In the Spirit of All That Campaign Word-Twisting ...

Too late for the Grammy awards but just in time for Tuesday’s primary comes the new, remixed, remastered, re-lyricized “Election Song” from the world’s only folk-bluegrass voter organization, the California Voter Foundation.

The cut is only 86 seconds long and not remotely a dance tune, unless you count clog dancing, but it packs in a lot about yet more new twists in the ballot.

“Oh, we’re having an election/March 5th is the day

It’s for all the people/In Cali-for-ni-ay

Lots of things are different/Many rules have changed

So if you feel a little lost/Don’t think that you’re to blame

This song will get you started/The rest is up to you

Democracy’s a lot of work/Best left to not too few

This election’s a primary/The parties nominate

The one they think will do the best/Of all their candidates

The districts were renumbered/The lines just got redrawn

Your current reps may be elsewhere/When this election’s done

There are lots of statewide contests/Their number totals eight

Plus state and local measures/So please don’t hesitate

(and here’s our favorite couplet:)

Get out your ballot pamphlets/And gather all your friends

‘Cuz out here in our Golden State/The ballot never ends

If you want more information/Just log yourself online

There’s so much more at calvoter-dot-org/We’re o-pen all the time!”

Thank you, thank you--no autographs, please.

Proposition They’d Like to Refuse

Ronald Reagan has been absent from politics since he announced his Alzheimer’s condition in 1994, but that hasn’t kept politicians and political causes from hooking rides aboard his legacy--this latest one invoking Reagan’s name without his approval.

A mailer favoring Proposition 45, which would let local voters loosen term limits for their local lawmakers, uses Reagan’s smiling face with the line, “Like President Reagan, Proposition 45 puts its faith in the voters to make the right decisions for themselves.”

We faxed it to Reagan chief of staff Joanne Drake, who says, “Neither President nor Mrs. Reagan have ever endorsed anyone in a primary campaign. They are not now actively involved with any candidate or proposition for [Tuesday’s] election.”

Howard Jarvis, though, is another matter; 16 years in his grave, and his picture is still appearing on mailers, shaking his tax-revolting fist. The latest flier endorses GOP gov candidate Bill Simon, who, being into education and all as he says he is, is surely not responsible for the misspelled word “sponsered” right there on the front.

Confrontation Not on the Pantry Menu

The last roundup of the gov candidates before Tuesday’s primary:

When former L.A. Mayor Richard Riordan stopped in at his downtown restaurant, the Pantry, Garry South was out front, waiting. South, who is the gray matter of Gray Davis’ campaign, is always spoiling for a good ol’ political donnybrook, but the moment never happened. Riordan’s staff, knowing he was right outside, hung back and kept their guy from leaving until the weather report came: all clear--no South wind.

(Hanging in the Pantry is a picture of Riordan with former Gov. George Deukmejian in happier times, before Deukmejian said last month that Riordan “is a man I couldn’t vote for.”)

As for Bill Simon, despite a rumor to the contrary, he’s not getting a contribution from Don Novey, chief of the California Correctional Peace Officers Assn. Novey only showed up for a Simon event in Sacramento a week ago because he wanted to talk to Rudy Giuliani, the former New Yawk mayor, and to get his autograph on a photo of the World Trade Center that Novey had bought at a charity auction.

Naturally, people who recognized Novey got to wondering about whether that mighty union boss, who saw to it that $2 million got to Gray Davis’ campaign four years ago, was putting body English on the GOP primary. “Nope. I just wanted to see Rudy. We talked about New York. I told him about stretching my neck to watch a Mickey Mantle home run into the third deck.”

Novey is less kindly disposed toward Simon; the prison guards union had set up a tour of a correctional facility, but Novey said Simon canceled at the last minute.

And Bill Jones, who has ranked as the bridesmaid in polls behind the dueling brides, Riordan and Simon, was in Orange County of late, still smarting from the pay-per-vote straw poll that Simon won at the state party convention last month.

Simon’s support was bought, Jones charged, by paying college students $200 each--plus room and board--to become “associate” members of the party for the day so they could vote. (Riordan boycotted the straw poll as being stacked to the right.)

New Speaker Hones Comedic Talents

Herb Wesson, the new Assembly speaker and evidently an aspiring stand-up politician, bore gifts at the Sacramento Press Club last week: a six-inch Oscar-ish statuette for each reporter with the inscription, “Herb’s Statue to the Critics. You’re the Greatest.”

Among the laugh lines:

* He hates getting phone calls from Legislative Analyst Elizabeth Hill, who studies the budget for lawmakers, because “every time I talk to her, we go deeper in the hole.”

* After two weeks as speaker, Wesson noticed that his mustache sprouted its first gray hair. If this keeps up, he says he’ll be clean-shaven by December.

* Asked whether the Kings would beat the Lakers, the Los Angeles assemblyman who now rules a state’s worth of politicians would only say that his “two favorite teams are the Lakers and the Kings.... I can’t lose.”

No Speedy Boarding, Even for ‘Names’

The lieutenant governor of California got the twice-over at the Burbank airport last week.

Waiting in the boarding pass 1-through-30 group for Southwest Airlines’ 4:10 p.m. flight out of gate A3 to Sacramento, Cruz Bustamante was flagged for a secondary security check. George Kostyrko, the communications director for the California Youth Authority, said that not only could you read the “Lieutenant Governor Cruz Bustamante” luggage tag from 10 feet away, but hanging right there on the wall a different 10 feet away was a framed picture of Bustamante, among other photos on the political frequent-flier hall of fame.

It was clear, says Kostyrko, that the security workers didn’t recognize Bustamante, but the other fliers did, and all of them were “watching with interest.”

Points Taken

* Oakland’s City Council turned down a reporting law that would have clued the public in on how much lobbying groups spent, and what matters they were trying to influence.

* Sausalito’s ballot measure B would say an advisory yea or nay to plans for a $7.8-million police and fire building. Some residents object that it’s not only out of scale for the waterfront town, but that it projects bad feng shui.

* Orange County, cash cow for the GOP for a quarter-century, has a champion milk-maker for 2001: Assemblyman John Campbell (R-Irvine), who collected $243,000 in contributions, followed by Santa Ana Democratic Assemblyman Lou Correa and Fullerton Republican Assemblywoman Lynn Daucher, with $227,000 each.

* After protests from some students, First Lady Laura Bush turned down an invitation to speak at UCLA’s spring commencement--but then, according to her office, she has “declined all commencement invitations she has received.”

You Can Quote Me

“I knew Howard Jarvis. And Bill Simon is no Howard Jarvis.”

--Gubernatorial candidate and Secretary of State Bill Jones, going after fellow candidate Simon and reworking the famous line that Democratic vice presidential candidate Lloyd Bentsen delivered about John F. Kennedy and used on his fellow senator, Republican Dan Quayle, in the 1988 veep debate.

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Richard Riordan greets patrons at his Pantry restaurant in downtown Los Angeles, where he spoke about primary rival Bill Simon.

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Garry South, campaign manager for Gov. Gray Davis, waits outside the Pantry for a Riordan encounter, which Riordan handlers averted.

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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 Mark Z. Barabak, Jean O. Pasco and Jenifer Warren.