Not every woman counts in politics

Alicia Robinson

The most important political issues for women are safe streets,

quality education and jobs, Republican U.S. Senate candidate Bill

Jones said this week.

Jones gave the briefest of stump speeches tailored to a mostly

female audience at Costa Mesa’s Shark Club on Tuesday at an event

launching Women-Count, a new state GOP outreach program to get women

more involved in party politics.

“Women have been the backbone of the Republican Party in

California as long as I can remember,” Jones said before giving his

talk.

However much Jones thinks women count, there’s one woman he

probably wishes would be less involved in politics, and he’s even

trying to take her job away: incumbent Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer.

Big gun coming for Jones

Rather than relying on women’s votes to get elected, the Jones

campaign on Wednesday brought out the big guns, announcing that

Republican Sen. John McCain will help Jones drum up support in the

state later this month. McCain will join Jones for appearances set

for July 18 and 19 in Sacramento and Long Beach.

Cox rumor getting thinner?

Always the bridesmaid, Rep. Chris Cox is rumored to be on the

short list to replace departing CIA Director George Tenet but

apparently didn’t merit a mention in an MSNBC story on Tenet’s

replacement.

The story, on the news channel’s website Tuesday, named 9/11

commission member and former Navy secretary John Lehman as the

administration’s leading contender for the position and predicted a

new CIA director could be tapped today.

Cox last week declined to comment on whether he was interested in

the job. He’s been talked about as a possible Senate or vice

presidential candidate, and he was considered for a seat on the 9th

Circuit Court of Appeals in 2001 but later withdrew his name from

consideration.

Campbell goes to Washington ... Times

Rather than a shot heard ‘round the world, call it a rant heard

across the nation: 70th District Assemblyman John Campbell’s weekly

e-mail newsletter last week discussed his indignation over Assembly

Democrats’ refusal to allow former Navy pilot and Vietnam veteran

Adm. Jeremiah Denton to speak on the Assembly floor in honor of the

Fourth of July.

By the end of the week, a Washington Times writer had picked up on

Campbell’s angry electronic missive and included the item in a

political column.

“I’ve actually gotten more response from that e-mail than anything

else I’ve ever done or written in politics,” Campbell said Wednesday.

“This one really lit some people up.”

How the tidbit got to the Times is a testament to the power of

mass e-mailing. Campbell sends his weekly letter to about 5,000

people, who sometimes forward it on. It ended up on a website for

former prisoners of war, where Texas Rep. Sam Johnson saw it and “it

made him absolutely livid,” Campbell said. Johnson called Campbell to

check the facts and passed the information on to the Times.

Campbell’s newsletter apparently doesn’t always bring positive

feedback, but is there really any such thing as bad publicity?

“It’s very, very well received and it’s widely read,” he said. “I

can always tell because if people don’t like what I say, we hear

about it.”