Politics and Poetry Combine for Checkbook Inspiration

Political consultants: small beady-eyed fellows, addicted to smoke-filled rooms, devoted only to politics, their souls devoid of all poetry except that which appears on a voter registration list, right?

Not always.

Take Luke Breit, 48, who has come south from his Mendocino haunts to run the San Diego mayoral campaign of Tom Carter.

Luke Breit is son of the late Harvey Breit, an assistant editor of the New York Times Book Review, and Alice Morris, former literary editor of Harper’s Bazaar.

His poems have been published in the New Yorker and the Haight Ashbury Literary Review. His latest collection, “Messages,” was warmly reviewed by Norman Mailer.

He served as Mailer’s driver during the latter’s picaresque run for mayor of New York in 1969. That led, roundabout, to staff work for Willie Brown.

Breit’s poems are of love lost (“On Receiving a Xeroxed Fundraising Letter From a Former Lover”), the morning after the night before, longing (“Letter to Sean From San Diego”), the seasons, baseball-as-metaphor, imbibing spirits and more.

“Playing The Game”

Baseball woman, blond, violet dress,

my favorite colors,

a seat away talking to friends

about baseball!

Perfume floats toward me

like a slow pop-up

Old pro, I drift under it,

make it look easy.

He did a fund-raising reading for Amnesty International and for the Indians who occupied Alcatraz. He wangled a political appointment to the board of the California-Poets-in-the-Schools program:

“Kids should not grow up thinking all poetry is from white guys who died 500 years ago.”

Thursday night, Breit will read his poetry at a Carter fund-raiser at Smokey’s Nightclub, in between sets by the rock-blues band Ruby & the Red Hots.

He writes in his reflective off-hours, when he’s not worried about polling and advertising and phone banks:

“I never know when it’s going to overtake me.”

City Government 101

The rest of the whirl.

* Tom Carter, the financier-developer-businessman who wants to be mayor of San Diego, is still a little light on the mechanics of government.

He told one candidates’ forum that he would approve of a mayoral veto if it could be overridden by five votes on the City Council.

Note to Tom: Anything that reached the mayor under such a system would already have five votes, a bare majority for passage on the nine-member council.

* Chessen Finkbine, the ex-San Diegan who was “Miss Sherri” on television’s “Romper Room” when she fought a real-life court battle to have an abortion in 1962, returns to San Diego from Arizona on Thursday.

She’ll host a fund-raiser for Steve Posner, a Democratic candidate in the 51st Congressional District who supports keeping abortion legal.

* Ray Saatjian, Republican hopeful in the 49th Congressional District, is the latest candidate to use a (six-minute) videotaped message to voters.

Tapes are being dropped at voters’ homes starting today. Included in the message is an endorsement from ex-Gov. George Deukmejian, the candidate’s cousin by marriage.

Undressing for the Court

Rancho Bernardo attorney Myron S. (Mike) Klarfeld is happy about winning the right last week to sue in federal court over being made to take off his loafers before entering a Los Angeles federal courthouse.

But he’s piqued at a dissenting judge who cited a letter to the editor in The Times’ San Diego County edition to bolster his contention that Klarfeld’s case is trivial. The letter suggested that cases like Klarfeld’s are undermining public respect for the legal system.

“What he (the dissenting judge) doesn’t quote are the hundreds of letters I got the other way,” Klarfeld said.

Among the letters, Klarfeld said, was one from a woman who was asked by overzealous guards to remove her brassiere (which had a metal clasp) before passing through the metal detection devices at the L.A. federal courthouse:

“She told me, ‘For God and country maybe, but never for the federal court.’ ”