Davis Aide’s Special Job: Keep Heat on Simon

What campaign would be complete without one?

A late-April memo to labor unions from the Gray Davis campaign announced the new “Deputy Political Director for Rapid Response,” whose job is to “keep the heat on Simon from now until November.”

The heat-seeking campaign includes writing letters to the editor about Republican Bill Simon’s spotty voting record and his not releasing his tax returns.

The memo suggests using any of 10 bullet points, such as: “Voting and paying taxes are two things every citizen should do. It looks like Simon doesn’t do either, and he wants our vote?”

Watch for them in a newspaper near you.

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Oracle Tout More Than a Footnote in Southland

The original Oracle, the one at Delphi in ancient Greece, was said to be able to foretell the future.

If that were true of the here and now, Oracle--a software company caught up in a dust-up over a sweetheart deal with the Davis administration--might have seen its own debacle coming.

Oracle-watchers have noted the presence of a bit player known for other political fracases from Orange County to Sacramento: Oracle lobbyist Ravi Mehta.

Last spring, it was Mehta who passed the $25,000 check for Davis’ reelection campaign from Oracle to longtime Davis aide Arun Baheti at a Sacramento restaurant. Baheti has since resigned.

Mehta wasn’t always a footnote.

A former Orange County deputy D.A. and an up-and-coming (rather than down-and-going) Republican activist, Mehta saw his prospects glisten in 1995 when then-Gov. Pete Wilson named him to head the Fair Political Practices Commission. But Mehta was slammed by two FPPC commissioners and consumer groups after he was paid by Wilson’s chief of staff, Bob White, for personal legal work done even as the FPPC was investigating a member of Wilson’s cabinet.

Mehta quit in August 1997 after he apologized to a gathering of lobbyists for the passage of a statewide campaign reform measure; he suggested it was unconstitutional--at the same time he was defending the measure in court.

Mehta returned to Orange County, and became the first special counsel hired by a California city to investigate alleged political misdeeds. A minority of the Anaheim City Council--two Republicans feuding with the Democratic mayor--approved Mehta’s labors, which ended up costing the city more than $400,000 before a judge put a stop to it, ruling in 2000 that Mehta had been hired illegally.

Last year, Mehta and a pro-business campaign committee were fined $23,000 for violating political reform laws. In that case, the FPPC accused its former boss of taking $7,000 from a campaign fund, which he served as treasurer, and using the money to get a paint job for his Porsche.

Of the new set-to, “I’m not surprised,” says longtime government watchdog Shirley Grindle of Orange. “The guy’s left everywhere under a cloud.”

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Attention, Shredders: Cease, Desist, Don’t Do It

From Watergate to Iran-Contra to Arthur Andersen and now Oracle, the sound of shredding is the sound of scandal.

No wonder, then, that at the rumor of document-shredding at an agency touched by Oracle troubles--the state Department of Information Technology (DOIT, which is pronounced DOYT, but if we were lucky, would be DO-IT)--a stop-shredding statement issued forth at e-speed from Davis’ legal affairs secretary, Barry Goode:

“This morning, the governor’s legal affairs office received an unsubstantiated report of possible document shredding at the Department of Information Technology (DOIT). I immediately called DOIT, directed it to determine if any shredding was occurring, and, if so, to cease immediately. I then called the attorney general’s office, reported what we had heard and done, and asked them to commence an investigation. In cooperation with the attorney general, the California Highway Patrol was dispatched to secure all shredders and trash at DOIT. While we had no conclusive evidence that any shredding or destruction of documents occurred, the mere suggestion that it may have occurred has led us to take these steps.”

And who can’t sleep better at night, knowing that DO-IT’s trash is intact?

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Victory Toast in China Almost Hits a Sore Spot

The Oxnard Harbor District folks, led by Commissioner Jess Herrera, made its victory tour of China last month, sealing a deal affiliating the Port of Hueneme with the Port of Qinhuangdao, about 200 miles east of Beijing.

