Breakfast at Riordan’s Tough for Jones to Swallow

Dick Riordan and Bill Simon are the millionaires, but Bill Jones’ campaign staff is making sure their guy gets his money’s worth. After Wednesday night’s final GOP primary debate, the Jones team was “spinning” its way through the pressroom at the Cal State Long Beach campus where reporters watched the debate over a closed-circuit feed.

Before the debate began, they handed around fortune cookies with predictions--”Bill Jones, First Farmer elected California Governor,” and the truly head-spinning “NRA endorsement propels Bill Jones to victory on March 5.”

And before the microphones had even cooled off after the debate--in which Riordan said the peacemaking post-election breakfast could be held at his downtown L.A. restaurant--the Jones team was ready: a press release headed “Why the unity breakfast should not be held at the Pantry,” pointing out that the we-never-close restaurant was briefly closed in 1997 for health code violations.

Not yet being served: the old-standby spin that surfaces in just about every campaign, a fake political menu of issues served at the opposing candidate’s “waffle house.”

Candidate to PG&E;: Thanks, but No Thanks

Remember the picture you saw here of Erin Brockovich, anti-toxic crusader, giving her thumbs-up endorsement to Tom Umberg, a Democrat running for state insurance commissioner?

On the heels of that, PG&E--the; utility that Brockovich took on over contaminated groundwater, the utility that filed for bankruptcy protection last year--still had enough in the petty cash drawer to give $10,000 to the campaign of Umberg’s opponent, Tom Calderon.

But Calderon, who said he didn’t know about the contribution, sent it back.

“Because of the bankruptcy, they shouldn’t be giving contributions,” he said. “I haven’t accepted energy contributions all year.”

But his teller window is still open for insurance company contributions: “I’ve been an open book about this. I’m accepting help from a lot of people.... They’ve never attacked my voting record. There’s not one shred of evidence that I’ve favored the industry.”

Raising the Titanic as a Political Jab

The Royal Mail Steamer Titanic, sunk by an iceberg in 1912, has been refloated 90 years later as the ship of state--at least the state of affairs for the California deregulation debacle.

Northridge’s state Sen. Tom McClintock put it around last spring that his fellow Republicans were joking, “What’s the difference between Gray Davis and the Titanic? When the Titanic went down, the lights were still on.” Richard Riordan, at the state GOP party convention, repeated the quip.

And at last week’s U.S. Senate hearings on the flat financial souffle that once went by the name of Enron, Jeff Skilling, Enron’s past-imperfect CEO, was quoted by Sen. Barbara Boxer as spreading the joke across California: “And this is what he said on a conference call: ‘You know what the difference is between the state of California and the Titanic? At least when the Titanic went down, the lights were on.’ ”

Sound Body, Sound Mind, Sound of Silence

Debate Day plus one found Bill Simon at Garfield High School in East Los Angeles, to cut the ribbon for a new fitness center funded by his family’s Cindy L. and William E. Simon Foundation, which has paid for fitness centers in seven Los Angeles schools.

He told the Latino students that the program is based on an ancient Greek principle of “sound body, sound mind”--a phrase he repeated in Latin, mens sana incorpore sano.

And he put a question to the students in the school gym: “Today’s the second day of Lent. What have you all given up?” (Simon, a devout Catholic, is abstaining from sweets and meat for the duration.)

The students were silent.

“You know, Lent?” Simon prompted them. “In the Catholic Church? Yesterday was Ash Wednesday ...?” No response.

Simon trudged gamely on, admitting that he was a mediocre high school student and athlete. “We want to recognize the kids who are trying the best they can, and may not be the stars of the basketball team,” he said. “As far as we’re concerned, every child is important.... Everything is possible in California. I mean, if I can run for governor, you guys can do anything, believe me.”

Maybe even bench-press your weight in gubernatorial candidates.

