POLITICS ASIDE:

OK, so consider this column one long correction.

Last week, I wrote that I had not seen any Newport-Mesa city council candidates at a fancy shindig at the Orange County Performing Arts Center.

That doesn’t mean at least one wasn’t there: Barbara Venezia.

And she was quick to correct me.

To make up for my gaffe, I agreed to meet with her for lunch so I could not only correct my mistake but write a little more about her. Along with Michael Henn, Venezia is the only candidate I don’t feel like I know personally, something I need to change during the campaign. (I also still need to sit down with Nancy Gardner, but after reading her dad’s column in this paper for years, I kind of feel like I know her. But expect a call from me, anyway. Consider yourself warned.)

I then had to cancel the lunch. We ended up meeting for coffee, and I walked away from it excited about the race between Venezia and City Councilwoman Leslie Daigle.

It’s going to be a good one, with some contrasting styles, and Venezia brings to the race far more knowledge of the minutia of city government than a typical first-time candidate — not to mention some marketing and advertising savvy.

Plenty of people know where she picked up a lot of that knowledge: Producing and getting on the air her old cooking show, “At Home on the Range,” which she did with philanthropist John Crean (who is her campaign’s honorary chairman).

That marketing knowledge will be one of the interesting components to this race. Venezia is running her own show, is getting out in the community (name recognition will be big for her, although she may have more of it than a usual candidate), and seems to be having fun doing it.

This isn’t going to be anywhere near the usual incumbent-creams-inexperienced-newcomer race.

Her campaign is going to carry her sensibility — it isn’t going to be some mass-produced political nonsense. It’s going to be fun. If you have seen her campaign literature and clothing, you know that.

But she’s also dead serious. “As serious as a heart attack,” she said a few times.

She wants to win. She intends to.

“I’m doing this so I can raise the bar,” she said. “I’m doing it to show how people should be treated.”

Right now, there is too much “us versus them” when it comes to the City Council, she said.

“I’m getting people involved who never wanted to be involved in local politics,” she told me, noting that she can appeal to the hard-core policy wonks — she’s been dealing with Santa Ana Heights redevelopment issues for a decade — and those who tend to sit back and let government run itself.

And she clearly likes talking to both.

Venezia and I covered a whole range of issues, including the ones she said she’s hearing about from residents: city hall, traffic, Greenlight.

We also talked about how she got where she is today. I won’t cover that because I assume when readers run across her they’ll get that story from her in a much more fun way than I could sum it up.

But I will share one thing she told me, which seemed to sum up her and her campaign. Among the first checks she got when she started running for City Council was from a lawyer in Beverly Hills. (Venezia has made it easy to donate, although she isn’t pushing too hard for money. Rather than having fundraisers she’s having “friend-raisers.”) It wasn’t a name she recognized, so she called him.

Do you live in Newport? she asked. No.

Do you do business in Newport? No.

So why did he donate to her?

It turns out that when this man was going through a divorce, he realized the only time he laughed was while watching “At Home on the Range.” He’d sent the money as a thank you.

Venezia said she runs into a lot people who know her from that show. If so, watch out City Hall.

S.J. CAHN is the editor. He may be reached at (714) 966-4607 or by e-mail at s.j.cahn@latimes.com.