On Today’s Menu: Skewers and High Prices

The jokey menu has been one of the major food groups for political campaigns for a while now; Bill Clinton used one in 1992, listing the bill of fare from “George Bush’s Waffle House,” and when Kathleen Brown ran for governor in 1994, Pete Wilson’s campaign came up with a full-sized “Kathleen Brown’s House of Waffles” menu, with dishes like a “pay raise souffle.”

The Bill Simon gubernatorial campaign has now concocted the same thing for “Chez Gray, an Exclusive Dinner Club,” every dish mocking ferocious fund-raising by Davis and his generous supporters. Dining at Chez Gray “requires a minimum order of $100,000.”

Sample “a traditional Normandie special: a 34% raise for prison guards,” for $251,000, referring to the quarter-million-dollar campaign contribution to Davis after the governor approved the big raise over five years.

To impress your date, order the million-dollar CTA platter, a “delightful cuisine” of desirable morsels for the California Teachers’ Assn., whose president said Davis asked for the seven-figure donation from the CTA at a Valentine’s Day meeting in his office.

You’d think that, even though Simon the multimillionaire businessman isn’t spending his own money on his campaign, his aides might have been able to afford a good French dictionary and found that “hors d’oeuvres” isn’t spelled “hors d’ouevres,” or that the word for “platter” is “ecuelle,” not “eucelle.”

C’est la viande.

The Criminal Meets the Political--Again

In politics, as in much else, everything old is new again.

After Gray Davis set in motion “the Amber alert,” a system to alert the public to child abductions by flashing the news on freeway message signs, Bill Simon lambasted Davis for not doing so earlier, and cited the work of the Polly Klaas Foundation as a group that tried to get Davis to come aboard earlier.

Polly Klaas is the 12-year-old Petaluma girl who, in 1994, was kidnapped from her home and murdered, and she figured in an earlier campaign, as 5-year-old kidnap-murder victim Samantha Runnion is figuring in this one.

In 1994, California’s Democratic candidate for attorney general, Tom Umberg, aired an ad suggesting that Polly might be alive had not the incumbent, Republican opponent Dan Lungren, failed to adopt a statewide computerized program for tracking parolees--an ad condemned across the political board.

Politicians and Food, Version Two

Great moments in statesmanship: bits of an exchange in Congress last month between Bakersfield Republican Bill Thomas and Sacramento Democrat Robert Matsui, regarding another member of Congress whose name rhymes with “baloney”:

Thomas: “... if the gentleman from California did not understand the context in which I referred to his argument ... I said it was the * * * baloney; and if the gentleman does not understand the use of that phrase, let me explain it. Apparently the argument that the Democrats have been making for the last hour is baloney.”

Matsui: “Mr. Speaker ... I think the gentleman has used a member’s name in a way that is diminishing to a member, and is putting the colleague up to contempt and ridicule. If I may have a ruling, Mr. Speaker ... “

Thomas: “Mr. Speaker ... the gentleman from California would ask unanimous consent to remove the statement and put in its place that the argument from the gentleman from California about the way in which the gentleman from Connecticut [James H. Maloney] was treated is phony baloney.... The gentleman from California is willing to strike that structure which has been presented if it offends the gentleman because I want to move on with the debate.”The clerk (reading back the remarks): “ ... if the gentleman from California did not understand the context in which I referred to his argument

The speaker pro tempore: “The chair is aware that the gentleman from California was using the word ‘baloney’ to characterize only the rationale offered by his opposition, but the chair nevertheless finds that the use of another member’s surname as though an adjective for a word of ridicule is not in order. Without objection, the offending word is stricken.”

What does that make us, chopped liver?

Till Council Meetings Do Them Part

It was a marriage made on the campaign trail and formalized in Santa Barbara.

L.A. City Council member Wendy Greuel and literary agent and campaign volunteer Dean Schramm met while trying to get people to register to vote.

They dated at the Sunland-Tujunga watermelon festival.

And they got married Saturday in Santa Barbara, the first marriage for both, with their nuptials commended during a City Council meeting last week.

“When he walked precincts and did fund-raising for me, I figured I’d better hold onto him before I lost him,” Greuel told her council colleagues, among them Eric Garcetti, who is engaged to be married.

Federal Judge Harry Pregerson pronounced them husband and council member. The couple will live in the council district, in Van Nuys, and are postponing their Caribbean honeymoon until the council recesses in late August. In the meantime, the couple will file city ethics forms disclosing their wedding gifts.

Not the Best Endorsement

The name of a former Republican presidential candidate has surfaced in a quirky connection to the San Diego trial of the man accused of kidnapping and murdering 7-year-old Danielle Van Dam.

Defendant David Westerfield’s 18-year-old son, Neal, testified that his father downloaded the porno found on the father’s computers. The son admitted that he sometimes browsed online porno sites--but never under his own name.

When he visited X-rated sites, he used several names, including that of Bob Dole, the former Kansas senator who ran for president against Bill Clinton in 1996, and later served as spokesman for the erectile dysfunction drug Viagra.

The admission brought laughter from audience, attorneys, jurors and even the dour-faced judge.

Points Taken

* The state’s Legislative Women’s Caucus and domestic violence groups are applauding the signing of a bill that lets victims of domestic violence sue their attackers for damages and recover attorneys’ fees. Assemblywoman Sarah Reyes, a Fresno Democrat, says California is now the first state to restore that provision of the 1994 federal Violence Against Women Act, which was overturned by the Supreme Court on grounds it was a state, not a federal matter.

* If you’re lining up for jury service Tuesday morning outside the civil courthouse on South Commonwealth Avenue in Los Angeles, that military-looking fellow isn’t courthouse security: he’s Sgt. Jury, and he wants you to do your bit for “Operation Jury Service” and show up in court when the jury summons tells you to, especially now that one-day, one-trial rule is up and running.

* It’s California Dreamin’ tonight in Santa Monica, where actress, activist and Mamas and the Papas founding member Michelle Phillips leads a campaign rally and volunteer gathering for City Council candidate Jerry Rubin.

You Can Quote Me

“Abuse of power is sometimes an angry, out-of-control cop beating up a teenager in California. Sometimes it’s an angry, out-of-control judge like Denise Majette.”

A snippet from a radio ad by Georgia Rep. Cynthia McKinney, comparing her primary-election opponent to the Inglewood police officer who slammed a handcuffed teenager onto the hood of a car. Majette, a former judge, once sentenced a speeder to two days in jail and a $1,000 fine, a sentence that was later vacated.

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Patt Morrison’s column appears Mondays and Tuesdays. Her e-mail address is patt.morrison@latimes.com. This week’s contributors include Tony Perry and Massie Ritsch.