New York Politicos Mine for California Gold

Take a look at these three guys. At least two of them may be coming back soon, to a fund-raiser near you.

Gov. Gray Davis has raised more than $7 million from out-of-state contributors, many of them from New York, his home state. This sort of thing happens a lot here; Republican Bob Dornan, the former firecracker congressman from Orange County, collected nearly seven of every 10 campaign dollars from out of state.

But in a switcheroo, a couple of guys running for governor of New York are circulating among the sushi-at-sunset crowd in California, bagging Golden State loot for their Empire State campaigns. Democrat Andrew Cuomo, son of the former N.Y. governor Mario, raked it in at a $2,500-a-noggin Beverly Hills fund-raiser last week. One of the $10,000 sponsors for the event was Hustler magazine Publisher Larry Flynt, drawing murmurings from a New York GOP pol about “naked ambition.”

The man who chased Cuomo the Elder out of Albany, Gov. George Pataki, was here last May on a four-day package tour that included his own $2,500-per chow-down, preceded by a $1,000 cocktail reception (for that price one hopes the cocktails were free). New York papers reported that our own former Gov. Pete Wilson was one of two honorary chairs of the Pataki fund-raiser--and a no-show. Pataki opposed Wilson’s anti-immigration Proposition 187.

Now, look at the pictures again. Cuomo and Pataki are the ones running. But be alert, Californians: The man on the right may look rather like Pataki, but he is former pro basketball whiz and ex-New Jersey Democratic Sen. Bill Bradley. He ran for president in 2000 and, who knows, may do so again, and come calling for California cash.

Dirty Politics: Time to Clean Up the Grammar

All of the leading GOP gov candidates are running as leaders in improving education, but some of their campaigns could use a refresher course:

Richard Riordan’s campaign sent out a press release headlined: “RIORDAN CAMPAIGN LAUNCHES FIRST ADS OF GUBERNATORIAL CAMPAIGN AND UNVIELS NEW WEBSITE.” That must be “unveils”; a campaign with so much dough can surely afford a proofreader, or at least a better spell check. But that wouldn’t have caught the mistake on Riordan’s Web site. Listed among the business and community leaders supporting him is one “Nancy Reardon”--his wife, Nancy Daly Riordan. Memo to Webmaster: Have you considered another line of work? Soon?

Bill Simon’s campaign sent out a press release noting, “Attached is the summery page of Bill Simon’s campaign disclosure statement”--a mistake, or global warming setting in?

The trend that began in the Beltway has now reached the Pacific shore. Rather than using the correct adjective “Democratic” to describe the opposition party, lest someone think they really mean small-d “democratic,” Republican pols and polemicists have taken to saying “Democrat Party,” preferring to be grammatically wrong and politically right.

And on the subject of grammar, President Bush, at last weekend’s town hall meeting in Ontario, declared that “not over my dead body” would taxes be raised, which means the opposite of the metaphor he sought.

That glitch hasn’t stopped California Republicans, from gov-wannabe Bill Jones to party Chairman Shawn Steel, from taunting Gray Davis for declaring carefully in his State of the State speech that he would “not advocate raising taxes,” with no mention of bodies dead or living.

Riordan on Davis: View From the Other Side

Richard Riordan watched Davis’ speech across the street from the Capitol, in a suite at the Hyatt, a hotel whose threshold good Democrats never cross because of the picket lines from a years-long labor set-to, but where Republicans love to disport themselves.

Riordan invited supporters and reporters in for the speech. At one point he praised Davis for saying California needs to “put children first.” When Davis fired a direct salvo at the former L.A. mayor and his prosperous Department of Water and Power by declaring that “merchant generators--even some of our own municipal utilities--were gouging us unconscionably,” Riordan threw up his hands and smiled.

Then he retreated to a private room for 20 minutes of briefings, and returned like a team after a locker room halftime, giving forth the made-for-TV sound bite retort to Davis’ pledge to solve the budget crisis the way he solved the energy crisis: “I hope not.”

Davis’ aides riposted to GOP slashes by e-mailing budget statistics comparing inflation and state employee-creep under Davis and a governor by the name of Ronald Reagan. Guess who came out looking fiscally rosier?

Davis’ speech had some awkward moments as he paused at applause lines for clapping that did not come, until his aides, standing at the back of the Assembly chamber, at last began the clapping-on-cue, a hint for legislators to follow.

A Tell-Almost Book of GOP Life in O.C.

