Stars Aren’t Coming Out for State’s GOP Event

What are we, chopped tofu?

Has California fallen off the Bush White House’s map, again?

George W. Bush all but ignored California in the 2000 election, and he became president without the Golden State, losing California and its 54 electoral votes by 12 points.

But California is too big even for a president to ignore, so bygones became bygones, water went under the bridge, and kiss-and-make-up was the order of the day.

So now what’s up with this? The California Republican Party’s convention is in San Jose early next month, but so far the best the party has been able to tease out of Washington as the star-turn attraction is (drumroll, please) Dick Armey.

Who? Because memories need more jogging than Bill Clinton, here’s this refresher: Armey is the House majority leader from Texas, who’s bailing out of Congress next year and so ranks more as a warmup act than a star attraction.

Expectations were that a name Cabinet member or two would be served up for the convention, to rev up the languishing state GOP for the big November vote-off. The state party’s Web site, last updated five weeks ago, promises, “We anticipate speakers representing the Bush administration and the Republican National Committee”--in other words, TBA.

Endorsement of Jones Comes and Goes

The MAPA flap is still happening.

A handful of weeks ago, Secretary of State Bill Jones, one of the Big Three GOP candidates for governor, got the endorsement of the Mexican American Political Assn. in California. He accepted the endorsement, and thanked the MAPA president, Ben Benavidez.

Still, influence doesn’t bespeak coherence. Something messy must be going on at MAPA, because in a bristling, boldface press release, MAPA’s executive committee has snatched away the Jones endorsement. It backed Richard Riordan on the GOP side and Gray Davis on the Democratic side.

Benavidez, the press release declared, “is not the president” but the head of MAPA’s Fresno chapter; “The so-called election of Benavidez as president in August was never ratified nor sanctioned,” and for that matter, the board that governed MAPA has canceled those elections.

It is “unfortunate,” the statement concluded, “that Secretary Bill Jones”--who has been proudly waving the endorsement ever since--”has now been caught up in the MAPA conundrum.”

A Latino by Any Other Name?

What’s in a nombre, hombre?

Republican Kenneth M. Fisher is one of two GOP candidates challenging Rep. Loretta Sanchez, the Garden Grove Democrat.

But you’ll have to look for him on the ballot by a name he didn’t use the other times he’s run for office: Kenneth M. Valenzuela Fisher.

Could it be that Fisher, a former member of the county’s Republican Central Committee, has become mindful of the Latino voting numbers in the district . . . and of the fact that his challenger is named Joe Chavez of Santa Ana?

Fisher ran for the Anaheim Union High School District in 1992 using his full middle name, Kenneth Manuel Fisher. He lost. This time, Manuel is demoted to M. and he’s using his mother’s maiden name, Valenzuela. Anaheim is a town founded by Germans and now densely populated by Latinos; Fisher says he is German and Latino.

The Democratic incumbent, Loretta Sanchez, was savaged in the 1996 election, accused of pandering to Latinos by using not her husband’s surname, Brixey, but her own, Sanchez.

Of Fisher’s challenge, she says, with tongue fixed somewhere between upper and lower molars, “I think it’s wonderful that more Hispanics are getting involved in politics.”

Awash in Images of Drunken Sailors

The California Democratic Party’s Master of Outrage, Bob Mulholland, was outraged anew. Republican top brass-man Jim Brulte, the Rancho Cucamonga state senator, was quoted as saying that the state’s Democratic leaders have “been spending like drunken sailors.” Mulholland faxed Brulte and everybody else in soundbite dudgeon about “our sailors risking their lives . . . in the Afghanistan theater,” and demanded an apology. He signed himself as a Vietnam vet and a 101st Airborne guy.

But ahoy there--a survey of the state’s newspaper files shows that drunken sailors have staggered across the Capitol poop-deck for a long while now.

September 1993: Bill Lockyer, then a state senator, reproaches Republican colleagues for a billion-dollar business tax break: “I’m surprised by my friends when it comes to investing in people but spending like drunken sailors to line the pockets of the rich and powerful.”

May 1998: The same John Burton rebukes the GOP for a tax cut that could starve public schools: “I don’t think we should act like drunken sailors on leave but be somewhat prudent.”

December 1999: Senate Republicans’ plans to spend a huge bite of the surplus (remember the surplus?) on a number of projects have Democratic Senate leader John Burton warning, “These guys are spending money like drunken sailors.”

December 2001: Richard Riordan, surveying the state budget, accuses Gray Davis of “spending like a drunken sailor.”

Buy you a drink, sailor?

Another Case of a Disappearing Seal

After the presidential seal was lifted from the lectern by a former Corona mayor to “save” it following George W. Bush’s recent speech in Ontario, a Disney employee described a similar incident that happened years ago, after Richard Nixon spoke at the Contemporary Resort at Walt Disney World.

Then as now, the First Seal disappeared from the lectern--not for safekeeping, but out of a sense of mischief on the part of some frisky young Disney things. The Secret Service, summoning the culprit pool, declared that if the seal reappeared, no problem, no questions asked. If not--well, the agent made it clear, he hoped everyone was prepared for a full-on IRS audit.

The seal was returned forthwith to the mischief-makers’ boss, who delivered it unto the Secret Service.

Who’s for Whom

Gray Davis: the FDR Democratic Club for Persons with Disabilities and Seniors; Access Now for Gay and Lesbian Equality.

Bill Jones: L.A. County Supervisor Don Knabe.

Richard Riordan: California Young Republicans.

Bill Simon: California ProLife Council; California Organization of Police and Sheriffs, state Sen. Ray Haynes (R--Riverside).

Points Taken

* Dick Cheney sighting in the works: The vice president and his wife are to receive the “Architect of Peace” award from Julie Nixon Eisenhower on Feb. 19 at a $2,500-a-plate luncheon at the Nixon Library.

* Fullerton GOP Rep. Ed Royce, who’s been angling for five long years for Radio Free Afghanistan broadcasting, finally saw President Bush sign a bill to spend more than $19 million for Royce’s proposal.

* At Planned Parenthood LA’s annual Roe v. Wade awards luncheon, an unusually animated Gray Davis declared that “as long as I am governor, as long as I am breathing, California will be a pro-choice state,” and Granada Hills Assemblyman and Dr. Keith Richman received the group’s “Giraffe Award” for “sticking his neck out” as a pro-choice Republican.

* In the first paragraph of a Bill Jones campaign press release scorching rival Dick Riordan--whose airport director hired a Clinton pal and Whitewater felon--the name of said felon was spelled Webster Hubble, as in the telescope, instead of Hubbell, as in Hubbell.

* Steven A. Nissen, lately the director of Gray Davis’ office of planning and research, is moving to L.A. to join the bemuscled law firm of Manatt, Phelps & Phillips.

You Can Quote Me

“You don’t get parole from this governor. Even compassionate release is hard to get.”

--Mike Florio, a senior attorney with the Utility Reform Network, found out Gov. Davis had extended his reappointment to the California Independent System Operator board until New Year’s Eve 2004. Cal-ISO, offspring of the 1996 deregulation plan, has labored long and hard to keep the lights lighted, and now the four board members have had their terms continued by the governor. No wonder they have been heard to joke that their duty is like serving a prison sentence.

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Columnist Patt Morrison’s e-mail address is patt.morrison@ latimes.com. This week’s contributors include Jean O. Pasco and Nancy Vogel.