OC rules at the Sacramento-based California Medical Association. Richard Frankenstein, a lung doc in Garden Grove, is new president of the 30,000-member advocacy group. The 57-year-old physician pronounces his last name “Frankensteen.” How many times has he been kidded about it? “You mean how many times per day? Have at it.” He shares power with Chairman J. Brennan Cassidy, a family doc in Newport Beach, and with an even scarier name for OC Republicans, Joe Dunn, who has completed his first year as the association’s CEO. Dunn, a former Democrat state senator, is rumored to be eyeing the central county supe seat; he’d be a formidable candidate even if the GOP weren’t divided over Janet Nguyen and Trung Nguyen
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Mark Mueller notes that SunCal chief Bruce Elieff was on enemy turf, the Disneyland Resort, to receive the Construction Industry Alliance’s Spirit of Life award. More than 800 attended the black-tie gala at Disney’s Grand Californian honoring Elieff for his fundraising on behalf of City of Hope. The event took place amid the unraveling of SunCal’s controversial bid, heatedly opposed by Disney, to build 1,500 condos near the resort …
George Argyros received the Marine Corps Scholarship Foundation’s Semper Fidelis Award with Donald Bren, William Lyon and 400 other SoCal luminaries in attendance at the Beverly Wilshire …
Request to KDOC’s Bert Ellis: Please bring back “Mr. Ed” …
Always something new for globe-trotting, skate-boarding entrepreneur Pierre Senizergues. The Insider kept him still just long enough to hear about his volunteer work with Global Green USA rebuilding New Orleans’ Holy Cross neighborhood. Senizergues, whose Sole Technology HQ in Lake Forest is a model of eco-design, is contributing time and dollars to green-friendly design competitions in the Katrina-ravaged area; the effort got him face time with Red-turned-“green” Mikhail Gorbachev. Senizergues is executive producer with narrator Leonard DiCaprio on the eco-documentary “11th Hour.” And he still finds time for the day job at Sole, designing and selling an estimated $200 million a year of etnies shoes and other labels …
Still Italian: Il Fornaio-owned Canaletto Ristorante Veneto is slated to take over the former Tutto Mare space at Fashion Island in fall 2008 …
Tough choice: Who to listen to last Tuesday night,Sam Donaldson (at the Balboa Bay Club), Sy Hersh or Ralph Cicerone (in separate appearances at UCI)? …
The New Majority has endorsed Mimi Walters over Harry Sidhu for state Senate …
Publicist Jim Trainor, who headed PR for Lincoln Mercury back when it was based in Irvine, has returned to the car biz, leaving Ingram Micro in Santa Ana for Hyundai Motor America in Fountain Valley.
