Shelley Finds That S.F.’s Reputation Precedes Him

Kevin Shelley, the secretary of state and the busiest guy in California when the polls close Tuesday evening, took time last week to speak to the Los Angeles League of Women Voters at its launch of a get-out-the-youth-vote drive.

Under-30s are more inclined to go along with the idea of civil unions and same-sex marriages than their elders -- with the possible exception of a certain waitress in Banning.

Shelley and his campaign manager, Eric Jaye, both heterosexually married men, were in Banning, conferring at a coffee shop, when the waitress chattily asked where they were from.

“San Francisco,” they answered.

She hesitated, glanced at their wedding rings, and asked. “Y’all come down here for your honeymoon?”

At Least He Didn’t Come Over and Sing

The DMV registration fee refund check is in the mail.

And so is the birthday card, whether you want it or not.

A voter in the 47th Assembly District race to succeed termed-out Assembly Speaker Herb Wesson was astonished to open her mailbox last week and find birthday greetings.

Oh, it was her birthday all right; that wasn’t the source of astonishment. It was that she had never met the sender, who had included a photo of himself, his wife and daughter. It was from Assembly candidate Rickey Ivie, and it left the voter a little rattled that her birthday had become the grist of campaigning.

For Jones, Accusation Becomes a Boomerang

Make that oops-osition research, not opposition.

Bill Jones’ campaign to become the Republican nominee to take on U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer in November did a little “opposition research” on opponent Rosario Marin, and posted a “dis” on the campaign website, accusing her of not voting in 1998. That was based on an L.A. County registrar’s certified list of Marin’s voting record.

But the dis came boomeranging back when Marin said, no way, she certainly did vote that year -- and Registrar-Recorder Conny McCormack’s office acknowledged that a computer glitch could have omitted the 1998 record. A firm that buys voter lists from registrars shows that Marin did vote in 1998, her campaign reported.

Jones spokesman Sean Walsh responded that the campaign would remove the accusation if Marin could prove she voted. This is the same Sean Walsh being sued by Rhonda Miller, the stuntwoman who claimed she was sexually harassed by Arnold Schwarzenegger and then defamed by his campaign as a convicted prostitute and addict when in fact the criminal record belonged to someone else of the same name.

Walsh, then working for Schwarzenegger’s campaign, suggested that reporters run the name “Rhonda Miller” through an official county website -- and there were several Rhonda Millers, including the criminally inclined one. Stuntwoman Miller’s suit says the campaign knew very well that she was not that person when it sent out the e-mail -- something Walsh disputes. (Walsh’s e-mail also chastised Miller’s attorney for not checking the “facts and background” of her client. Will Walsh’s defense be that, gee, he didn’t do so, either?)

Walsh was spokesman for the gubernatorial campaign of Bill Simon Jr. in October 2002 when Simon said he had a photograph of Gov. Gray Davis illegally taking a campaign contribution on state property. The photo was actually taken in the den of a private home in Santa Monica, which, as anyone must know, is by definition swankier than any government office.

Election Day Luncheon Keeps ‘Em in Stitches

Election night parties are usually exclusively partisan, crying or crowing events. But that election day luncheon in Orange County is something else entirely.

The host, lawyer/consultant Christine Diemer Iger, began assembling the lunch about 15 years ago -- “originally so I wouldn’t have to eat alone on election day” -- but now it is quite the election day event, where people who won’t be on speaking terms by midnight can break bread together at midday.

About 200 political-junkie guests sing special lyrics to the tune of “My Favorite Things”: “When the sound bites, when the quote stings, when the mailers hit/I simply remember it’s that time of year, And everything seems to fit.”

This year, Republican Assemblyman Todd Spitzer has asked to sing his “new release,” and Democratic state Sen. Joe Dunn promises to come up with a crowd pleaser.

The menu in the past has included “term-limits sub” -- “looks good on paper, but leaves a bad aftertaste when done,” and a trivia game has delivered some stump-the-experts minutiae on Orange County politics, such as, “Which former congressman’s daughter bore the child of her sixth-grade student?” (Answer: Mary Kay LeTourneau, daughter of the late John Birch Society stalwart John Schmitz.)

Watch C-SPAN and Comedy Central duke it out for broadcast rights!

Podiatrist Puts Feet to Fire as Political Hopeful

Who says you can’t do retail campaigning in California?

David Rizzo is a door-to-door political salesman whose product is himself. The Fullerton podiatrist is taking on Rep. Ken Calvert in the 44th Congressional District’s Republican primary.

Rizzo figures he’s campaigned on foot perhaps 450 miles in 90 days, believing that face to face is what voters hunger for. He wore out three pairs of shoes in a case of “physician, heal thyself.”

When patients came to him, Rizzo said, “I’d take off my shoes and show them my feet looked worse than theirs.”

Rizzo’s secret identity is Dr. Roadmap, the author of a popular commuting guide, “Freeway Alternates.” And maybe he’s telling us something when a big traffic expert chooses to go on shank’s mare.

Points Taken

* It’s been a long campaign, already. At a recent Pasadena debate-by-proxy of the Democratic presidential candidates, Howard Dean’s representative, Eric Garcetti -- who was only 4 months old at the time of the 1972 Watergate burglary -- began an answer with “John Dean ... “ and corrected himself, laughing. John Dean was the Nixon White House attorney who warned that Watergate was “a cancer on the presidency.” Howard Dean was the Vermont governor and presidential candidate who, being a doctor, no doubt knows a cancer when he sees one.

* Tuesday is the election, but Sunday is the 10th anniversary of California’s three-strikes law. Watch for speeches, reports and conferences on whether it’s time to amend the law regarding third-strike lifetime sentences for crimes such as videotape shoplifting and stealing pizza from kiddies.

You Can Quote Me

“I’ll wash your car every week till it’s paid off ... and Armor All the tires ... in a toga.”

-- Actor George Clooney, in a cover letter for an invitation to a fundraiser for his father, Nick Clooney -- former Cincinnati (and briefly Los Angeles) anchorman, brother to Rosemary and father to George -- who is a Democrat running for Congress in Kentucky. Clooney in a toga would be worth the $500-to-$4,000 contribution. As Clooney himself writes, “If I was allowed, I’d pay for the whole [campaign]

*

Patt Morrison’s columns appear Mondays and Tuesdays. Her e-mail address is patt.morrison@latimes.com. Her earlier columns can be read at latimes.com/morrison. This week’s contributors include Jean O. Pasco.