Simon Loyalists Say E-Mail Dirty Trick Backfired

Nope, it wasn’t us, they say.

Supporters of Bill Simon for governor -- both last year, and now as a candidate in a probable recall election -- say it wasn’t their loyalists who sent out an e-mail letter signed “Team Simon” volunteers and advising Simon to sit out the election to avoid splitting the party vote and worse.

Joel Strom, the Team Simon chair, says no one from his statewide leadership group wrote such a letter, and whoever did “did not accomplish the goal he/she apparently set out to achieve and, in fact, only helped to sharpen our focus on our work as volunteers.”

A letter to the “Team Simon Statewide Leadership” characterized the “PLEASE BILL, DON’T RUN” letter as a “silly prank concocted by a nervous potential opponent who fears our strong statewide organization.” The effort “to distract and divide us” in fact “failed miserably,” it said, because Team Simon remains “strongly intact” and “highly supportive of Bill’s bright political future.”

Who might be behind such a dismissive missive? Team Simon’s leadership wouldn’t speculate, but you know you’ve got an election on your hands when this sort of thing gets up and running.

Watergate scandal history is footnoted with dirty-tricks techniques, almost all directed at the opposing party, like the notorious “Canuck letter,” a letter to a New Hampshire newspaper falsely quoting 1972 Democratic presidential candidate Ed Muskie as having made an insulting reference to French Canadians as “Canucks.”

Tricksters were also fond of frat-boy stunts like ordering hundreds of dollars’ worth of pizza delivered to Democratic rallies and sticking the Democrats with the tab. Just before the 1992 election, someone in Orange County did the same thing, sending a flier to a homeless soup kitchen announcing free pizza at the nearby Democratic headquarters. When homeless men showed up, the flummoxed Dems obligingly sent out for pizza and doughnuts.

But Simon and anyone else contemplating a run for the recall governorship may have bigger problems than political pranks:

Angelyne, the billboard babe who ran for a spot on the unrealized city of Hollywood council, will be writing her $3,500 check to get her name on the recall ballot. For what party, you ask? Independent, of course. This is a woman who auctioned off her underwear to finance her council campaign.

Clinton’s Still a Talker as an Action Figure

The First Fellow, take two. With its Talking George Bush figure selling above 100,000, the Irvine-based Talking Presidents firm is releasing the second in its series of presidential action figures, Bill Clinton. (No, not that kind of action -- shame on you.)

Like the Bush figure, which utters tough sound bites in GWB’s actual voice -- “Terrorism against our nation will not stand” -- and malapropisms -- “We’re working hard to put food on your family” -- the Clinton figure speaks 18 “historical and hysterical” phrases.

Among them are his line-in-the-sand line on changing welfare to be “a second chance, not a way of life,” and the memorable quotations from l’affaire Lewinsky, including “It depends upon what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.”

Rush Seems to Have No Equal on the Left

Folks of Democratic and leftward bent have been casting about for a Rush Limbaugh balancing act, a national liberal radio talk-show host who can generate both heat and humor -- with little luck to date.

Christopher Flannery, associate editor of the Claremont Review of Books, published by the Claremont Institute, diagnoses the problem in his essay “No Limbaughs on the Left.” He observes that “compared with the real El Rushbo ... the lefty pretenders appeared, to friend and foe alike, anemic, wan, somehow depressing. In a word, grim; even the professional comedians. The Left is not a barrel of laughs....” Flannery cites a few left-on-the-dial programs, but concludes, “The lefter you go, the grimmer it gets.”

Parks’ Punchlines Win a Friars Club Callback

Among the luminaries arrayed for Sunday’s Friars Club roast of Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt: Larry King, Dennis Hopper, Jerry Buss -- and L.A. City Councilman and former LAPD Chief Bernard C. Parks.

Evidently Parks -- laconic, terse Parks -- was such a comedy hit at last year’s roast of Magic Johnson that he got a callback. His son and spokesman, Bernard Jr., says, “People didn’t think he was going to be funny for some reason, but he was hilarious, and they invited [him] back.” Even on behalf of Larry Flynt, pornographer?

“There are going to be people who have issues with it,” said Parks Jr., “but [Flynt] represents some 1st Amendment issues, and he is a businessman in the city of Los Angeles.”

Besides, he said, Parks Sr. gets a special kick out of the Friars Club events “because he used to park cars there when he was a teen.”

Points Taken

* Distributed to reporters by Gray Davis’ Press Secretary Steve Maviglio: a customized milk chocolate candy bar called “California’s Budget Crunch Bar,” its blue and yellow wrapper illustrated with a panicky-looking Golden State-shaped cartoon figure cinched around the middle. Mmm.

* Who’s for whom: Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich, who was campaigning in L.A. over the July Fourth holiday, has won the support of Mohandas K. Gandhi’s grandson Arun, head of a Tennessee nonviolence institute named for his grandfather, Los Angeles liberal and antiwar activist Tom Hayden, and “Granny D,” the 93-year-old woman who walked coast to coast on behalf of campaign finance reform.

* A play-within-a-film is set for July 26 at the Warner Grand Theatre in San Pedro -- a performance of “From Wharf Rats to Lords of the Dock,” about International Longshore and Warehouse Union founder Harry Bridges, that will be filmed for a movie directed by Oscar-winner Haskell Wexler.

The event is co-sponsored by Los Angeles City Council-woman Janice Hahn, L.A.’s Cultural Affairs Department and the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.

* The unofficial mascot -- and collectible -- of the new nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan is a small stuffed bear named Ronnie.

The Santa Barbara Council of the Navy League of the United States introduced the sailor-clad mini-mascot, whose prices start at about $5. Proceeds benefit the league.

* California Sens. Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein want help in saving California’s 21 historic but aging missions, and are seeking $10 million for five years’ worth of restoration work. A possible stumbling block: whether missions still used for religious purposes could qualify for funds under the constitutional separation of church and state.

You Can Quote Me

“All right -- can’t see why anyone would have a problem with this guy.”

Sardonic comic Jon Stewart, host of “The Daily Show,” after viewing a videotape clip of Gov. Gray Davis remarking of the effort to recall him, “Look, this recall is a bunch of sour grapes by a bunch of losers.”

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