OC doesn’t produce California GOP gubernatorial candidates, just their rainmakers. The latest is businessman-philanthropist Mark Johnson (Chapin Medical), who is gearing up to be Dick Riordan’s state finance chairman. Johnson knows how to raise money (see the Performing Arts Center), and he’ll need to raise a lot of it, an estimated $50 million, to get the ex-LA mayor through both the primary and general elections. Four years ago another OCer, Gary Hunt, was finance chair for party standard bearer Dan Lungren, and before that Hunt’s then-boss Donald Bren was a co-chair for Pete Wilson Leland H. Hartwell, director of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle and winner last week of the Nobel Prize in medicine, started his academic career at UCI. In 1965 the LA native was a founding faculty member in the Department of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry, where his study of yeast cells made him a pioneer in the field of cell cycle research. Hartwell left UCI for the University of Washington in 1968 and two years later began the experiments and gene discoveries that led to the prize…
Melissa Walter, one of Prof RR’s alert Chapman U students, noted that the Register led its Oct. 1 edition with news of the trash strike and Nguyen Van Thieu’s death,the first time since Sept. 11 that terrorism wasn’t the top story Rep. Chris Cox, R-Newport Beach, penned an eloquent essay defending the Constitution in the Oct. 15 Forbes: “Will our civil liberties be a victim of friendly fire?” Shaking off the shock of Sept. 11, people are starting to network again. EE RR did his part last week, moderating an intellectual-property conference attended by 60, and participating in a Business Wire editors’ panel with the Register’s Colin Stewart and the Times’ Don Lee that drew 200. The Insider attributes the encouraging turnouts to top-notch speakers, and possibly the free food Nearly 800 golfers have joined the Sunday discount club since Pelican Hill shaved the price from $250 a round to $150 on June 1. Golf director Bobby Heath calls the response “phenomenal” Linda Sanchez is said to have a decent shot of joining older sister Loretta Sanchez in Congress. Linda, a lawyer and Orange County Central Labor Council official, is raising money for the March 5 Democratic primary in the new, incumbent-free 39th District. The mid-counties area includes Artesia, Cerritos, Hawaiian Gardens, Lakewood, La Mirada, Lynwood, Paramount and parts of North Long Beach and Whittier. It’s about 60% Latino and 2-1 Democrat. Taking a cue from Loretta, Linda is omitting her married name (Valentine) from the ballot Writer, college instructor and former OCBJ ME Peggy Hesketh spent the summer at a dinosaur dig in Malta, Mont. unearthing Leonardo, a duck-billed hadrosaur.
