Delegation From State Is All Over Political Map

California, land of extremes -- even 3,000 miles away.

The National Journal, an independent weekly in D.C., has ranked Congress’ liberals and conservatives, and California wound up scoring the most liberal and most conservative members in the House of Representatives, and -- with the death of Minnesotan Paul Wellstone -- the most liberal senator, Barbara Boxer, who scored 93.2 on a 100-point scale.

On the other side of the big white Capitol dome, Hayward Democrat Pete Stark, with a score of 97.8, tied with Michigan Democrat John Conyers Jr. for “most liberal.” And Diamond Bar Republican Gary G. Miller wound up in a 13-way tie for “most conservative,” with 91.8.

The congressman-bites-dog part of this is that Bakersfield Republican Bill Thomas, the tough-guy tax slasher who heads the Ways and Means Committee, is the owner of one of the more centrist voting records among the 20 California GOPsters, with 58.7 on the 100-point conservative scale. Last year, the Journal reported, his voting record was a nudge to the left of Sacramento’s Doug Ose -- one of the names being bruited about to run against Boxer -- and a smidge to the right of Palm Springs’ Mary Bono.

A House divided.

If History Had Been Different

This is why they call it them parties.

The Republicans convene their state party in Sacramento later this month, and among the cast of characters is Randy Ridgel, vice chairman and Lake County rancher, who has among other things endorsed an essay on the theoretical upside of the Confederacy winning the Civil War; freed slaves, Ridgel wrote, fared better before emancipation because “most of the poor devils had no experience fending for themselves.”

After another state party vice chairman, Bill Back, recently distributed an essay on the possible benefits of the South winning the war, the party’s only black leader, Shannon Reeves, wrote an anguished open letter to his party. To that, Ridgel responded with his own open letters, mocking Reeves: “Get over it, Bucko. You don’t know squat about hardships.” He suggested Reeves stop “parading” his race and griping about “how awful it is to be a black Republican.”

A call to Ridgel’s ranch gets a banjo-suitable tune and this message on his answering machine:

“Ridgels’ place and we’re not here.

Jackie’s drunk from drinking beer.

She’s out sleeping in the yard.

Leave your message, it’s not hard.”

At Least He Got a New Suit

San Fernando candy maker Frank Sheftel came in second in the November election for a city council seat in a city that never got created when secession failed. He kidded that he “lost by a ponytail” -- maybe his hair and casual clothes turned off voters, and he wrote to the chat show “Live With Regis and Kelly” asking for help. “If I am going to be meeting with the mayor and running for office I need a new conservative look.”

Regis and Kelly bit, and Sheftel was wafted to New York, where re-designers cut off his ponytail and kitted him out in a $2,000 suit.

Unfortunately, Sheftel’s part of the show was preempted by an even more conservative look: Attorney General John Ashcroft, speaking sternly into the TV cameras about terrorism.

For Every Cop, a Secretary

Sure, it looks great in “Dragnet,” but in places, Parker Center, the LAPD headquarters, is about as insubstantial as a movie set -- and much less safe.

So the City Council has suggested that the police brass and all its collateral personnel take up temporary quarters on South Spring Street, on the fringes of skid row. To that, the Police Commission’s executive director, Joe Gunn, objected.

He also told the Downtown Business News that the buildings are a poor choice for civilian employees, which prompted this droll, civic-spirited offer to Police Commission President Rick Caruso from “The Secretaries of South Spring Street.”

“For many of us who work on Spring Street, we understand how frightening [a move there] might be, and the trepidation with which your officers might view such a move.” They understand, the letter said, that it would be “a radical change for a Police Department ... used to patrolling and protecting a ‘suburban’ city to suddenly find themselves on Los Angeles’ equivalent of the streets of New York.”

