This Is Only a Test Ballot -- Do Not Punch

A guy can dream, can’t he?

The official state of California Web site, which carried election results as they came in, was running its tests before the big night, and according to the fake results run through the system:

Incumbents were turned out by the score. Third parties swept entire counties. Judges were tossed off the bench, and nearly every proposition was voted down.

Most interestingly, the tests had Bill Simon leading Gray Davis by about 460,000 votes, with 96% of the vote counted.

If there were no other way to tell that this was only a test, and entirely fictitious, it was the figure showing about a 97% voter turnout. Dream on.

Rubin’s Letters Reveal Reaction to Jail

The Libertarian and Druid who just pulled a cool 2% in his campaign for governor says he was pen pals with Irv Rubin, the Jewish Defense League leader. Rubin last week was said to have attempted suicide on his way to court for allegedly plotting to blow up a mosque and the California offices of Carlsbad Republican Rep. Darrell Issa.

Rubin wrote to Gary D. Copeland that he was “in hell” and understood why Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (“may he rot forever”) chose death over prison. In his isolation cell, Rubin said he had nothing to read but “old dated magazines like Road and Track and Popular Mech[anics].” One day “in the hole” was like a thousand. “I’m literally a political prisoner,” Rubin wrote. “I will wait to see if this letter reaches you before I write again,” he said.

It was the last Rubin letter Copeland received.

A Personal Stake in Transportation Issue

Now that’s bipartisanship:

The California Capitol Hill Bulletin reports that 16 California members of Congress have written to Transportation Secretary Norm Mineta asking him for an exemption to allow nonstops to fly between the urban Washington Reagan National Airport and LAX.

This would mean that legislators facing those looooong flights to the West Coast wouldn’t have to take that looooong ride out into Virginia to Dulles airport to catch the L.A. nonstops; they’d just have to leap into a cab for the dash from Capitol Hill, all the better to get home earlier for a weekend with the family or constituents -- or the fund-raisers. Maybe they’re counting on the fact that Mineta understands their plight: He was once a California congressman himself.

State Party Chairman Would Like to Rephrase

Shawn Steel, the besieged but genial chairman of California’s Republican Party, was up late election night, and on Pasadena public radio station KPCC when asked about the possible Democratic sweep of Sacramento offices.

“Giving all power to one party invites nothing but tyranny and corruption.... Everybody recognizes that,” he proclaimed.

When it was pointed out to him that his own party now holds one-party control in Washington, D.C., Steel said with a laugh, “You’ve really got me caught in my own rhetoric.”

Mayor Snuggles Up to Some Heavy Hitters

Some politicians worry about protecting their base; others worry about covering the bases.

Irvine’s just-reelected uber-mayor, Larry Agran, once a Democratic presidential candidate and perennially a punching bag for Orange County’s GOP, appeared on a preelection slate mailer that made his rivals blanch: Front and center, in full color, was Agran shaking hands with ... George W. Bush, a photo apparently taken during Bush’s August visit to Santa Ana.

That very same day, some Democratic voters reported receiving a recorded telephone exhortation to voters to cast their ballots for Agran -- a message from a Democratic U.S. senator and another favorite GOP punching bag, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The Quackenbushes, Slightly Ascendant

The name Quackenbush has pretty much departed the California scene, after former Insurance Commissioner Chuck Quackenbush, facing impeachment and a criminal investigation in a political corruption scandal, quit the job.

He and his wife, Chris -- whose failed 1998 campaign for state Senate was bankrolled by $175,000 in contributions made to her husband by insurance interests -- moved to Hawaii. Chris Q.’s name appeared on a letter to the editor in the Honolulu Advertiser on Halloween. She identified herself as a businessperson, praising Linda Lingle, the GOP nominee for governor, and slamming Hawaii’s Democrats as responsible for “prevalent corruption,” among other failings.

On election night, the Quackenbushes were spotted at Lingle’s victory party. The Quackenbushes probably remember that “aloha” means both “goodbye” and “hello.”

Fancy in Name but Otherwise the Same

Angelenos voted last week not to let bits of their city defect from the body politic, but two neighborhoods that never put it to a vote are staying in the fold and are making sure all the other cattle know they’re there.

In the optimistic tradition of settlements called River Oaks that possess neither river nor oaks, the L.A. City Council voted to allow a culturally and historically distinct neighborhood bounded by Vermont Avenue, Figueroa Street, 120th Street and El Segundo Boulevard to be known as Athens on a Hill.

Residents supposedly refer to the area that way among themselves, even though in terms of altitude, says one City Hall-er, it’s more a bump than a hill.

Ditto East Hollywood, where a neighborhood bordered by Western Avenue, Melrose Avenue, the Hollywood Freeway, Santa Monica Boulevard and Ardmore Avenue will henceforth be known as Melrose Hill.

Points Taken

* Job insecurity: GOP Rep. Steve Horn, redistricted out of his seat and soon to leave Congress, announced not long before last week’s election that he had hired two new staff members, one in Washington and the other in Lakewood.

* Democratic State Sen. Sheila Kuehl will be honored at a Thursday evening gala by the UCLA women’s studies programs and the UCLA Center for the Study of Women with the first Women’s Community Action Award. Former National Organization for Women President Patricia Ireland is the guest host.

* Ben Austin, a former Clinton White House aide, former deputy mayor to Richard Riordan and now spokesman for Rob Reiner, is engaged to Tracy Olmstead. The couple first met on Halloween during Clinton’s 1992 campaign, and met again in the White House. The wedding’s in 2003 -- maybe on Halloween. The bride-to-be is a fund-raiser for Gray Davis -- does this mean she is now out of work?

* Closed captioning on television is always an approximate process of rendering spoken into written words, and on election night, closed captioning for Los Angeles station KCAL-TV Channel 9 rendered “Valley secession” as “Valerie secession,” and Arnold Schwarzenegger as “Schwarz-negative.”

* File this under “what ifs”: Political gossip has it that back in January or February, the White House was so eager to see former L.A. Mayor Richard Riordan win the California gubernatorial primary that there were negotiations about Bill Simon getting out of the race to take the No. 2 job in the new Homeland Security office. But the possible offer supposedly fell through when Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge had a wobbly start, and the idea of a political fledgling like Simon in the second chair changed some minds. The rest, like the Simon campaign itself now, is history.

You Can Quote Me

“Everyone in Hollywood wanted to be just like Gandhi -- thin, tan and moral.”

Actor Martin Sheen, who was in the film “Gandhi,” speaking at a pre-election fund-raiser for Santa Monica’s Measure JJ, the living-wage proposal, which failed to pass in a citywide vote.

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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 Jean O. Pasco and Massie Ritsch.