The Inside hears Mark Chapin Johnson has his eye on Chris Cox’s House seat

Talk about some of the best deals being the ones you don’t make: Commercial real estate legend Bob Voit has been itching to relocate his personal office to a bayfront location near his Balboa Peninsula home. To that end, he recently had his people check out Paul Sumner’s building at 2808 Lafayette,a week before it made headlines by collapsing into Newport Bay. “We actually looked underneath. I looked at the pier,” said Voit Commercial Brokerage’s Chris Deason, who remembered thinking, “This can never be replicated. It sticks out, there’s a great view, no seawall.” Deason said the building passed his eyeball inspection: “Where it collapsed was not where you could see by the naked eye.” But he said Voit wasn’t thrilled with the asking price of $3.5 million for 5,000 non-contiguous square feet: “Bob isn’t going to pay $500 a foot for something.” Whatever interest Voit had in the building went down with the wreckage. Cost of repairs aside, getting Coastal Commission approval to shore up the building is problematic, Deason said. Voit has subsequently renewed his lease with the Irvine Co. at Corporate Plaza in Newport Center for three years. But Deason said, “Bob would love to be on the water. We’re still looking there seriously” Chapin Medical boss, arts patron and New Majority co-founder Mark Chapin Johnson says he is planning to run for Congress,if and when Chris Cox joins the Bush administration … Tom Fuentes has been easily and quietly re-elected as local party GOP chairman; the executive-led New Majority, which challenged Fuentes last March and is bigger now, decided this was not the time for a rematch: “We have other hills to climb,” Johnson said Resident wits have had a field day with Bush-Gore. Larry Thomas calls Gore “The Democrat Dan Lungren.” Dr. Mike Glueck dubs the whole mess “Gatorgate” and “Chad-daquidic” About 100 well-wishers at the Irvine Marriott gave outgoing Irvine Mayor Christina Shea a royal sendoff, complete with a crowning ceremony. “I started with modeling, moved to mothering and then to ‘mayoring,'” Queen Christina said. “Maybe I’ll go back to modeling.” Not a bad idea, but the Insider sees more politics in her future Last week’s item predicting that Stan Oftelie would be named El Toro planning czar was, at the least, premature. Last-minute arm-twisting by the local GOP got pro-airport supe Jim Silva to join anti-airport colleagues Tom Wilson and Todd Spitzer in a 3-2 vote against Democrat Oftelie, who is favored by GOP donor George Argyros Tradition: Auto dealer John Campbell was sworn into the state Assembly last week on a Bible that had been given to his great grandmother in 1876 by his great-great-grandfather Alexander Campbell, who was elected to the Assembly in the Lincoln sweep of 1860.