Now This Is Truly Government by the People

The election’s over, and you the voter, you the Californian, think your job is done, don’t you? That you can just kick back and relax until the next round of campaign ads cross your TV screen, right?

Not so fast.

Sure, you passed bond measures and changed the state budget by voting, but if you live in one of two Assembly districts, your assemblyman wants more. He wants you to help draft new laws.

A couple of years back, Assemblyman Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto) got the idea that people in his district -- which includes the very bright environs of a little academic institution called Stanford -- probably had some fair ideas about what would make for a good law.

So he put together a contest -- “There Ought to Be a Law” -- and found three winners among the submissions:

AB 2472, which would require the state to set up a demonstration project to cut the pesticides and herbicides used on Capitol grounds and environs ... AB 2473, requiring a business declaring bankruptcy to keep accepting gift certificates it issued before it declared itself bankrupt ... and AB 2474, requiring that any antifreeze sold in California have a bitter agent to counter any sweetness in the liquid, so wildlife, pets and children won’t be accidentally poisoned, as has happened to California condors released into the wild.

All three bills were passed by the Legislature and became law.

Now Simitian’s colleague Alan Lowenthal, a Long Beach/Palos Verdes Peninsula Democrat, has decided to conduct his own contest: You too can make laws (without the big per-diem legislator bucks)! See the governor sign your bill! Get to keep the pen!

Residents of his 54th Assembly District have until Dec. 20 to send along their bright ideas. Winners get their bills put into the 2003 legislative hopper, as well as a chance to testify at hearings on the bills’ behalf -- and the capper, lunch with the assemblyman.

(Under the rubric “Be careful what you wish for, it might come true”: If this catches on, legislators might put themselves out of business.)

Learning Political Fisticuffs From Colonial

Britain’s Labor Party had a secret weapon in the dirty-tricks and confidential-files work of its covert Attack Unit -- a California ingredient.

Bob Mulholland.

The Times in London reported recently that the unit, with its computer Excalibur, dates back to a meeting at a 1995 Labor Party conference, when future Prime Minister Tony Blair authorized a delegation to travel to the U.S. to study Democrats’ campaign tactics.

The newspaper said delegates met Mulholland, a former Vietnam helicopter pilot, political director of the California Democratic Party and author of myriad in-your-face political pranks and knife-edged quotes. It said Mulholland’s philosophy was simple: “Let me give you an example. The Republicans, say, are running on family values. Then you find out that, say, a candidate knocked up a woman 25 years ago and she had an abortion. Boom! Someone asks him about it at some public forum.”

The Labor Party embraced the idea, the paper said, keeping track of opponents via spying and digging dirt, and secret files in Excalibur -- the name of King Arthur’s legendary sword.

“I thought the way Bob Mulholland did,” the newspaper quoted Richard Elsen, a former head of the unit.

“It was about kicking them to the floor and keeping them down. It was a bare-knuckle fight, and there was a lot of mischief on all sides.”

The Times said Mulholland “remains close to senior Labor Party figures” and visited their headquarters as recently as June.

Gotta be the frequent flier miles.

A Fine Mess He’s Gotten Himself Into

So shut up and pay the two dollars -- plus $7,498.

Six years after he hid the fact that he took $10,000 from a congressional candidate’s sister to pay for a campaign mailing on her brother’s behalf, former Orange County Democratic Party Chairman Jim Toledano has been ordered -- the second time -- to pay a $7,500 fine for violating federal election laws.

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals order ripped the Santa Ana attorney for “his persistent lapses of memory [and] his demonstrated penchant for playing fast and loose with the truth.”

It was 1996, and Democrat Jim Prince was running in the primary against now-Rep. Loretta Sanchez for the Santa Ana congressional seat.

Toledano said he created a separate bank account in the Democratic Party’s name, made himself the sole signatory, and produced the mailer without telling anyone else in the party -- because he knew they would have stopped him.

Still, he insisted that what he did was merely a “political sin” -- a “trivial” breach that didn’t hurt anyone.

The court concluded otherwise, and quoted the lower court ruling against Toledano that found such arguments to be frivolous and far-fetched.

Just pay the money, the court said, “as a sanction for his bad-faith conduct and abuse of the judicial process.” Now -- when is that check in the mail?

These Messages Are Just a Bit Garbled

Had the San Fernando Valley seceded, would we have been in for not only Valley-speak but Valley-spell?

A motion by Valley-based Councilman Dennis Zine refers to the “long struggle to address the evils of vice in our communities,” to which end he proposed an ordinance requiring police permits from certain “message parlors” -- later referred to correctly as “massage parlors.”

And a news release announcing a community meeting Thursday about possible double-decking of the Ventura and Hollywood freeways summoned residents with the warning, “We have no time to loose!”

Points Taken

* Former L.A. Mayor Richard Riordan, a Republican in the nonpartisan job, seemed to get along fine with Democratic President Clinton. But after he read in a recent Times story that Clinton urged Gov. Gray Davis to spend primary-election dollars trying to knock Riordan out of the GOP gubernatorial primary, Riordan e-mailed Clinton, “You dirty rotten scoundrel. Let’s have lunch and play golf next time you are in Los Angeles.”

* An invitation to a Los Angeles Free Clinic dinner on Dec. 2 honoring, among others, county Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, prints on the front the irresistible promise to Angelenos who seem congenitally determined to get home before midnight from even the most enjoyable party: “Once again, you’ll be out by 10.”

You Can Quote Me

“Los Angeles Mayor James K. Hahn’s name comes up, but few outside that city even know what he looks like.”

A Nov. 10 article by the Washington bureau chief of the Hartford Courant, assessing the list of the Democrats top-of-the-ticket prospects for the presidential sweepstakes in 2004.

*

Patt Morrison’s columns appear Mondays and Tuesdays. Her e-mail address is patt.morrison@latimes.com. Jean O. Pasco contributed to this column.