State’s Brightest Lawmakers Shine in ‘Minnie’ Spotlight

It’s high summer, but the state Legislature is just now getting its report cards.

The “Minnies,” awarded by the California Journal on rankings made by numbers of aides, legislators, lobbyists, administrators and the press, are named for Minerva, the goddess of wisdom whose likeness graces the state’s great seal--and considering that this is the Legislature we’re talking about, some have said the resemblance ends there.

A few lawmakers are singled out for being smart--that category used to be called “intelligent” but now it’s called “quick study”--as well as for four other qualities, with awards in each category and a passel of honorable mentions, which is where the same 20 or so names keep turning up as the A-list of legislative talent.

Like the Emmys or the Oscars, some legislators do tend to sweep the awards categories time after time. Unlike the Emmys or Oscars, there are no acceptance speeches, and no Roberto Benigni-like walking over the desks in the Senate or the Assembly.

Legislator of the year: Fred Keeley, the Democratic Boulder Creek assemblyman and speaker pro tem, who’s been at legislative ground zero on energy, insurance scandals, and the budget, a “pragmatic liberal” of whom a lobbyist said in ranking Keeley, “He’s here for the right reasons. He won’t cave on issues. He carries big bills and gets them passed.”

He is also termed out.

Rookie of the year is Northridge Republican Keith Richman, a physician who has cut himself an off-the-radar piece of health-care turf to focus on, the uninsured. As one lobbyist told the polltakers, Richman “forced the Democrats and the governor to deal with that issue, and that was courageous.” He is also the only person to date to file fund-raising papers to run for mayor of a San Fernando Valley city that doesn’t exist. So far.

The tops in integrity: In the state Senate, Coronado Democrat Dede Alpert, giving her back-to-back wins in this category (Sweep! Sweep!) The integrity award in the Assembly goes to rookie of the year emeritus Darrell Steinberg, a Sacramento Democrat, of whom one insider said, “His integrity is annoyingly intact at every moment of the day.” In the category of best problem-solvers, the envelope please: In the Senate, it’s Republican Jim Brulte of Rancho Cucamonga, in a three-peat! Brulte was praised for knowing when to pick a fight and how to get things done without beating his considerable chest. In the Assembly--wait, Darrell Steinberg wins again! He was praised as a great mediator who knows how to stay the course on an issue.

The Legislature’s 24/7 hard-working crowd is topped by worker bees Joe Dunn, a Democratic senator from Santa Ana, who “never seems to slack off,” and, once again, Fred Keeley, the energetic energy point man who burns a lot of midnight oil--so much that one insider wrote, “I think he’s been cloned.”

For potential, look to Joe Dunn, again, and Santa Monica Democrat Sheila Kuehl, a front-runner for Senate president pro tem.... And on the other side of the Capitol, Long Beach’s Jenny Oropeza, a rookie who took the job as head of the budget committee and “identified the end game right away.”

And as for that category formerly known as intelligence, the third-time winner is Sheila Kuehl, given a back-handed compliment by an apparent Republican as “a dangerous liberal because she’s smart and works the system.” And the Assembly’s quick study is--come back on stage here--Fred Keeley.

Good work, everyone, but it still won’t get you into the Vanity Fair Oscar party.

Alarcon Won’t Run for Valley’s Mayor

State Sen. Richard Alarcon (D-Sylmar), who made the Journal’s list of legislators “seen as tarnished,” has said he won’t run for mayor of a San Fernando Valley city, even if one does exist, and some secessionists figured it was just a deal to keep anti-secession labor unions on his side so he could try for another job.

Could that other job be lieutenant governor, in four years’ time? In classic pol-speak, Alarcon did say people have, uh, approached him, but he has not decided, and anyway there was no deal with unions to skip the Valley job in exchange for a later-round draft at something bigger and better.

Miguel Contreras of the County Federation of Labor said there was no quid pro quo, but Alarcon “will get a lot of support from us, whatever he does.”

Alarcon demurred. “I have not focused a lot of attention” on the lieutenant governor’s election four years away. Instead, Alarcon said, he is concentrating on his own November reelection. How much concentrating can it take? He’s running unopposed.

Bill Gives Ice Cream a Taste of Milk Campaign

The big butter-and-egg men are at work in Sacramento.

