Slot peddler

Who better than Larry Flynt to flesh out the outer limits of California’s Total Recall?

The pornographer may not be America’s favorite political pundit. Yet he was an arresting counterpoint to Ken Starr’s pornographically explicit report on President Clinton’s indiscretions with Monica Lewinsky. In a Washington obsessed with sex, lies and Linda Tripp’s tapes, his revelations of the alleged bedroom imbroglios of some top Republicans injected a farcical note into the impeachment and had a few prominent conservatives on the run.

Perhaps only in America could a former Dayton, Ohio, factory worker build a small empire of “Hustler” strip clubs, rise to prominence as the publisher of the most explicit skin periodical in the mainstream pornographic press -- and then aspire insistently to political influence.

For those who might wonder why the “smut peddler who cares” is running for governor, a better question might be: Why not? Here in the land of the free, it costs only $3,500 to get on the California ballot. For this pittance, Flynt has fielded “hundreds” of interview requests, according to a publicist, appearing on CNN, MSNBC, the BBC, the “Today Show” and dozens of radio stations.

Flynt is under no illusions that he will get more than a minuscule percentage of the vote.

But you can’t beat the exposure.

Bothered by recall

“Don’t get too close to him right now. He’s concentrating,” warns a handler in a dark suit, as Flynt plays seven-card stud at his Hustler Casino. Here, in the unshaded strip-mall haven of Gardena, a cauterizing afternoon sun is still heating up the asphalt, but the parking lot is already packed.

Inside the darkened, plush bordello-red interior, where the gaming tables are packed, the wall panels shimmer with real gold leaf. Sitting under an Austrian crystal chandelier, Flynt -- whose moon-faced looks have been compared to Rush Limbaugh and Uncle Fester of “The Addams Family” -- is holding court in his wheelchair.

He wants you to know that he’s “deeply troubled” by the recall.

“We’re setting the stage that if any state is not happy with the government, they can recall,” he said. “[Davis] has not been a good governor. But I think the recall procedure subverts the Democratic process.”

Once upon a time, people ran for governor for one reason: They wanted to win. But in California, with 135 contenders on the ballot -- only a few with a whisper of a chance -- there seem to be as many reasons as there are candidates.

Flynt has his reasons. Winning is not one of them.

“I never, for any second, had any ambition of being elected governor or going to Sacramento,” he said in an interview in an office, which is adorned with neo-Greek marble statuary and Gilded Age-style antique replica lamps and furniture. “I knew voters would never be able to separate my candidacy from my profession.”

He’s got a poll to back himself up.

Flynt commissioned a survey, conducted in August by JKK Research, a Culver City polling firm, of 1,157 voters. It shows that only about 1% of them were likely to choose Flynt. It indicated that if he bought TV ads, he might be able to bump that up to 4%. Only 10% of respondents had a favorable opinion of Flynt -- and 75% had an unfavorable view. But the survey also indicated that one in three voters in California was at least willing to listen to his views, especially men under 50, Latinos, liberals and voters earning less than $40,000 a year.

“I was interested in the platform,” Flynt said. “I thought I had ideas and I thought if I got them out in the marketplace, other politicians would incorporate them or members of the press would take them up.”

He believes, for example, that nonviolent drug offenders should be rehabilitated, not incarcerated. And that society must “make a serious effort to control the border” and stem “illegal immigrants who are a huge drain on California.”

But the issue Flynt talks about first and longest is his plan to offset California’s budget deficit by expanding gaming regulations to allow slot machines in private casinos, namely his Hustler Casino.

“I think you could easily balance the budget with the taxes on the slot machines,” he said.

Flynt has become, in political parlance, a “message candidate.” Presidential races are increasingly strewn with these Un-Contenders, whose campaigns push issues, sell books and raise the stature of Republicans such as Pat Buchanan, Gary Bauer or Alan Keyes; or Democrats such as Jesse Jackson and Jerry Brown. Perhaps the most notorious nonaspirant was Ralph Nader, who could not have expected to win the 2000 presidential election, though he greatly raised the profile of the Green Party, and certainly changed the course of history by diverting votes from Al Gore.

And now, add to this august company, Larry Flynt. But at least he’s upfront about it.

“I’m not playing around like Gary Coleman or one of the people who are part of the geek show,” Flynt said, referring to a lineup that also includes a political doppelganger, porn actress Mary Carey. “I’m very serious about all my views.”

Flynt has won some converts. Or at least fellow travelers. Actor James Woods sits in the casino bistro, studying several typed pages of his elaborate gaming theory with a young blond female companion. Woods offers up, unprompted, Flynt’s idea of offsetting the California deficit with the slot machine tax.

“He makes a lot of sense,” Woods said. “You look at somebody like Cruz Bustamante, and he’s taken so much from the Indian casinos, and they could do so much to solve the deficit. I think Larry’s very cogent on that point.”

Plus, Woods added: “This is the nicest casino.”

Question Flynt’s credentials, and he looks you sternly in the eye.

“I think most people know I took a bullet for the 1st Amendment, and not a lot of people can say that,” he says, referring to an attempt on his life in 1978, allegedly by a white supremacist, Joseph Paul Franklin, who was said to be outraged by a Hustler photo spread of an interracial couple. The shooting left Flynt paralyzed from the waist down. Franklin was indicted for the crime in 1984 but never tried. He was already serving two life sentences for racially motivated murders.

Political mischief

If Flynt seems something of a political UFO, he has already goosed the American body politic. Who can forget his offer in 1998, at the height of l’affaire Lewinsky, to pay up to $1 million for anyone willing to provide evidence of Republican sexual peccadilloes.

“Everything came to a halt in Washington for about a week,” Flynt chuckled, with evident satisfaction.

This political mischief won Flynt more than a few closet admirers among liberals who might have been turned off by a Hustler “parody” of Alanis Morissette being tortured or images of women drinking from a toilet bowl, being raped or dismembered. A Clinton White House spokesman reportedly even slipped and called Hustler a “newsmagazine.” Surely, that -- along with the opening of the admiring Hollywood biopic, “The People vs. Larry Flynt” -- was his belle epoque.

Still, Flynt is not eager to end his date with history. After all, the presidential election is coming up. And if anything got Flynt traction, it was his role as the Democratic evil twin of Ken Starr.

“As a result of what happened during the impeachment debacle, it seems like if anybody has a seamy past, their dossier winds up on my desk,” he said. “Because of their upbringing, most of the conservatives are very much in the closet. If something comes up and it’s important or significant, yeah, we’ll do it.”

In other words: He is threatening to wade back into the dirty laundry of prominent Republicans. “It’s basically the hypocrisy. I’m not interested in exposing people’s sex lives,” he said. However, “I feel like if a politician takes a position contrary to their private life, he’s fair game.”

But that was inside the Beltway.

“I think it’s more tolerant in California,” he said, when asked about reports of Arnold Schwarzenegger making unwanted sexual advances. “Bill Clinton made it awful easy for people to get elected to office who don’t necessarily have a politically correct background.”

Nonetheless, Larry Flynt is not going to be elected. So why is he bothering to be a candidate?

Flynt is running because it costs less than he might win or lose at the card table. Campaign? He won’t buy even a minute of radio. Why do that when he is expecting to opine on “All Things Considered”? He gets free publicity to push his bid for slot machines in casinos at a time when, otherwise, no one would be paying him much attention.

In the end, no matter who is elected governor, he’s a winner. And for a gambler, those are pretty good odds.