Scandal-Scarred Politician Finds Haven in MTA Contract

He was all set to become one of the most powerful politicians in America, the speaker of the House of Representatives, but Louisiana Republican congressman Bob Livingston quit on the same December day in 1998 that his colleagues voted to impeach President Clinton.

In the face of a magazine’s scrutiny of his personal life, Livingston’s confession of marital infidelities left his political career on the cutting-room floor of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal ... almost.

He has since founded a lobbying outfit named the Livingston Group, which is in the indirect employ of Los Angeles’ Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

The MTA board just voted a two-year contract with options for another four years to spend $3 million with the big-noise Washington lobbying-law firm Patton Boggs -- and the Livingston Group, starring the ex-rep Livingston, is listed as one of Patton Boggs’ three subcontractors, designated federal lobbyists.

Think of it as your fares helping to keep a former congressman off the unemployment rolls.

Top 10 Reasons Hahn Didn’t Bag Any Pandas

At the annual truce known as the L.A.-mayor-hosts-the-news-media holiday party at the Getty Mansion, Jim Hahn offered his top 10 reasons why his Asia trip did not net him the pandas he’d hoped for -- only the Miss Congeniality of the panda competition, a pair of golden monkeys. Among the 10:

* The Chinese government demanded the panda fly first class, and City Controller Laura Chick said “No way.”

* The Chinese wanted to know how could they send a nice, cuddly panda to a city that would treat Winona Ryder like that?

* L.A. couldn’t swing what China wanted in exchange -- two Laker floor seats next to Jack Nicholson.

* Hahn wouldn’t swap Police Chief Bill Bratton for a panda.

* The burger gift certificates and autographed photos of Hahn taken along as protocol gifts “set the wrong tone.”

* And -- not the No. 1 reason but a crowd-pleaser -- Chinese President Jiang Zemin was “upset that the San Fernando Valley wasn’t getting its fair share of city services.”

(Hahn didn’t bring back any trophy pandas, but he may have won over three political lap dogs: a trio of San Fernando Valley business execs who paid their own way to fly with Hahn on his Asia trip, and who wrote glowingly in the Daily News that, as they saw it, “every corner of our city benefited from the time the mayor and city departments invested in this rather grueling trip,” which “struck the right tone for the start of a [regional] marketing campaign” to sell L.A. But it’ll still have to be a campaign sans pandas.)

State’s 4th Governor Left Prospecting for Politics

J. Neely Johnson was California’s fourth governor, and in Dave Doerr’s book “California Tax Machine” and on the state’s Web site, Johnson’s contributions are detailed thusly.

Johnson, who came to California as a gold prospector, ended up in politics. He once accused a newspaper editor of writing an insulting article about him, grabbed the editor’s nose and twisted it. The editor drew a pistol, but was overcome by onlookers before he got off a shot.

Johnson became governor at age 30, the youngest ever to get the job, and was described after the vote tally as “the most startled man in the state.” Among his gubernatorial pinnacles: vetoing a bill creating Del Norte County because it contained “bad spelling, improper punctuation and erasures.”

Bubba’s Call Negates Personal Cloture Rule

As if there weren’t already enough star power trying to stand in the path of the huge Ahmanson Ranch housing project near Calabasas, with Martin Sheen, Rob Reiner and Erin Brockovich saying no to bulldozers and plumb lines....

John Flynn, who chairs the Ventura County Board of Supervisors, had pretty much decided to invoke his personal kind of cloture -- no more chatting with lobbyists or colleagues before he was to cast his vote on the project. But then ... Bubba rang.

Flynn was en route to a hearing on the issue when his cell phone rang, and on the other end was Bill Clinton. Flynn, a liberal Democrat, immediately made an exception to his cloture rule: “I would never ignore Clinton’s call. That would be stupid.”

The ol’ Clinton charm came right through the phone as the former president nudged Flynn to put off a final vote on the project until January, when a new, anti-Ahmanson supervisor is sworn in. Flynn wouldn’t say whether he’ll support delaying the vote; the supes resume their hearings tomorrow.

In the afterglow of chat, Flynn remembered, “He was just like a high school chum. You almost felt like he had his arm around you” -- which, if Clinton had been standing there, he undoubtedly would have.

Orange County GOP Gets Some Bad News

Election year 2002 brought grim news for California Republicans, even unto their stronghold, Orange County.

A survey of voters by the Public Policy Institute of California and UC Irvine found that, in spite of the GOP in ORA talking about making inroads among Latino voters, Latinos were still twice as likely as non-Latinos to like the job being done by the man the Republicans love to hate, Gray Davis, the Democratic governor. They were also twice as likely to support Davis’ handling of the economy.

When it came to judging President Bush, the ethnic differences among Orange County voters all but disappeared: Nine in 10 Republicans, 60% of independents and about half of Democrats like the job he’s doing.

Memo to the GOP in CA -- Accentuate the positive: Don’t dump on Davis; push Bush.

Points Taken

* The L.A. City Council primary election is in March, and yet last week’s December mail brought a “re-elect council member Nick Pacheco” flier loaded with endorsement names.

Pacheco has a bit of making-nice to do after a friend of his sent out a mud-spattered mailer blasting Pacheco’s biggest opponent, Antonio Villaraigosa, for having white advisors and children out of wedlock.

On the endorsement list: Rep. Xavier Becerra, who’s carped publicly about the mailer, and who promised to pull his endorsement of candidates practicing negative politics.

* Ms. Magazine lists California Democrat and new House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi as one of its 2002 Women of the Year award recipients; Rush Limbaugh, who got his start as a professional palaverer on Sacramento radio, complained on his Web site that the awards went to women because of their “reactions to men, not their legitimate successes.”

Limbaugh, in a rare burst of fellow-feeling toward Democrats of the male persuasion, added that Pelosi had “stabbed Democrat men in the back to get into power.”

* L.A. Mayor Jim Hahn’s kiss-and-make-up speech to the Valley Industry and Commerce Assn. on the state of the San Fernando Valley was introduced with Hahn’s election night dance anthem “I Love LA.”

It was followed by the announcement that VICA’s “business of the year” award was going to Washington Mutual, the backers of Ahmanson Ranch project -- which Hahn opposes.

You Can Quote Me

“I made a serious mistake. What I did was irrational and wrong.”

-- Newly sworn in Berkeley mayor and former Democratic Assemblyman Tom Bates, apologizing for stealing about a thousand copies of the Daily Californian, the issue of the UC Berkeley newspaper that endorsed his opponent -- and whose apology was quoted, where else, in the Daily Californian.

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“IS OUR CHILDREN LEARNING?”: Just ask “mini-he,” the President Bush doll, the first among a planned line of First Toys from an Irvine company, TalkingPresidents.com Inc. The just-over-a-foot-tall action figure has a repertoire of some Bush malapropisms among its 17 sound clips, such as, “We’re working hard to put food on your family,” but more straightforward Bush quotes are also in the sound mix: “Terrorism against our nation will not stand.” The company co-founders say they are “staunch Republicans” who admire the 43rd president. Still gift-shopping? Not for this Christmas: The Bush doll is sold out and back-ordered into the new year. The company says it soon will put out a line of former firsts -- a Ronald Reagan doll to be followed by Clinton, Nixon, JFK and first George (“Read my lips”) Bush talking dolls.

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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 Jean O. Pasco and Catherine Saillant.