Hometown boy for President? Mayor asks ‘West Wing’ to consider SP
By Peggy Kelly
Santa Paula News
Published: February 23, 2005
It just might be that Santa Paula is on the way to being the hometown of the President of these United States, that is if the producers of the hit television drama, “The West Wing” decide to take Mayor Mary Ann Krause up on her suggestion.
By Peggy Kelly
Santa Paula Times
It just might be that Santa Paula is on the way to being the hometown of the President of these United States, that is if the producers of the hit television drama, “The West Wing” decide to take Mayor Mary Ann Krause up on her suggestion.
“The West Wing,” staring Martin Sheen as President Bartlett, has been an NBC hit for years, but what with term limits and Bartlett’s precarious health a new president is looming on the horizon. Why not a local boy?
City Manager Wally Bobkiewicz noted that the city has indeed proposed to “have one of their characters who is running for president to hail from Santa Paula.”
Alan Alda has recently joined the cast as Senator Arnold Vinick from California, who on a January 26 episode “mentioned that he grew up in an area that produced citrus. In the eyes of Mayor Krause, that could be only one place: Santa Paula,” Bobkiewicz said.
Krause sent a letter to Alda and West Wing Executive Producer John Wells two days after the episode aired, offering Santa Paula as Vinick’s hometown. Krause also sent Alda a full box of Santa Paula-related T-shirts, sweatshirts and a Santa Paula Union High School baseball cap to wear on the program.
Since Alda really isn’t really running for elected office the gift is not considered a bribe, but influence peddling it sure is: Krause also shipped a crate of Limoneira Co. oranges to Alda, Wells and the writing staff of the program.
Krause received a letter on Feb. 4 from Lauren Schmidt, a writer on “The West Wing,” thanking her for the writers’ oranges (writers – alas – are often overlooked, although they’re the ones who put the character in the characters). Schmidt wrote Krause that, “We are still in the process of developing his [Alda’s] character, and thus, are not ready to commit ourselves to all the intricate details of his past. However, we will definitely keep Santa Paula in mind, if we ever take a journey back to Vinick’s home for campaign events.”
Early last year Bobkiewicz and the council conducted their own successful campaign to bring Santa Paula back to the Los Angeles Times’ weather map. He noted that “Santa Paula plans to keep up its campaign to be the home of the next President of United States!”
But Bobkiewicz and the council better not let Fillmore know: “The West Wing” already used Fillmore City Hall as the backdrop for a campaign kickoff speech by Vinick.
Perhaps Jimmy Smits, who plays Matt Santos on the show and has already announced that he also is a presidential candidate, needs a hometown. Smits’ character is a three-term Congressional representative from Texas, but not to worry: the real President of the United States is also a Texan, but his real hometown is New Haven, Connecticut.
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