Tony Moiso is one Republican who isn’t likely to badmouth Gov. Gray Davis, and not because the cowboy-landowner needs all the friends he can find in order to push through his bold plan for developing and preserving the final 25,000 acres of the O’Neill family ranch. Moiso goes back a long way with Davis. As boys in West LA, high school senior Moiso got $10 a month to drive freshman Davis to Harvard School. Davis not only followed Moiso to Stanford, he joined the same fraternity. When the two ran into each other at a Barbara Streisand concert at Staples Center, Davis introduced Moiso as “my hero.” Moiso isn’t surprised by Davis’ political achievements, noting he was class president, a good athlete and an A student. What does Moiso think of Davis as governor? “I think he’s doing a fine job.” Even on the energy crisis? “I don’t want to go down that road” The Insider thrives on controversy, but Dusty Simington might be going too far. The Newport Beach native and hair stylist to the stars, who splits his time between boutiques in Beverly Hills and Fashion Island (Spa Gregories), thinks hair dressers are better in OC. “The work is much better, both the artistic and technical talent.” In Beverly Hills “you get a good publicist and they make you a superstar.” Simington won the prestigious Editor’s Select honor at February’s North American Hairstyling Awards in LA His clientele includes Tiffani-Amber Thiessen, Daisy Fuentes, LeAna Rimes and Carol Lawrence. You can make an appointment with Dusty, too, starting at $150….
……Check out the best friend of OC Performing Arts Center’s Terry Jones in the August Orange Coast magazine (page 127). Folks, the photo’s a gag, it’s not what you think In his first post-election visit to LA and OC last week, U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham detailed plans for a $300 million project to break a notorious bottleneck in the state’s transmission grid, freeing up electricity for more than a million homes. President George W. Bush wants the new lines to be privately built and owned, putting him on a collision course with Davis, who wants the state to take over the power grid. You’d think reporters would sop up this kind of news, so you can understand why GOP officials were dumbfounded that, unlike broadcast outlets, neither of the big OC dailies covered the story More power punches: OC treasurer John Moorlach, fresh from his hair-raising redemption of $20 million in Edison bonds, has joined the nuclear-energy bandwagon. And Moorlach says he’ll be happy to offer his and his associates’ bankruptcy expertise to Edison, should the company wind up filing Chapter 11 Dick Riordan, testing the gubernatorial waters, was set to meet late last week with New Majority members at Big Canyon Sharing a booth at Josh Slocums: Sugar Shane Mosely, Dennis Rodman, Paul Kariya and IMG’s Jack Tiernan.
