After Mix-Up, Hertzberg Ponders Noble Thing to Do

It had to be true, because there it was, in a Los Angeles Times newspaper ad, right? “Hon. Robert Hertzberg, Nobel Prize Winner.”

The emeritus Assembly speaker, a Democrat from Sherman Oaks, has made peace a few times in Sacramento, where people may think the rancor approaches that of the Middle East. But a Nobel?

The full-page ad congratulated a veterans group for its recent award dinner, and listed entertainment and political figures among its attendees and honorees, from Gray Davis to Gregory Peck.

A man named Robert Muller was also listed as a Nobel Prize winner, and that’s a lot closer to the mark: He founded the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation and co-founded the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, the ICBL. The 1997 Nobel Peace Prize went to Jody Williams, the campaign’s coordinator, and the ICBL.

Hertzberg has not yet gotten a congratulatory call from his fellow fictional Nobel laureate, actor Russell Crowe, who isn’t a mathematician but plays one in a movie. But Hertzberg’s 12-year-old son was the first to congratulate him, running in and giving his dad a hug. And Hertzberg’s friends have been calling and sending copies of the ad, a correction for which was published a day or so later.

With term limits nudging Hertzberg out of Sacramento this year, this mix-up has gotten him to thinking about “reinventing myself.... Now I’m gonna do something bold and dynamic so I’m worthy of my newfound honor.” Maybe keep the Valley from leaving L.A.? Now that’s Peace Prize-worthy, but the people talking up Hertzberg as a possible mayor of a new Valley city, despite his protestations against that notion, would be so disappointed.

What the ad giveth, it also taketh away: It misspelled the name of the county sheriff as “Lee Bacca.”

E-Mail ‘Alert’ Takes Aim at Laura Chick

E-rumors, the eighth plague of L.A. City Hall!

First, one from something calling itself, blandly and anonymously, “Action Alert” (no names) demanded that Angelenos “stop racism in the city controller’s office!”

The e-mail zipping around town asked recipients to phone or e-mail Controller Laura Chick “to stop headline-grabbing at the expense of our community.”

“Community” in this case is shorthand code for minority groups, and the racism bit--Chick supposedly criticizing “events by or for people of color,” including the L.A. Marathon, Magic Johnson Foundation, Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and others--doesn’t stand up to study.

Chick is not taking on the groups named in the e-mail. She is, rather, investigating the semi-independent and semi-rich Department of Water and Power, a city agency she is tempted to call the Department of Wasteful Practices. It writes many checks to lots of groups and events besides the ones named in the e-mail: a 75-G annual membership to the Coliseum Commission for VIP suites, tickets and promotional signs, $4,747 for food for the DWP’s best customers, $15,000 to feed a party to rename the DWP headquarters after the late council President John Ferraro, and 100 thou for 24 tickets to next month’s soiree for Project Restore, the City Hall rehab project.

Chick’s office says it’s received more “you go, girl!” e-mails than any “action alert!” complaints. And Chick--sounding like the new sheriff in a corrupt frontier town, a scenario beloved of western movie writers--says taking on the DWP has evidently riled up some folks.

“I think there are a variety of ways that people involved in this are trying to silence me.... This is an anonymous message that is absolutely without any truth or substance, and in my mind is just one more way that attempts are being made to silence me or scare me off.”

A Missive Misses the Mark Widely

On a different floor, and with less sinister undertones....

Councilman Jack Weiss is not moving to Seattle.

The first-term councilman, who’s barely lowered his hand from the swearing-in last summer, has been caught by surprise by this e-mail and others like it:

“The word among the talky-talks is that Jack’s wife wants to live in Seattle, and they’ll be moving there in a year,” the e-mail goes. “So, are you quitting and moving to Seattle? ... If not, somebody’s sure trying to undermine you and your rising star.”

This was all the buzz of the vote-counting room in the L.A. County registrar-recorder’s offices in Norwalk during the down-to-the-wire wait for results in the city’s 2nd District council runoff March 5, the e-mail said. And sources? The e-mailer had it confirmed by someone who heard it “absolutely” from someone who used to work for veteran Rep. Howard Berman’s political operation and now works for a Los Angeles school board member.

