Senate candidates show their lighter side

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Running for the U.S. Senate is no laughing matter, but it turns out that the three sober-minded Republican candidates vying for the chance to unseat Sen. Barbara Boxer have a sense of humor after all. You just have to dig around a little bit.

As the clock ticks ever closer to global catastrophe, er, the June 8 primary, Irvine Assemblyman Chuck DeVore is playfully aligning himself with Jack Bauer, the pro-torture hero of the long-running series “24,” which ends tonight.

“What would Jack do? Vote for Chuck,” a three-minute low-budget video on his website, recaps DeVore’s action-packed career … and his surprising, if fictional, rivalry with Bauer:

“The following events take place over 24 years during the foreign and military experience of U.S. Senate candidate Chuck DeVore,” says an authoritative narrator.

“In 1983, Chuck DeVore found himself at Ft. Knox, Ky., in the Army ROTC Basic Camp, where he earned his expert badge in rifle and scored second-best in his training battalion. Cadet J. Bauer was rumored to have been the battalion’s top shooter that year.

“As a cadet, Chuck would have gotten top score in land navigation except that Cadet Bauer sabotaged the course.

“The following year during ROTC advanced course, Cadet DeVore would earn his expert’s badge in grenade – something Jack Bauer is still jealous about.”

DeVore’s current mission, of course, is to retire Boxer.

“But first, some important business that not even Jack Bauer, or, for that matter, Barbara Boxer, would ever attempt … Chuck must successfully mow his lawn … and then patch his leaky roof.”

What makes this video funny and not, um, torture? The goofy photos of DeVore on his roof and pushing his lawn mower.

Former Hewlett-Packard Chief Executive Carly Fiorina demonstrated an appreciation for the absurd when she OKd the “Demon Sheep” video, an instant classic. But long before that, when she was an up-and-coming senior executive at Lucent Technologies, she displayed what can only be considered a ribald streak a mile wide. That, it would seem, was a necessary survival skill in the male-dominated business world. In her 2006 memoir “Tough Choices,” she recounts having to take a meeting in a strip club, being called “our token bimbo” and fending off rumors that she traded sexual favors for promotions.

She turned the tables in 1998, when Lucent acquired Ascend Communications, a company with an almost exclusively male sales force. Lucent’s sales force was almost half women. When the two groups met, Fiorina took the stage prepared.

“The hard truth is we think you Ascend guys are a bunch of cowboys who don’t understand our customer’s requirements for quality of service,” she said. “You think we’re a bunch of sissies. You think we’re not tough enough or street smart enough.”

“But I just want you to know … that I’m wearing Tony Lama cowboy boots and we can kick ass with the best of ‘em.” As people laughed, she turned her back to the crowd for a moment, removed her jacket and faced her audience again.

The bulge in her pants where she’d stuffed a borrowed pair of her husband’s socks allowed her to deliver the coup de grace: “And our balls are as big as anyone’s in this room!”

Not everyone appreciated the humor, she wrote. But her boss fell off his chair laughing … and that’s what counts.

Meanwhile, as one might expect of a rigorously academic former law professor and business school dean, former Rep. Tom Campbell has explicated his sense of humor in a spreadsheet on his website. Just kidding. It’s not a spread sheet, it’s a tab called “Lighter Moments,” which promises to reveal “Some things you may not know about Tom Campbell.” They include:

• Published movie critic, ‘Review of Mystery Science Theater 3000, the Movie,’ in congressional newspaper ‘The Hill,’ 1996. (Tom gave the film two thumbs up, on the same hand.)
• Devotee of the worst movies ever made; large personal collection, including ‘Plan Nine from Outer Space,’ starring Bela Lugosi, and ‘Inkubo,’ starring William Shatner with 100% Esperanto dialogue.
• Elvis impersonator at Haas School of Business Holiday Party, 2007.

Elvis? Really? We asked Campbell spokesman Jamie Fisfis if he had any photos of Campbell as Elvis. The answer was no. (Someone out there must have one. Mrs. Campbell? Anyone?) How do you say “Heartbreak Hotel” in Esperanto?

-- Robin Abcarian