Police Group Bails Out on Davis Campaign

To all of you who don’t pay attention to politics until after Labor Day, thinking it doesn’t get interesting until then--go ahead, turn the page. See you in September.

Right. Now that we political junkies are alone: Last week’s endorsement by a police organization of Republican gubernatorial candidate Bill Simon has launched the campaign’s latest dust-up.

One might think, well, naturally, cops and Republicans go together. But this group, the California Organization of Police and Sheriffs--COPS--has endorsed Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein in the past, and it endorsed Gray Davis in 1998 and again in last spring’s Democratic primary (when it also endorsed Simon on the GOP side).

Dropping Davis now is the political equivalent of changing your date in the middle of the prom, and the Davis camp, its corsage beginning to wilt, is accordingly outraged.

The head outragee is Garry South, Davis’ campaign manager. Not long after the March primary, someone evidently sent South a confidential COPS report that the group was thinking of switching its endorsement. He dispatched a fax railing about that, calling it a barnyard euphemism.

South went on about Monty Holden, COPS’ executive director and a Davis appointee to a state police-related commission called POST:

“Monty Holden declaring war through COPS on the governor of California--who only appointed him to POST--and pimping for Simon

Stirring the dust even more, in a letter to Davis, a past COPS president denounced what “ludicrous” deeds the current COPS crop of leaders were up to, and offered his own “unyielding support.”

Kelley Moran, on COPS’ board of directors, said the group had bailed on Davis because of a general want of leadership, massive budget problems affecting local public safety issues, and a rising crime rate.

But, engagingly, the confidential report that so infuriated South pointed out that where Davis seemed to have “forgotten we exist,” Simon paid to fly COPS officials “all over the state” for his public-safety news conferences.

Moreover, noted the report, “a Bill Simon endorsement would be a HUGE recruiting tool for COPS (membership $36 a year),” especially considering that “80% of police officers are Republicans and don’t appreciate how the police unions always seem to endorse the Democrats.”

And then there was this: “ ... If we go with Simon in the general (election), there’s a very good chance the board will get the chance to meet the president.”

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Nate Holden Targets Unemployment--His

Unemployment is an awful thing, and politicians in particular find it unpleasant to contemplate, which is why Proposition 45 was put on the state ballot in March, to allow voters to petition the secretary of state to let maxed-out incumbents run again.

It lost around the state but won in Los Angeles, which has encouraged the termed-out, out-the-door Nate Holden to say he’ll try to get his 14 colleagues to help him put something on the Nov. 5 ballot that would allow council members to serve three four-year terms, instead of the two required by charter amendment. This task might be made a bit more difficult not only by the looming matter of secession, but by Holden’s remark about some of his greener council colleagues: “You can see these guys don’t have enough experience around here.”

In Sacramento, a couple of Republicans tried to do much the same thing, then quickly abandoned the plan like a stink bomb at a flower show.

It was very complicated--so is a shell game--but it would have cut term limit total years from 14 to 12. That looks like tighter limits on the face of it, but the measure would have changed the rules to let legislators serve all that time in either the Senate or Assembly if they wished.

That would have allowed one of its sponsors, Moorpark’s Tony Strickland, to sit tight in the Assembly until 2004 when he might get a shot at a Senate seat if a fellow Republican, Thousand Oaks’ Tom McClintock, gets to be state controller in November.

That had nothing to do with it, Strickland insists. He and Fresno colleague Mike Briggs only wanted to curb “office jumping” from chamber to chamber, one step ahead of term limits. But once their colleagues got wind of this, they sent so many suggestions for “improving” the measure that Strickland said he and Briggs decided to put a stake in it.

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Putting a Spin on Tussle in a Pub

You read it here last week, all about CommandFocus, the new political spin shop opened by Republican spokesdude Dan Schnur and three compatriots.

Then the firm made even more of a splash after its official launch at Gallagher’s Irish Pub in Sacramento, where there must be testosterone in the Bushmills.

Democratic policy guru Bob Mulholland, who is Schnur’s Democratic counterpart when it comes to the cutting political riposte, stopped by for a congratulatory chat with the guys, which didn’t go over well with Schnur, perhaps in part because Mulholland has taken great relish in pointing out Schnur’s twin DUIs back in the 1990s.

It didn’t take long for the soiree to go south, with what was described as a “physical altercation,” reportedly a shove-fest between the rather tall Mulholland and the rather not Schnur. Who started it depends on who you talk to, even if they didn’t happen to be there.

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Points Taken

* The check was in the mail, from a surprise source: M.A. Hartwig’s $1,000 donation to the Gray Davis campaign last month was from none other than Ron Hartwig, a PR executive at Hill & Knowlton and former gubernatorial campaign manager to Republican Richard Riordan.

* They don’t call it the Golden State for nothing: Janet Reno came to California not long ago to raise money for her run for Florida governor, and now Florida papers report that her opponent, incumbent Republican Jeb Bush, brother to the White House’s First Occupant, hit the road for a two-day fund-raising trip in California too.

* Brandon Neal, an 11-year-old from Venice Beach, is absolutely destined for a career in high diplomatic and political circles: When the vegetarian Brandon found out that the Carl’s Jr. hamburger chain was renting a penthouse suite his family owned to make a burger commercial, Brandon got his father, Brad, to agree to make the filming conditional on the production company making a $1,000 donation to PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

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You Can Quote Me

“Each class [at UCLA] taught me something significant to what I do today. I’ve got more skills to deal with you guys.”

--Fred Flores, who for 10 years has been communications and community relations director to Mission Hills Democratic Congressman Howard Berman. At 40, Flores is now a UCLA graduate, picking up a diploma from the university’s communication studies department--with a 3.1 GPA while handling work, fatherhood and grandfatherhood.

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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 Jean O. Pasco and Margaret Talev.