Practically gospel.

The truth: Weiss has a field deputy named Ken who is getting married this summer to a woman who lives in Seattle and Ken might just possibly move up there--but that is one long stretch to Weiss “absolutely” leaving town.

Weiss’ wife, Leslie Kautz, e-mailed her husband drolly that she appreciated his willingness to go anywhere with her, “given its potentially negative impact on your career.... I wouldn’t move to Seattle (or anywhere) on a bet! (Mammoth? now that’s another story).”

Points Taken

* With Wendy Greuel apparently beating Assemblyman Tony Cardenas in L.A.’s 2nd District council election, Sacramento politicians are now 0 for 8 in recent elections trying to win L.A. municipal office.

* Coattails already? Bill Simon’s shellacking of fellow Republican Richard Riordan in California’s gubernatorial primary is also getting him credit for helping to pass Orange County’s Measure V, creating a new county charter that fills even brief vacancies on the Board of Supervisors by election rather than leaving them to gubernatorial appointment.

* Biotech bigwig Tina S. Nova has been named chairwoman of California’s Democratic Leadership Council, the Golden State’s franchise on the “New Democrat” group that helped to move Bill Clinton into the White House.

* Former Clinton White House press aide Chad Griffin, who also worked for Rob Reiner’s cigarette tax initiative, will head the celebrity-studded Rally to Save Ahmanson Ranch campaign to stop Washington Mutual’s swanky 3,050-house and retail development in the Simi Hills of Ventura County.

* A House subcommittee on military officers’ abuse of government credit cards, a group chaired by California Republican Steve Horn, was told that a former Navy worker in San Diego used her credit card to spend nearly $12,000 on goods, including a computer, gift certificates and clothes, before walking away from the debt--and right into a better job at the Pentagon. She was never asked to repay the government, and the U.S. attorney in San Diego declined to prosecute, Iowa Republican Sen. Charles Grassley told the hearing.

* Absentee ballots may have made the difference in Santa Barbara County, obviating the need for a November runoff and evidently giving the 50%-plus margin of victory to Sheriff’s Cmdr. Jim Anderson over retired Undersheriff Dave Dorsey and two other candidates for county sheriff.

* Former Atty. Gen. Janet Reno will be in L.A . on March 26 at a Century City fund-raiser for her campaign to unseat President Bush’s brother as governor of Florida.

* A New England Journal of Medicine story about a study of California’s prescription drug discount program for Medicare beneficiaries reported that many elderly do not get the benefit of the program, and said the study was conducted in part by enlisting “Medicare beneficiaries with acting experience” to test 500 pharmacies.

* D.C. alert: L.A. attorney Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. opens a branch in the nation’s capital.

You Can Quote Me

“Richard Gere is here!”

--A spokeswoman for Newport Beach Republican Congressman Chris Cox, rushing to get off the phone. The actor, a devotee of Buddhism and the Dalai Lama, had stopped by to chat up Cox, who shares Gere’s interest in Tibet, but not his ability to leave the opposite sex completely rattled. Gere had testified at a congressional hearing about religious freedom there.

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With term limits nudging him out of Sacramento, emeritus Assembly Speaker Bob Hertzberg says the mix-up has him thinking about “reinventing myself.”

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Santa Claus, stay out: Gifts from lobbyists or just folks are proving to be such Trojan horses for politicians that on office doors throughout the state Capitol (some but not all), signs are popping up with some variant of “Thanks but no thanks,” or “Thanks on these conditions.... “ On the door of L.A. Democrat Rod Wright’s office, above: “We appreciate the generosity of all gifts brought to this office. We’ll also gladly accept all gifts that we can legally receive that other members refuse.” Below, La Canada Flintridge Democrat Carol Liu’s is in the just-say-no vein: “Though we appreciate your generosity, we are not able to accept gifts. Thank you.” Ah, but campaign contributions may be another kettle of fish

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