Homer Simpson of L.A. Politics Seemed to Be After the Doh!

Let’s be honest, men. At times, there are things you simply don’t want your wife to know about. Problem is, she always finds out, and you always end up in the doghouse.

Am I right, or am I right?

Just take the case of Alvin Parra, a political operative who works for Los Angeles County Supervisor Gloria Molina.

Parra went behind the back of his wife, Nellie Rios-Parra, and drafted a plan to get her elected to the Los Angeles school board.

Good intentions.

Dumb move.

Someone leaked Parra’s harebrained scheme to The Times -- a scheme that proposed hitting up the city’s biggest powerbrokers for millions of dollars -- and now the thing has blown up in his face.

Rios-Parra wept when she heard what her lesser half had done. The next day, she dismissed his plan as “ridiculous.”

We never learn, do we? Even when we’re trying to do something nice, we manage to mess it up in ways we never imagined. I rang Parra’s office to find out if he’s sleeping on the couch, but he didn’t return my calls.

Three-to-one his wife took away his phone privileges.

Here’s what the poor fool did:

On Nov. 1, Parra read a Times story alleging that Eli Broad, with a little help from his friend Dick Riordan, was offering a $10-million-plus package to Occidental College if its president ran against an L.A. Unified school board member who refuses to be their lapdog.

A light bulb went on. If Broad and Riordan were throwing money around, Parra figured, why not get in on the action?

I must admit I had the same idea. If these guys want to buy what little they don’t already own, I’m still ready to offer my services. The day Parra wrote his memo, I wrote a column telling the Big Boys that if they needed another yes man on the school board, I’d be their dummy for a mere $3 million.

Parra, the rat, undercut me by $1 million. He said Broad and Riordan’s political action committee should go ahead and give a few million to Occidental to make it look like they intended to all along, and then give $2 million to his wife’s school district, Lennox.

That way, Rios-Parra’s superintendent would be happy to pay her full salary -- she’s director of the district’s preschool program -- even after she went part time so she could work on the L.A. school board.

“Nellie gets its [sic] all and there is no loss [sic] $,” Parra wrote in a memo to his wife’s campaign manager.

Nice to know that Molina hires only the best and the brightest.

Parra also suggested tapping the Big Boys for a cool $400,000 to finance his wife’s campaign, and “we control the expenses.”

(Note to hacks everywhere: If you’re going to play ball, play hardball. Start at no less than a half-million bucks, and make sure you write yourself into the deal as a consultant.)

Parra offered an explanation that Broad and Riordan’s Coalition for Kids might use to say why it suddenly decided to back his wife:

“In any public comment, they need to say something like ... ‘Nellie was not our first choice, but now that she is looking at this race, she clearly is the best candidate.... ‘ “

Clever, huh?

And what was he thinking when he wrote:

“Nellie doesn’t know about this.”

The minute he put those words on paper, Parra was a condemned man. Rios-Parra was, of course, destined to know about it. She would see it in his eyes, sniff it out, then let him have it.

They always find out.

“I had no idea that Alvin wrote this memo, and strongly oppose everything contained in it,” Rios-Parra said Tuesday in a prepared statement that was accompanied by an apology from her husband.

“The demands and conditions contained in it are ridiculous,” she went on.

Amen, sister.

Parra says he reconsidered his own scheme and never sent the memo to anyone; all sides are saying they never saw it.

Doesn’t matter.

Parra has single-handedly managed to raise suspicions about his own wife. And it doesn’t help that Broad and Riordan’s coalition -- which is dying to unseat David Tokofsky -- has shoveled $121,000 into Rios-Parra’s campaign.

In the end, Parra couldn’t have done Tokofsky a bigger favor.

How can we think of Rios-Parra as anything but Broad and Riordan’s stooge, thanks to her husband?

He’d be lucky to get the couch at this point.

But the deadliest flaw in Parra’s get-rich-quick scheme was that even if it worked, he was going to end up sounding like one of the Chipmunks when his wife got through with him. If she hasn’t already, she’ll hit him where it hurts and ask the following question:

Did he think so little of her that he believed she couldn’t win without his help?

For men who are wondering, there is only one way to respond to the question.

You hang your head, you cower, you weep. Wet your pants if you have to. But you never, ever, under any circumstances, try to explain.

You’ll only make it worse.

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