Recall Buzz Gets Heated at Clip Shop

Anyone looking for a lively recall debate should proceed directly to Lawrence Tolliver’s South Los Angeles tonsorial parlor, but be forewarned:

The good Rev. Roger Smith of the Southwestern Church of God ventured in there one day last week, tossed a few ideas into the mix, and almost needed the Lord’s help to get out with his life.

It all began innocently enough. Mr. Tolliver was cleaning up a customer named Kevin E. Hooks, a dapper marketing man and political junkie. Suddenly, Mr. Tolliver found it impossible to contain himself.

“I don’t understand it,” he grumbled to one and all. “If the people of California vote in Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor, they’re dumber than Kobe Bryant.”

This drew hoots from most of the 13 other men in the clip shop on Florence near Western. The regulars are never hurting for topics at Tolliver’s, but sexual assault charges against Laker star Bryant, and the recall, have made for a daily Kobe and Arnold show. (The take on Kobe is that he was a fool, at the very least, to get himself jammed up the way he did.)

“If you think Arnold Schwarzenegger can solve problems,” Mr. Tolliver went on, “why not send David Copperfield to Sacramento too? He can make the budget deficit disappear.”

“It has a certain logic to it,” quipped Hooks.

This was when Rev. Smith stepped into the pulpit.

“I signed the recall petition,” he volunteered, damning Gov. Gray Davis and state legislators for a sinful lack of ability and leadership. “The public is saying, ‘Look, we don’t care, we’ll take anyone else. We’ll take Gary Coleman and put him in there if it means the Legislature will listen to him.’ ”

No one in the room seconded the Gary Coleman motion.

Davis is driving businesses out of California, Rev. Smith preached. He said his church couldn’t afford to hire and train a chef because of the high cost of workers’ comp insurance.

“He would have been a half-time employee, and workers’ comp was going to be $5,000 a year,” Rev. Smith complained.

Fine, said Hooks. But how can you pin that or the state of the economy on one man -- Gray Davis?

Because that’s the kind of simplification you can always count on from the public and the media, snapped another patron. It was former Assemblyman Rod Wright, who wore a fine summer brim of golden straw.

“If I go to a cocktail party and talk about the budget,” Wright said sarcastically, “everybody can tell me how to balance a budget, without having any skill or knowledge.” About 80% of the budget is fixed, Wright said. “You can shut down every fungible expense and still have a deficit.”

People don’t care to hear the complexities, Mr. Tolliver said with growing animation. In my many visits to the shop, I’ve seen him amused, annoyed, irritated and even angry, but never quite like this. Tolliver -- who just won yet another citation, the Albertson’s “Good Neighbor Award,” for years of community service -- was downright insulted.

He’s no Davis fan, and said he’d vote for Republican Peter Ueberroth if the election were tomorrow. But he thinks the recall is nuts, and he can’t believe a movie actor with scant involvement in civic affairs and a refusal to answer questions about the issues could possibly be ahead in the polls.

“They weren’t even good movies,” he complained of Arnold’s filmography, noting that the acting career began after Arnold smoked dope in a body-building documentary.

Well, Rev. Smith asked, hasn’t everyone gone down that road once?

Bad question.

Mr. Tolliver, a proponent of clean living, came out from behind his barber chair, scissors in one hand, comb in the other, and let loose a fire-and-brimstone sermon.

“I have never put marijuana in my mouth,” he testified, raising the roof. “Lord strike me down right here. I never had any co-caine in my mouth. You can’t be a governor, smoking joints. He’s got no experience to be governor. How in the H is he leading in the polls!?”

Rev. Smith barely flinched. He didn’t say who he was voting for, but he defended the idea of Arnold’s candidacy, calling him someone with a lot of success, a big enough personality to get people’s attention and an outsider’s desire to whip Sacramento into shape.

It didn’t fly with Mr. Tolliver.

“I bet if I gave you these clippers, you’d think anybody could cut hair!!” Tolliver bellowed, holding them out to the reverend. “Here, try it!”

In a show of hands, 12 of the 14 men in Tolliver’s voted against the recall, but there was no consensus on a replacement if Davis gets bounced. Rev. Smith, one of two to raise his hand for a recall, insisted you don’t have to be a career politician to be governor, and several of the men agreed.

“We’ve got the best-prepared governor right now,” the reverend said. “He’s got 30 years experience, and he can’t fix it.”

“What does that tell you?” Hooks asked the reverend. “That it’s bigger than one man.”

Mr. Tolliver charged out from behind his chair again in a manner so menacing, I was almost tempted to step in and grab the scissors out of his hand.

“Is Arnold qualified!!??” he demanded of the reverend, the two of them whisker to whisker.

The reverend refused to answer or give ground.

“I’m going to stand here till hell freezes over,” Tolliver went on. “Is Arnold qualified!!??”

The question bounced off the walls of the shop, echoed into the streets and across the great state of California, where summer boils like never before.*

Steve Lopez writes Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. Reach him at steve.lopez@latimes.com.