Shriver’s Charming Plan to Fund Protocol Office

It’s all in the wrist, and on it. Along with plans for a women’s exhibit in a state museum, California first lady Maria Shriver wants to bring the gold back to the Golden State. OK, silver.

She wants to develop a line of jewelry to honor “remarkable women.” Already on the market is a California-themed line of jewelry. Designer Jill Schiff’s sterling bracelet ($170) tinkles with postcard-bright images of the top 10 wondrous sights in California, such as the Walt Disney Concert Hall, Golden Gate Bridge, Yosemite, the Hollywood sign -- and Maria Shriver and Arnold Schwarzenegger. (Eighteen bucks gets you a single charm.)

The money is destined for the fund for the state’s protocol office, which handles matters of propriety, courtesy and etiquette -- presumably like how to say “no” nicely to all 50 members of a foreign delegation who want individual photos taken with the governor.

Perhaps the bracelet will become the accessory for the women of the Schwarzenegger administration, as that golden eagle perched on a pearl was for Clinton administration women. Former Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala wore hers in a milk promotion campaign, secretary Betty Currie wore hers when she testified before Kenneth Starr’s grand jury and Hillary Rodham Clinton wore hers in a TV interview about the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

(Shhh: Laura Bush reportedly has one too, not surprisingly. It was designed by Ann Hand, a Texan who makes patriotic- and military-themed bijoux. To bring it full circle, Hand’s husband worked for LBJ as ... head of protocol.)

Political Theater Sounds Like a Family Feud

Maybe it was because he said something about the “county family.” L.A. County Sheriff Lee Baca’s appearance before the county Board of Supervisors sounded at moments more like a family quarrel.

Gloria Molina, inquiring about the investigation into how five inmates came to be killed in the county jail, said that when her daughter was a child, “every time there was something wrong, she said she didn’t do it.... My job as a parent was not to allow her to just sit there and tell me, ‘No, I didn’t do it.’ ”

Baca answered that “everyone who works at the jail works very hard; they’re not children.” A few moments later, Baca said he didn’t know who was responsible for some problematic strip searches.

“My daughter said she never knew who did it,” Molina said.

“Well I’m at a new level,” the sheriff said. “Your daughter and I are together.”

Nation’s No. 2 Office Is No. 1 on This Website

Remember the car rental ad about “number two tries harder”?

As far as Woodland Hills businessman Dan Coen is concerned, it’s all about number two. He is managing director of what seems to be the only webzine devoted to the American vice presidency: VicePresidents. com.

Even though a lot of the 15,000 hits on his site are from schoolkids researching homework, Coen sticks up for the much-maligned office, which was characterized by one of FDR’s vice presidents as being worth “a bucket of warm spit,” albeit with a stronger second noun.

Coen has appeared on C-SPAN and elsewhere with such number two nuggets as the fact that the slangy contraction “veep” was first used for Truman’s vice president, Alben Barkley, and it was coined by his grandson. And Abraham Lincoln’s first vice president, Hannibal Hamlin, almost never got to Washington; he was a Coast Guard cook in Maine.

Coen’s choice for Democratic Sen. John Kerry’s “veep” is none of the usual suspects, but former Sen. Sam Nunn, a moderate Georgia Democrat.

Coen’s book, “Second String: Trivia, Facts and Lists About the Vice Presidency and Its Vice Presidents,” comes out in July -- just in time for Kerry to draw some cautionary lessons before the nominating convention.

Boot Camp for Aides Moving to Sacramento

Coals to Newcastle, legislative aides to Sacramento?

Not really. LSMI isn’t committed to producing more Myrmidons of government, but better ones. LSMI -- Legislative Staff Management Institute, a kind of Gov. U for legislative workers -- is folding its tents in Minnesota and setting them up in Sacramento.

LSMI was forged 14 years ago by both Republicans and Democrats of the National Conference of State Legislatures, and it opened its doors at the University of Minnesota, in the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs. (Humphrey was a Minnesota politician, Lyndon Johnson’s vice president who campaigned for his boss’ job on the now-quaint slogan “the politics of joy.” He lost, to Richard M. Nixon.)

Sacramento won the bidding war against the University of Texas at Austin, and the University of Minnesota folks, who wanted to keep the program. The five-year contract moves the institute into the downtown Sacramento Center for California Studies operated by USC and Cal State Sacramento.

Several things will have to change, of course, apart from the address on LSMI’s letterhead. Its summer boot camp for legislative aides offers the Twin City allure in this way: “This region is known

They’ll be trading that for bottled water, Schwarzenegger political theater, triple-A play by the Sacramento River Cats and pummeling summer heat.

Points Taken

* Until this month, “Brulte Way” meant following the leader, state Senate Minority Leader Jim Brulte, a Rancho Cucamonga Republican. Now Brulte Way will be the name of the main entrance to Copper Mountain College’s Joshua Tree campus. It acknowledges Brulte’s role in creating the college: The poorly punctuated press release said the gesture “will show it’s appreciation” to Brulte.

* The man who opened the state Chamber of Commerce’s annual business legislative summit earlier this month was not a congressman. Not a businessman. It was actor Tom Arnold, who joshed that he was “the acting governor” of California, moments before the real one walked in after flying from abroad.

* Before the L.A. City Council voted for an 11% raise in Department of Water and Power water rates, it welcomed Dodger pitching alum Fernando Valenzuela. Council members gathered behind Valenzuela for a group shot, and someone clapped a blue Dodger cap on his head. On the back of the hat, Jack Weiss spotted some familiar letters: DWP. “Hey, the DWP paid for this hat!” [Weiss was among three council members to vote against the rate increase.]

You Can Quote Me

“Our carnitas have more pork than the Senate.”

-- From a sign outside a Rubio’s restaurant in San Diego.

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 included Patrick McGreevy.