One Democrat’s Debt Reduction

Last week we told you about state Sen. Steve Peace betting an Enron lobbyist a year ago that Enron would be bankrupt within three years, loser buys dinner.

Now we can tell you that Democratic strategist Bob Mulholland, the state party’s one-man Panzer division, was seen trying to hand uber-rich-guy Bill Simon a wad of cash on the very steps of the state Capitol.

Mulholland had bet Simon a hundred bucks that he’d exit the race by the end of 2001. Mulholland was paying off his debt--very publicly.

But Simon’s aides rushed to intercept the C-note. “They saw the cameras and got nervous, so Simon told me to just donate it to a church.”

Who’s For Whom

Davis: Democrats for Neighborhood Action, in the San Fernando Valley; the Democratic Club of Pasadena Foothills.

Riordan: Asian Americans for Riordan Coalition.

Simon: California College Republicans.

Points Taken

* Oops--among the elected elite introduced at a Town Hall Los Angeles breakfast with First Lady Laura Bush were former gov Pete Wilson, gov wanna-be Dick Riordan, L.A. City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo--and Leslie Irving, who had not only been booted off the Compton City Council by a judge four days earlier in Compton’s election scandal, but was also ordered “forever disqualified” from holding public office in California.

* With former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani endorsing Bill Simon, current N.Y. Mayor Michael Bloomberg and New York Gov. George Pataki endorsing Dick Riordan and former New York congressman Jack Kemp stumping for Simon--only New York Sen. Hillary Clinton is missing from the pack ... but the general election is yet to come.

* Demonstrators protesting Vice President Dick Cheney as “Architect of Lies” will be turning out Tuesday at the Nixon Library in Yorba Linda as Cheney and his wife receive the “Architect of Peace” award from Julie Nixon Eisenhower.

* Kansas has the corn but California has the lettuce, so Kansas Democratic gubernatorial candidate Kathleen Sebelius came to L.A. to meet potential donors who hail from the state whose motto, Ad Astra Per Aspera, To the Stars Through Adversity, doesn’t mean the Hollywood kind.

* Wendy Greuel, running for L.A.’s second-district City Council seat against Tony Cardenas, has become engaged to a man she met at a campaign event staged by Arkansas-California Democratic politico Terri New, who says this is the third time marriages have been match-made at her political soirees.

* Dick Riordan’s campaign hammered at Bill Jones’ energy record with a one-sheet comparison: number of rolling blackouts--Fresno, at least 6, Los Angeles, 0; number of traffic accidents due to blackouts--Fresno, at least 4, Los Angeles, 0.

* Los Angeles city Controller Laura Chick is exhorting the state athletic commission not to license Mike Tyson to fight in California, saying the “red-carpet treatment” for Tyson in California “would be the wrong message to send to our children, the rest of the country and to the entire world.”

You Can Quote Me

“I was very pleased to learn that she’s been married 36 years. That’s longer than I’ve been able to do it.”

--Billionaire David Murdock, CEO of Dole Food Co. and Castle and Cooke, now on his fourth marriage, speaking admiringly of the marital staying power of Ventura County Supervisor Judy Mikels at a country club fund-raiser he gave for her.

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Star Wars: If you’ve ever wondered why Sheriff Lee Baca gets five stars on his uniform and Los Angeles Police Chief Bernard Parks gets only four, here’s the star-chart: Baca’s stars are purely traditional, and so are Parks’, but the reason for the numbers are lost in the mists of history, which in L.A. means anything older than last year’s best picture Oscar. LAPD commanders wear one star and deputy chiefs wear two stars. Assistant chiefs wear three stars, but there haven’t been any of those since Parks became chief in 1997. Baca’s star advantage doesn’t mean Parks has to salute him--the very idea would infuriate the thin blue line.

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Columnist Patt Morrison’s e-mail address is patt.morrison@ latimes.com.

This week’s contributors include Jean O. Pasco, Nicholas Riccardi, Margaret Talev and Jenifer Warren.