A bill Gov. Gray Davis signed last week extends that snappy generic marketing campaign by the California Milk Advisory Board--most famously the “It’s the cheese” campaign that’s giving them sleepless nights in Wisconsin--to include ice cream made with California milk. Bakersfield Republican Assemblyman Roy Ashburn’s bill also greenlights the milk board on offering coupons past the old Jan. 1 cutoff date.

We’re talking ad hall of fame time here; California put into the consumer lexicon such phrases as “A can a week is all we ask,” created by the Almond Board of California, and the deathless, now nationally renowned line, originated by the California Fluid Milk Processors Board, “Got milk?”

As for the eggs part:

Assembly GOP leader Dave Cox of Fair Oaks launched the third week of the stuck-budget process by getting peeved with Gray Davis for trying to peel off some GOP votes to get his spending plan approved, rather than negotiating upfront with GOP leaders.

David did the same thing last year to get a budget, prompting Cox to remark that, like a farm dog, Davis had developed a bad habit: “Once you allow a dog to get into the henhouse and suck the eggs, you can’t cure a dog from sucking eggs. So when in fact you do that once, you believe that’s the model for doing it again. That’s what’s transpired here.”

Apropos of this lesson in the politics of animal husbandry, Davis spokesman Steve Maviglio was asked whether the governor prefers brown eggs or white: “He likes them done--like the budget.”

Schwarzenegger Eyes the Governor’s Seat

It’s four blessed years before the next governor’s race, but the name of good-guy movie brute Arnold Schwarzenegger has already been bruited about as Republican governor material. At a breakfast meeting of some 15 GOP state governors, he said he had thought about taking on Gray Davis this year, but the movie work had gotten in the way.

“It’s something that I’m still interested in [for the future. It gives me the greatest satisfaction--much more than going down another red carpet to do a movie premiere: to go and create after-school programs, help special Olympians, inspire kids to stay away from drugs and gangs.”

He’s now filming sequels to two films, reprising roles as a CIA spy and an all-powerful cyborg, so it isn’t much of a leap to imagine himself as governor.

Gray Davis, whose staff would point out that he served as a captain in Vietnam, even if he didn’t play one on TV, did list some of his small-screen credits last week at a banquet speech in Universal City, pointing out how California is indeed the land of opportunities (and the pitfalls of typecasting): “I was too dull and boring to be governor, but I worked hard. And I went on Jay Leno, not once, but twice.”

CD Aims to Keep L.A. United Through Song

As you read here, Los Angeles’ Service Employees International Union has assembled a CD of bring-us-together songs in opposition of the San Fernando Valley secession (“Breaking Up is Hard to Do,” “Stay”). An “Inside Politics” reader reminds us that 47 years ago, Gogi Grant recorded a song called “Suddenly There’s a Valley.”

For the Valley, which lists “Camelot” as an official ballot choice of a name, should it secede, this sounds like the makings of an official civic tune:

When you think there’s no bright tomorrow

And you feel you can’t try again

Suddenly there’s a valley

Where love and hope begin.

But there’s another verse that makes it clear this is not about the San Fernando Valley, except perhaps in history books:

Touched only by the seasons

Swept clean by the waving grain

Surveyed by a happy bluebird

And kissed by the falling rain.

Not.

Points Taken

* With his wife, Michelle, California GOP party chairman Shawn Steel, one of the generals in the internal strife in the Golden State’s GOP, co-hosts a Saturday fund-raiser, “Women With Simon,” an event for that husband-and-wife team in the governor’s race, Bill and Cindy Simon. But no Carly Simon.

* Former Republican Assembly speaker Curt Pringle of Garden Grove won’t be keeping his spot as First Corn Dog on the Orange County Fair Board, but Gov. Gray Davis, whose grace-and-favor job this is, did let him stay on through the end of the fair, until July 28.

* Attorneys general from 11 states, including California, have delivered a letter to President George Bush, criticizing him for not adopting a comprehensive global warming policy and asking him to reconsider what he’ll do about climate change. They also ask the president to put a cap on greenhouse gases.

* Los Angeles City Controller Laura Chick, the first woman elected to citywide office, is now the first grandmother to hold citywide office, with the birth of her granddaughter, Morgan Riley Mulder.

You Can Quote Me

“My favorite breaks are Malibu Third point; Sunset, which is right next to Gladstone’s. I surf a 9’ Becker, I have used the term gnarly dude.... I’m a goofy foot, and I go right.”

Bill Simon, answering a question at the Sacramento Press Club. Some of his supporters think he walks on water, but he does indeed surf it.

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