As chairwoman emeritus of the Orange County Republican Party, Lois Lundberg has seen and heard plenty over the years--but you won’t read all about it in her new book, “The Big Orange: 50 Years of Republican Political Life.”

“There’s a lot of things in it that I hope will prove interesting. But no scandal,” she says. The 285-page book is sold through the Nixon Library in Yorba Linda and local party offices in Costa Mesa.

How nice is it? She writes kindly of the press, and even of the dead. The political implosion of John G. Schmitz--conservative congressman and national director of the John Birch Society--was news to the rest of us, especially as it was hastened along in 1982 by word that Schmitz had two children by a longtime mistress.

But to Lundberg, “These were real people to me. These were personal friendships,” and writing about them “was hard.”

A Little Foggy in the Time Department

The Legislature’s ranking Democrat strolled in very publicly and very late indeed to Gray Davis’ State of the State speech--he may have caught the last five minutes. San Francisco Democratic Sen. John Burton demurred prettily afterward, claiming that fog and traffic and his new status as a grandpa required him to drive very cautiously indeed.

Two nights later, Burton begged off lending an ear to GOP candidate Richard Riordan. Burton gave his speech to a civil-rights group in Oakland and then didn’t hang around for Riordan’s, for fear, he said in ironic voice, that the governor was “really going to be mad.”

“Dick promised to give me not only a video of his speech tonight, but a video of Gray Davis’ State of the State address, which will mean I won’t have to buy melatonin for about a month,” Burton told the audience.

For the record, Burton, taking his own sweet time again, endorsed Davis on Friday.

The Presidential Seal Was Safe With Him

When CNN reported that the official presidential seal had been stolen last week after President Bush’s speech in Ontario, former Corona Mayor Al Lopez fessed up to police: The seal was safe and sound and still round--and at his house.

Corona Police Lt. Kelly Anderson said Lopez called “right away” to find out what to do with the seal. He had grabbed it off the presidential podium at the end of the town hall meeting.

A local press account quotes Lopez as saying he was “just trying to save a national symbol” from disappearing--presumably to some house less scrupulous than his. The seal was speedily returned to the Secret Service.

Did Lopez succumb to temptation and have himself photographed with it? Only his photo processor knows for sure ....

Quick Hits

* Democrat Ellen O. Tauscher of Alamo, Calif., was the only mere member of the House of Representatives accompanying five U.S. senators on a trip to try to get into Afghanistan from a region still a bit murky on the map to some, including Connecticut Sen. Joseph Lieberman, who referred to it as “Southeast Asia,” perhaps conflating it with the scene of another American armed conflict.

* Knowing that his is not a household name, Bill Conrad, running in the GOP primary for Gary Condit’s Modesto congressional seat, cannily lists in the subject line of his e-mails the grabber “Conrad/Condit.”

* A candidate for Los Angeles County assessor says he has legally changed his name to John “Lower Taxes” Loew to run for that office.

* As singer Dinah Washington whirls in her grave, the state Republican Party has christened its spring convention “What a Difference a Gray Makes.”

* With George Argyros off ambassadoring in Spain, another Orange County developer, Donald L. Bendetti, replaces Argyros as chairman of the board of the Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace Foundation.

* Now open for SigAlerts: the Sonny Bono Memorial Freeway, named for the late Palm Springs mayor and congressman and described as “a stretch of the I-10 from west of Highway 111 to the bottom grade east of the eastern city limit of Coachella.”

* New names and faces on the Richard Riordan campaign: communications director Margita Thompson, whose most recent job was as spokeswoman for Mrs. Vice President, Lynn Cheney, and before that, worked as California spokeswoman for the Bush campaign, and drew a paycheck from Gov. Pete Wilson ... and press secretary Kim Serafin, who did tours of duty with two GOP mayors, Rudy Giuliani and Riordan himself.

Word Perfect

“I took the sucker home, but he hasn’t gone in the tub yet. We have to bond first.”

The Assembly’s new speaker, L.A. Democrat Herb Wesson, whose wife, Fabian, revealed to the press that her Herb likes to relax with a half-hour morning bubble bath, something she once read makes a heart attack less likely. When that news hit, the new speaker got a shower of bath potions--and a yellow rubber ducky.

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Columnist Patt Morrison’s e-mail is patt.morrison@latimes .com. This week’s contributors include Mark Z. Barabak, Miguel Bustillo, Michael Finnegan, Jean O. Pasco and Jenifer Warren.