LaBonge, who has been known to chase down tour groups for a snapshot.

When a constituent wrote to LaBonge that her son’s photos of the Laker victory parade didn’t turn out, LaBonge sent her official photos to replace them.

LaBonge, Dennis Zine and Jack Weiss each ordered more than 400 photos in six months. The most camera-shy, apparently, is Cindy Miscikowski, who requested a modest 69 prints.

The six-month total for the entire council: 3,605 photos, all paid for out of their office budgets, making the 15 council members mere pikers compared to grandstanders of yore, like Gil Lindsay, Robert Farrell, Art Snyder--who also arranged to have an exit on the Pasadena Freeway named after his daughter--and the present mayor’s father, Kenneth Hahn, before he was elevated to the Board of Supervisors.

Ron Butcher, the council’s official photographer for more than a quarter-century, figures it this way: “Every time I take your picture,” he tells the politicians, “it’s a vote.”

Points Taken

* Democratic Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante sent Republican gubernatorial candidate Bill Simon Jr. an official commendation for “your dedication to strengthening the economic vitality of the region.... Your leadership sets a wonderful example for all Californians.” Bustamante’s office said it was simply part of a larger mailing to the Simon family investment firm, which the Los Angeles Business Journal named one of the top 20 venture capital firms in Southern California.

* Still seeking spell-check: When Bill Simon went surfing recently with another Republican politician, the congressman from Newport Beach, the Simon campaign misspelled the name of Dana Rohrabacher.

* Gov. Gray Davis has signed West Hollywood Assemblyman Paul Koretz’s bill requiring pet stores to give to buyers of dogs and cats a brochure about the health benefits of spaying and neutering their new pets, and to encourage new ways to get owners to fix their animals to stem the hundreds of thousands of unwanted dogs and cats being put to death in California’s shelters every year.

* An Inland Empire family planning group, Inland PLANet, is campaigning to get 34 million supporters to send $1 each to the U.N. Population Fund, to make up for the U.S. share the Bush administration revoked, overriding its own State Department findings by contending the money could be used indirectly to support coerced abortions in China.

* Laker fans can vote on what they would like to name the street in front of Staples Center: Chick Hearn’s Place, Chick Hearn Court, Chick Hearn Lane and Chick Hearn Dribble Drive. Register your vote at www.lacity.org/council/cd14/, and please--no double-dip voting. This isn’t Florida.

* Alpine County, California’s smallest, is getting its $752,000 share of Prop. 10 campaign money for free universal preschool for its 3-and 4-year-olds--all 20 of them, compared with the 100,000 or so in Los Angeles County.

* The two-bit project is moving west; the U.S. Mint will eventually get to the 31st state in its state-design quarter program, and California First Lady Sharon Davis has announced a design contest to choose an image for the flip side of the coin to be issued in January 2005.

You Can Quote Me

“I should have left my car and walked the four blocks home.”

--Lodi City Council candidate JoAnne Mounce, who was arrested on suspicion of drunken driving after a police officer twice warned her at a Chamber of Commerce barbecue not to get behind the wheel.

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More separated at birth: Except for different tastes in ties, Republican gubernatorial candidate Bill Simon Jr., left, and public television host Ed Arnold on Orange County station KOCE could be twins.

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Patt Morrison’s columns appear Mondays and Tuesdays. Her e-mail address is patt.morrison@latimes .com. This week’s contributors include Patrick McGreevy, Jean O. Pasco, Massie Ritsch and Julie Tamaki.