Edwards’ Visit to Take Him to a Republican Hotbed

With polls showing Democratic presidential near-nominee Sen. John F. Kerry leading by double digits among state voters, Sen. John Edwards heads to Southern California this week for his first trip West as Kerry’s running mate.

The North Carolina senator will headline an event Friday in Los Angeles, which was still being organized late last week.

On Saturday, Edwards will venture into Orange County for a luncheon fundraiser at the Balboa Bay Club in Newport Beach, a venue better known as a watering hole for the county’s well-heeled Republicans. It’s the campaign’s last scheduled stop in California before the Democratic convention in Boston.

It’s symbolic that Orange County Democrats will send off Edwards in his final California event, said the county’s Democratic Party Chairman Frank Barbaro, who also heads the county’s Kerry campaign.

“We’re doing it right here in the Republicans’ backyard,” Barbaro, a Santa Ana attorney, said. “We’ve already raised well over $1 million in Orange County for Kerry, and this will bring us close to $2 million.”

California has been good to both Kerry and Edwards.

Both candidates have raised more here than in any other state -- about $16 million for Kerry and $3 million for Edwards.

Kerry supporters kicked in $5 million just three weeks ago at a downtown Los Angeles fundraiser. A day before, $4.5 million was raised at a similar event in San Francisco.

No Agreement on Fourth of July Festivities

Assemblyman John Campbell (R-Irvine) has been swamped with attaboy messages after the widespread distribution of a screed he penned against Sacramento Democrats who he said blocked plans for a Fourth of July ceremony on the Assembly floor.

The dust-up started, as they so often do, over good intentions.

Assemblyman Jay La Suer (R-La Mesa) had arranged for Vietnam War hero Adm. Jeremiah Denton, a former U.S. senator from Alabama, to be honored at a June 28 ceremony celebrating the Fourth. A Navy pilot who spent eight years in a Vietnamese prison, Denton gained fame for appearing on television in Hanoi while blinking his eyes in Morse code to spell “torture.”

Such legislative celebrations aren’t unusual -- the Assembly has honored Cinco de Mayo, St. Patrick’s Day and Chinese New Year.

But Denton isn’t just any war hero. He later was elected to the U.S. Senate, where he voted with conservatives and once remarked that he didn’t believe in the separation of church and state.

Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez (D-Los Angeles) pulled the plug. “Problems have arisen both with regards to the spirit, content and participation of various individuals with regard to the ceremony,” Diane M. Pugh of Nunez’s office wrote in an e-mail to organizers. “It has now turned into a ceremony more in line with Veterans Day and with ideological overtones that were not presented or agreed to.”

That fried Campbell, who chided the “party of tolerance” for tolerating only those messages and people with whom it agrees. It also got back to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who stepped in to offer a room for the ceremony, which was attended by a standing-room-only crowd and several invited veterans, including Denton.

Nunez spokesman Nick Velasquez later told the Washington Times that the Assembly didn’t have time for the event because of budget negotiations. However, Campbell pointed out that the Assembly did take time out for a floor ceremony later that day -- to honor retiring Los Angeles Times staff writer Carl Ingram.

Conservatives Keep Eye on Bush Representative

No one loves the sport of politics more than true believers. In that spirit, a hearty band of unapologetic right-wingers has since April 2002 e-mailed occasional thwacks at Los Angeles attorney Gerald Parsky, President Bush’s point man in California.

Written with the breathless tone of a romance novel, Parsky Watch is e-mailed to 2,500 subscribers and forwarded from there. There’s even a website with Parsky Watch T-shirts, mugs, a mouse pad and hats.

In Parsky Watch No. 62, the campaign chief was ridiculed for failing to stop several members of Young Americans for Freedom from passing out the “premier issue” of Parsky Watch magazine and a bumper sticker featuring the group’s binoculars logo at an official GOP conclave. The anti-Parsky material was disguised in packets labeled with a “Bush/Cheney” sticker.

So what gets the right so riled about Parsky?

He has said hurtful things about conservatives and party activists, said one of the shadowy figures -- anonymous, of course -- responsible for the critique. Some activists also believe that his efforts to open up the party to a wider spectrum of views has weakened its ideological punch.

Success is the best response, said Parsky, who says he doesn’t pay attention to the grumblers. The party is more unified than it has been in 20 years and is bringing in record numbers of minorities and women, he said.

Oh, and raising oodles of money.

For Riordan, It’s Only One of Many Gaffes

The latest gaffe by Education Secretary Richard Riordan has gotten barrels of ink, particularly because it was directed at a 6-year-old girl. But it isn’t the first time that Riordan has opened mouth and inserted foot.

A few others:

“If it’s San Francisco, no mercy,” gloating about Los Angeles selling its electricity surplus during 2001.

“I’ll put Harlequin novels on tape,” suggesting a remedy for clogged freeway traffic.

“After I execute everybody?” after being asked about the first thing he’d do as governor during his unsuccessful 2002 campaign.

Points Taken

* Gov. Schwarzenegger has lent his formidable name to the official ballot arguments in favor of one proposition and against three others. He will ask voters to support Proposition 69, which would expand the collection of DNA from criminal suspects and convicted felons, and oppose two measures that would expand casino gambling, Propositions 68 and 70, as well as reject Proposition 66, which would amend California’s three strikes sentencing law.

* Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich comes to Orange County on Friday for a lecture and book signing at the Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace in Yorba Linda. A Fox News Channel analyst, Gingrich will sign copies of “Grant Comes East,” his second book on the Civil War.

* Speaking of the Nixon Library, Rep. Gary Miller (R-Diamond Bar) wants to officially rename Imperial Highway through Anaheim “Richard Nixon Parkway.” Yorba Linda already changed the name of its small stretch of the road in 2002.

* The Club for Growth, a national anti-tax organization, has named Assemblyman Tony Strickland (R-Moorpark) president of its new offshoot, the California Club for Growth. Strickland, whose term ends in December, said his group would raise money to back candidates in GOP primaries. “It will be a supply-side club with clout,” he pledged. Economist Arthur Laffer, one of the founders of supply-side economics, will serve as the group’s chairman.

You Can Quote Me

“I’m a journalist. Michael Moore is not. He’s a filmmaker. He is a polemicist. He is the Rush Limbaugh of the left.”

-- Democratic commentator and former state party Chairman Bill Press defending the filmmaker’s editorial license on CNN’s “Reliable Sources”