Campaigning for Change -- of Careers

With “politician” being the least popular occupation among just about everyone who is running to become one, just what do all of these candidates do in their day jobs?

Down the very long list of gubernatorial candidates, the most frequent self-description is some variant of businessman/businesswoman/entrepreneur. But among the more singularly employed are:

Joel Britton, a retired meatpacker; William Chambers, a railroad switchman/brakeman; Ivan Hall, a custom denture manufacturer; Paul Mailander, a golf pro; Robert C. Newman II, a psychologist/farmer; and Kurt E. Rightmyer, a middleweight sumo wrestler.

Paul Nave describes himself as a businessman/prizefighter/father and Arianna Huffington lists herself as an author/columnist/mother.

And candidate Mike P. McCarthy has put himself down as a used-car salesman, calling to mind the antique jest about the trustworthiness of a man who famously didn’t get elected California governor, Richard Nixon: The joke was, “Would you buy a used car from this man?”

Caustic Take on a Tumultuous State

The Onion, the satirical online newspaper that does indeed sometimes make people weep, provided its own USA Today-style box of voters’ complaints about Gov. Gray Davis, among them:

* Davis insisted on collecting “taxes” to pay for government “programs and services.”

* Under Davis’ watch, Hollywood released worst summer blockbusters in a decade.

* Davis lacks 20/20 hindsight of his challengers.

* State can take care of its own self, don’t need no governor bossing it around.

* Davis stood idly by while Republicans deregulated energy industry, leading to blackouts across the state.

* Davis unfit to handle imminent rise of the machines.

Schwarzenegger’s Team Has Deep Roots in GOP

Californians are great believers in recycling, even in political campaigns.

Arnold Schwarzenegger’s staff has some big biceps, aides with long and crisscrossing GOP pedigrees:

George Gorton: former California Gov. Pete Wilson’s longtime aide; Proposition 165 welfare cuts campaign in 1992; President Bush I; then-San Diego Mayor Susan Golding.

Don Sipple: crafted Proposition 187 ads for Pete Wilson; Bush I; Texas Gov. George W. Bush in 1994; presidential candidate Bob Dole in 1996; ex-Insurance Commissioner Chuck Quackenbush in 1994 and 1998; Joel Wachs’ L.A. mayoral campaign in 2001; Richard Riordan’s gubernatorial campaign in 2002.

Sean Walsh: White House press office under Bush I; Wilson; pro-school voucher initiative in 1993; Tom Campbell’s 2000 Senate campaign against Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.); Bill Jones’ and then Bill Simon Jr.’s gubernatorial campaigns last year.

Rob Stutzman: Tom McClintock’s 1994 state controller campaign; Republican state Sen. Rob Hurtt; Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren; Proposition 22, the anti-gay-marriage measure in 2000; state party spokesman as recently as last month.

Karen Hanretty: Assemblyman Bob Margett of Arcadia in 2000; state GOP; state Senate Republican leader Jim Brulte of Rancho Cucamonga.

Signing on with Republican-but-running-as-Independent Peter Ueberroth is Dan Schnur, master of the well-honed sound bite. Schnur worked with Wilson; the state Republican party; the presidential campaign of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.); the No on 45 term limits extension measure; Riordan’s 2002 campaign; Mariposa Republican Rep. George Radanovich’s aborted Senate shot this year. (Schnur also partners with Stutzman in a political consulting firm now with divided interests.)

Simon’s reconfigured staff includes: Gary Lawrence: pollster, the Reagan White House; Ed Zschau’s failed Senate campaign against Alan Cranston; anti-Proposition 65, the toxins initiative.

Wayne Johnson: pro-term limits initiative, Proposition 140; anti-Proposition 5, the Indian gaming initiative; McClintock’s campaigns for state senate and controller.

Jim Robinson: Former Gov. George Deukmejian; Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren.

Jess Huff: Deukmejian.

KB Forbes: presidential candidate Pat Buchanan.

Stay tuned for more of the campaigns’ continuing staff soap operas.

Points Taken

* Not lacking in star power of its own, the McClintock gubernatorial campaign has hired as its finance director Sean Doherty, brother of “Beverly Hills 90210” actress Shannen Doherty.

* Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean says he opposes California’s Proposition 54, the Racial Privacy Initiative, as part of an “agenda of division.”

* A British musical group named Arnold must be enjoying a revival of its 1998 CD with a song called “Goodbye Grey.” Some of the lyrics: “Well I look into your grey eyes/I know what you go through/I’ve seen the place you’re going/And you’re not taking me too”; and the chorus, “I need to tell you now/it’s goodbye/I need to tell you how/I could not try again.”

* Among the inevitable campaign T-shirts heading our way are these: from a San Diego man, one mocking the crowded candidate field. It reads “I’m not running.” Another, sending up Schwarzenegger’s films, his Democratic wife and his presumably moderate social policies (we’re all still just guessing there), is “The Governator

* Democratic Rep. Xavier Becerra of Los Angeles judged a spelling bee for second-, third- and fourth-graders at an after-school program in L.A.’s Koreatown. Among the spelling words most useful in politics: conservatism, legality, comment and zany.

You Can Quote Me

“It’s a California problem. The president, rightfully so, should be out of it.”

-- Republican Rep. Darrell Issa of Vista, whose millions bankrolled the signature gathering that put the recall on the ballot, commenting on the White House’s nonexistent role in his decision not to run in an election that has now evidently become “a California problem.”

Patt Morrison’s columns appear Mondays and Tuesdays. Her e-mail address is patt. morrison@latimes.com