It’s a marriage that could yield a lot of juice when citrus exports start yielding port fees for the home team. But when the time came to toast the deal, it wasn’t orange juice in those cups.

Herrera admits the delegation was culturally unready for the contents of the cups--a strong liquor that Herrera described as having an aroma he didn’t immediately associate with drink.

“Gan bei!” was the Chinese toast, translating closely to “Empty one’s cup” or, loosely, “Bottoms up!”

But what with the jet lag, the language gap and the powerful fragrance coming from his cup, Herrera said it was all he could do to keep from blurting out, “Ben Gay!”

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Taxpayers Send More Than Feds Give Back

That sucking sound going east? Your tax dollars.

Tax Year 2000 made the 14th consecutive fiscal year that California sent more tax money to the federal government than it got back in federal goodies and services. This means, according to the California Institute, that ever since that kid skateboarding in your driveway was born, California’s money has been bailing out some other state; in 2000, the difference was $29.3 billion.

The “trade deficit,” as the California Institute calls it, began after the drying-up of the defense-dollar pipeline that had poured more than a trillion dollars of federal dough into California since World War II; that “trade surplus” peaked in fiscal 1984, giving California $6.8 billion more than it sent east.

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Points Taken

* California Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer, who maxes out at about 5 feet tall, was “particularly upset” that Enron used the name “Get Shorty” for one of its schemes to try to manipulate energy prices in California.

* Two parody Web sites--www.voteforbillsimon.com and www.voteforgraydavis.com--zing the former as having “hired radical right-wing activists from the ‘Traditional Values Coalition’ to promote his election campaign” and the latter as having “accepted over $119,000 in campaign contributions” from Enron before it filed for bankruptcy.

* Pathways to Power, a Costa Mesa lunch series sponsored by the Conservative Women’s Leadership Assn., on Thursday hears from U.S. Treasurer and former Huntington Park Councilwoman Rosario Marin, and on May 23 from Mindy Tucker, whose resume runs from spokeswoman to candidate George Bush and Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft to communications director for the Republican National Committee.

* Reliable sources report that Gray Davis’ security detail stopped Cinco de Mayo traffic around Los Angeles’ Olvera Street so Davis--evidently in the neighborhood for the Mexican American holiday--could use the men’s room.

* In a guest column in a newspaper published in a part of Los Angeles that no longer wants to be part of Los Angeles--you can take it from there--L.A. County Sheriff Lee Baca stuck up for his big big budget against cuts being proposed by his Board of Supervisors bosses--”except,” Baca writes, “Michael A. Antonovich.” Antonovich’s middle name is Dennis, whose usual budget-trimming tendencies could merit the nickname “Dennis the Minus.”

* About 28 years after his father’s illness made him drop out of college, and three years after he earned his bachelor’s degree in study-by-mail courses, Assembly Speaker Herb Wesson was awarded an honorary law doctorate from his recent alma mater, Lincoln University in Pennsylvania.

* No hard feelings? The California Teachers Assn., which put $2 million into Gray Davis’ campaign in 1998, hasn’t donated a tenth of that yet, in spite of Davis’ request for a million bucks--and even so, Davis declared May 8 to be California Day of the Teacher.

* No hard feelings II: The Bill Simon campaign has hired Rod Lapsley, who worked for Bill Jones in his losing primary campaign against Simon, and Jones’ daughter Andrea, who at 24 is already a pro, having worked for the presidential campaign of John McCain and the Senate race of Tom Campbell.

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You Can Quote Me

“Gray Davis is in bad shape in terms of his personal popularity and voters wanting a change. But whether Simon’s the guy to do it or not, we’ll have to see.”

Rep. Tom Davis, a Virginia Republican and head of the National Republican Congressional Committee, speaking on CNN of Simon’s gubernatorial effort with a decided want of gung-ho enthusiasm.

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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, Jean O. Pasco and Margaret Talev.