Can Bush Carry California? He Has to Get on Ballot First

George W. Bush, the “write” candidate for president?

Republicans are pushing the envelope, and the calendar, by scheduling the expected renomination of Bush as the pick of his party at the GOP convention in New York City on Sept. 2.

The late date means the convention won’t compete with the televised Summer Olympics, and it will nudge the renomination into the news a scant week before the 9/11 anniversary, reminding voters of Bush’s response to terrorist attacks. (Democrats are convening in Boston in July.)

Uh-oh, though. Somebody didn’t check other calendars -- the ones for states such as California, where presidential candidates must be certified by Aug. 26 to get their names on the November ballot.

Could this mean that ... the president would be a write-in candidate?

Indiana and Idaho have changed their laws to extend the deadline so Bush can get on the ballot, but California is still trying to figure out whose responsibility it is to make it so -- Secretary of State Kevin Shelley’s or the Legislature’s.

It’s possible that a top-to-bottom Democratic state government might enjoy making the White House sweat a bit over the prospect of the president running as a write-in, but Shelley says he won’t let that happen: “I’m determined to make sure he gets on the ballot. This is about more than the letter of the law, it’s about the spirit of the law, and clearly that would mean Californians have the right to vote for him.”

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Boxer’s Reelection Bid Poses Usual GOP Puzzle

Barbara Boxer, who has never lost an election but has had some squeakers, received a little more help in her bid to get reelected next year -- the endorsement of 15 of the high and mighty among the high-tech and biotech crowd, Republicans and Democrats.

Among them are Genentech’s Arthur Levinson, Cisco’s John Chambers (the defendant in a class-action suit charging Cisco with fraudulently predicting rapid sales growth as insiders sold off stock), and Meg Whitman of EBay. (The only Boxer item on EBay last week: a copy of her 1994 book, “Strangers in the Senate,” recounting her own story and the resurgence of women in power after the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill Senate hearings. Starting price: $1.99; had no bids as of last week.)

Republicans are still sorting out their usual dilemma: Do they go with a really conservative candidate close to the party’s right ventricle but who will probably flame out in the general election, even against the liberal Boxer ... or cave in to the party’s moderate flank and nominate a candidate who could get more votes from Democrats than from Republicans? Decisions, decisions.

One Boxer opponent is the Unknown Republican, Danney Ball. He is not only sore that his party didn’t invite him to the fifth annual Republican Wars peace talks, a June gathering of GOP bigwigs at Brooks Firestone’s winery-ranch in Los Olivos, but he also is miffed that Boxer won’t debate him, even though the primary election to choose her GOP opponent is more than a year off.

So Ball says he’ll just debate a life-sized cardboard cutout with a tape-recording of her statements on the issues of the day. It’s a venerable technique: Tom Hayden toted a cardboard cutout of Richard Riordan around Los Angeles in the 1997 mayor’s race, and four years earlier, businesswoman Linda Griego used black-and-white cardboard silhouettes of her male opponents to dramatize her contrast to them. The silhouettes got more attention than some of the candidates they represented.

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Councilwoman Expected Barbs and She Got Them

The ribbons are yellow, but she isn’t. Huntington Beach council member Debbie Cook knew she’d take flak for her idea. (She already had her trial by fire last year, when she ended invocations before City Council meetings.)

To the people wanting to adorn city vehicles with yellow ribbons for U.S. troops in Iraq, Cook -- whose nephew serves in the military in Korea -- had another way: Send a check to a military group. Write soldiers a letter. Just don’t go for the “typical jingoism that we get hung up on in these times,” she said.

The yellow-ribbon resolution passed over Cook’s objections, which did not go unnoticed. An e-mail blast from the right-wing California YAFfers -- the Young Americans for Freedom -- declared her “not just an ordinary idiot but worse, an idiot who doesn’t really like America very much,” according to one e-mail making the rounds. “In other words, a liberal.” (Cook is a registered independent.)

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Activist Asks Democrats to Take Direct Action

The gunfire in Iraq has subsided, but as far as Eric Hacopian is concerned, the other firefight is still raging. The political consultant and activist has started up 4Direct Action, and its big mailer of the moment, “Who Paid the Price? Who’s Profiting?” challenges Congress to challenge the awarding of contracts in postwar Iraq.

The mailer particularly cites contracts to Halliburton, whose former chief executive is VP Dick Cheney.

Curiously, the mailer asks voters to contact Los Angeles Democratic Rep. Howard Berman “to take the lead in demanding a congressional investigation” into this; about 50 people, according to Berman’s office, have done so.

Another L.A. congressman, Henry Waxman, already is leading the charge to investigate the Halliburton connection. But Hacopian says he wants to know whether the pro-Iraq-war Berman “is willing to break ranks with the pro-war people and ask for” an investigation.

In a letter of response prepared for such callers, Berman says that while “somebody has to do the work” in Iraq, he is troubled by the “blatant cronyism” of the Halliburton contract, the secrecy of the contract process and questions the legitimacy of the reconstruction process. And he says he supports Waxman’s efforts -- even though the minority party Democrats can’t set Congress’ agenda.

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Points Taken

* Bills about growth often get a yawning reception, but Santa Rosa Democratic Assemblywoman Patricia Wiggins knows how to deliver a bill with a jolt: Her measure to limit urban sprawl and increase affordable housing notes that the state’s 40-year growth projection means “26 more cities the size of San Jose, 54 more Fresnos, or 163 more Moreno Valleys.” Eeek!

* Animals making news: An Assembly panel rejected West Hollywood Assemblyman Paul Koretz’s effort to ban the declawing of cats, as the city of West Hollywood did recently ... and proponents began collecting signatures for a ballot initiative to ban penning pigs in crates so small they can’t even turn around.

* Upton Sinclair, author (“The Jungle,” about the horrors of the meat industry) and gubernatorial candidate (in California, in 1934) is being remembered again by the Liberty Hill Foundation on June 2; honorees include the Rev. Eugene Williams, a community organizer; philanthropist Rob McKay; “The Vagina Monologues” creator Eve Ensler; and political commentator/author Arianna Huffington.

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You Can Quote Me

“My family was not keen on that. My nonpolitical friends thought I’d be crazy. My dog didn’t want me to do it. A whole lot of things added up together.”

-- Brooks Firestone, vintner, former assemblyman, father of “The Bachelor” on the TV show, and moderate Republican. Firestone decided not to run for office again, despite the blandishments of Republican colleagues.

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Patt Morrison’s columns appear Mondays and Tuesdays. Her e-mail address is patt.morrison@latimes.com. This week’s contributors include Jean O. Pasco and Richard Simon.