Loyalty Pays Off for 3 of Condit’s Key Aides

This is probably not the last Gary Condit story, but be patient--the Ceres congressman will be out of office in the new year.

The remains of Chandra Levy, the murdered young woman whose name will always after be preceded by “intern,” were found in late May.

Now Roll Call, the Capitol Hill publication, reports that its analysis of payroll records shows the California Democrat gave big raises to three loyal key aides not long after reports emerged that he was--as the phrase goes--”romantically involved” with Levy.

There’s a school of logic called “post hoc ergo propter hoc,” meaning that because something happens after an event, it is assumed to have happened because of the event. Whether that’s the case here, who knows?

But Roll Call, analyzing quarterly salaries, found that Condit’s longtime executive secretary’s income rose from about $57,000 in 2000 to $99,000 for 2001 and, this year, up to a quarterly rate that would work out to about $105,800 annually.

His administrative assistant earned $95,000 in 2000 and about $115,000 a year after the Levy story broke, and got another raise this year that would work out to an annual income of $137,000, not much less than a lot of members of Congress get, and just $8,000 under the maximum allowed for congressional staffers.

And Condit’s chief of staff saw his salary rise from $114,400 in 2000 to $127,500 last year, and then, based on his pay so far this year, to an annual rate of $138,000.

All had vigorously defended their boss in the Levy matter. The administrative assistant was spotted driving Condit to a trash can in northern Virginia, where Condit threw away a watch case reported to have contained a gift from a woman friend.

On the other side of the country, in Fresno, lawyers representing Condit’s wife, Carolyn, were fussing over whether the National Enquirer could legally be called a “newspaper.”

That definition could figure in a federal judge’s ruling on the Enquirer’s motion to throw out the $10-million libel case that Mrs. Condit filed after the tabloid’s August 2001 article headlined, “Cops: Condit’s Wife Attacked Chandra,” an account of a supposed telephone confrontation between Mrs. Condit and the intern.

In her suit, Carolyn Condit included a request for an apology and a retraction, but California law gives newspapers a chance to correct mistakes by printing corrections or retractions before lawsuits are filed--if they are in fact newspapers.

The courts ruled in 1976, in a lawsuit by Carol Burnett, that the tabloid is not a newspaper under the state law’s definition. But its attorneys now argue that the Enquirer is a different publication these days, covering news and emphasizing “being hot and being first.”

Once that’s settled, maybe we’ll have heard almost the last.

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Frat’s Gray Area

What’s wrong with this syllogism?

Gray Davis pledged Zeta Psi fraternity when he was at Stanford.

The fraternity’s Web site has a list of “famous members of Zeta Psi.”

Ergo, Davis should be on that list, right?

He’s not. Baby doctor Benjamin Spock is. So are “Superman” actor Dean Cain, a couple of NFL players and some major money men.

Is it an oversight? A campaign tactic? An outdated list? After all, Dr. Spock is dead, Red Grange is dead and Pete Wilson is governor no longer.

But hey, they left off Zeta Psi-ster Henry Ford II, too--the man who put the Mustang and the Thunderbird on the nation’s roads, along with the Pinto and the Edsel.

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Slicing and Dicing

It’s slice-and-dice time in Sacramento, and we don’t mean the budget.

First, a veteran GOP senator was handed his head by his own party, after being locked out of closed-door caucus meetings. Maurice Johannessen, a 67-year-old Redding Republican, was being punished for siding with Democrats to give the budget and tax bill the two-thirds majority it needed.

Johannessen denied that he traded his vote for an appointive position when he’s termed out of office at the end of November, or to get a veterans home in Redding, but for reasons of serious budget concerns.

And he responded to his schoolyard scolding appropriately, with a statesmanlike “Nah-nah nah-nah nah.”

And across the aisle, Dean Florez, the Democrat who headed the joint legislative audit committee, was abruptly dumped from the job by Assembly Speaker Herb Wesson.

The Shafter Democrat felt he was getting the shaft--not for bailing out on a critical vote on the groundbreaking greenhouse-gases bill that had passed the day before, but because he’s been leading the charge on hearings into the backroom dealings that gave a green light to the state’s screwed-up software deal with Oracle Corp., a $95-million deal approved without competitive bidding.

A gloating Republican Party press release asked Florez’s successor, Fred Keeley of Boulder Creek, whether he wants to be an “honest truth-seeker” or “Gray Davis’ lap dog.”

What, no third choice?

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Points Taken

* Longtime Congressman David Dreier, the high-ranking GOP guy from San Dimas, is celebrating his 50th birthday with a bowling party in Washington on Tuesday, probably one of the few times that the call “Strike!” will be part of a Republican’s vocabulary.

* In calling on Gray Davis to debate Bill Simon, the latter’s campaign also said it wants to include in the debates the Green Party’s gubernatorial nominee, Peter Camejo, who has been hitting middle single digits in the polls lately. Camejo speculates that he’s what’s keeping Davis from agreeing to debate.

* Spotted last month on a booth in the courtyard outside the Cal State Fullerton campus: “LaRouche in 2004,” heralding the return of Lyndon LaRouche, who ran his 1992 campaign from a prison cell, where he was serving time for fraud.

* Is there an Ahmanson curse? In the Ventura County supervisor’s race, the winner was the first-out-of-the-box anti-Ahmanson Ranch development candidate, Republican Linda Parks. On the L.A. side of the line, Republicans and Democrats have opposed the Washington Mutual development, from L.A. Mayor Jim Hahn and council member Dennis Zine to state Sen. Sheila Kuehl. And now that Keith Richman, the Northridge Republican assemblyman who had supported the Ahmanson development, says he’d run for mayor of a new San Fernando Valley city, he also says he’s prepared to change his mind on the matter if the facts warrant.

* Happy second birthday to the state’s Department of Managed Care; don’t burn yourself on those candles--your HMO might not cover it.

* L.A. council members Nick Pacheco and Ed Reyes showed up to celebrate the certification of the Historic Highland Park Neighborhood Council, but didn’t win the talent show.

* Under “be careful what you wish for--it might come true”: Ross Perot has been asked to testify at a congressional hearing on California’s energy crisis. He’s already set to testify before the state Senate on July 11 about questions over whether Perot Systems, which helped create the state’s energy market software, also dropped hints to energy companies on how to “game” the market.

* To the disgust of lunchtime patrons a few Tuesdays ago at the venerable El Cholo Mexican restaurant in Los Angeles, a police black-and-white roared up, parked in the red zone out front, and two uniformed officers leaped out and rushed inside--to eat lunch.

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You Can Quote Me

” ... A snow-cone ghost town experience....”

--Assemblyman Tim Leslie, a Tahoe City Republican, who trashed the competition--Calico, Calif.--as he barnstormed to get his bill passed declaring Bodie the official ghost town of California. His bill died in the Senate after supporters of Calico--a town near Barstow that stages mock gunfights and Wild West parades for people to watch while they’re eating those snow cones--put the heat on legislators. Leslie promises to bring the measure up again in August.

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Patt Morrison’s column appears Mondays and Wednesdays. Her e-mail address is patt.morrison@latimes.com.