The secretaries generously offer to “assist many of your officers in making that transition with minimal fear.” They are forming an “Adopt-a-Cop program where we will agree to meet your officers when they arrive at work, walk them to the Spring Street office complex, and then meet them at the end of their shift and reverse the process. We’re prepared to do that for as long as it takes to assist them in making the transition with minimal fear and trepidation.”

Reconsidering FDR’s Decision

It’s not Trent Lott, but it got a lot of attention.

North Carolina Republican Rep. Howard Coble was on the radio recently, saying how he thought FDR did the right thing sending Japanese Americans to internment camps during World War II: It protected America, and probably, he said, protected some Japanese Americans from a hostile public.

Some of Coble’s Asian American colleagues took him to the woodshed, among them Sacramento’s Robert Matsui and San Jose’s Mike Honda, who in a letter invited Coble to meet with them to help him better understand that “incarcerating citizens and legal resident aliens solely because of their ethnicity is neither compatible with the Constitution nor an effective way to make our nation more secure.”

Now Coble has made meek amends with a statement saying in part, “Today we can certainly look back and see the damage that was caused because of this [FDR] decision. We all now know that this was in fact the wrong decision and an action that should never be repeated.”

Talking About the New Security Plans

Insecurities: L.A. Mayor Jim Hahn sojourned not long ago to the Beltway, where the new-fallen snow had that L.A. boy snapping digital photos like a tourist.

On his return to California, he went to Sacramento for meetings. The mayor, who not long before had spent more than half an hour talking in D.C. with Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge, was pulled out of line at the Sacramento airport, and ordered to do the Security Striptease: Take off his shoes, extend his arms for “wanding,” listen to the “wa-wa” noise his belt buckle made, get “re-wanded,” as his LAPD security guys stood by, wagging their heads.

New security at the state Capitol posed a quandary to one man talking on his cell phone: Hang up and send his phone through the conveyor-belt scanner, or go to the back of the line and keep talking -- and waiting. In a stroke of inspiration, he told whoever was at the other end to “hold on for 20 seconds while my phone goes through.”

The phone, with the line still open, rolled through the conveyor, the phone’s owner stepped through the metal detector, picked up his phone and neatly picked up the conversation where he’d left off.

Even a Bake Sale With Controversy

The UCLA Bruin Republicans’ “Affirmative Action Bake Sale” a week ago gave a new meaning to “price point”: black, Latina and Native American female students were asked to pay 25 cents per cookie; black, Latino and American Indian males paid 50 cents; white females paid $1; and white males paid $2.

The state Democratic party’s chief, Art Torres, took issue with more than the carbs. He protested that bake-sale vendors were given names like “Uncle Tom” and “The White Oppressor,” while another student labeled “Admissions Officer” was assigned to determine the buyer’s race and gender.

“Unfortunately, this activity is consistent with the Republican Right’s tactics to engage in race-based political discourse,” Torres said in a news release.

Naah, said club President Andrew Jones, who also writes a column in the Daily Bruin. It was just meant “to drive home to students the absurdity of deciding college admissions by race.”

Points Taken

* Las Hermanas Sanchez, the sister pair of Democrats elected to Congress, have another difference besides the morning-person and night-owl one. Linda Sanchez of Lakewood, a former Spanish lit major, uses the accent over the “a” in Sanchez; her Garden Grove sister does not.

* The LA Watts Times, on page 4 of its Feb. 6 issue, refers to 18th century L.A. pioneer Francisco Reyes as “the first black mayor of Los Angeles,” and on page 17, in a black history feature in the same issue, memorializes Tom Bradley as “the city’s first black mayor.”

You Can Quote Me

“I’ll use my office in any way I can.”

San Francisco Assemblyman Mark Leno, touring a Sacramento County animal shelter, promising to press local officials to reconsider a policy that sells live dogs and cats for animal research -- the only county shelter in California that sells adoptable pets for medical research.

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Patt Morrison’s e-mail address is patt.morrison@latimes.com. This week’s contributors include Patrick McGreevy and Jean O. Pasco.