19th District California State Senator Tom McClintock (R-Thousand Oaks)

Missing McClintock: Well, ha, ha, the joke’s really on us. All this time we thought State Sen. Tom McClintock (R-Thousand Oaks) was living here in the 19th District representing us. But all the time, since 1996, he’s actually been housekeeping up in northern California.

Living there, but voting here. And now that he’s being termed out of the state legislature, McClintock wants to run for the US Congress in a different northern California district—not the one he lives in.

Gosh, it must be fun being a politician like McClintock, hopscotching around the state and running unsuccessfully four times for higher office, including governor. And living with his family up there in Elk Grove for 12 years while supposedly representing Santa Barbara, Carpinteria and Ventura County.

It comes as a surprise to Santa Barbarans because, although the carpet-bagging issue was raised in Ventura County during one election, it wasn’t aired in Santa Barbara. After all, by one count he’s only visited here about four times. The News-Press loves the guy and if it knew about his sham, it never said a word. We just kept re-electing him, foolishly thinking he was our man in Sacramento. While all the time he was Elk Grove’s man in Sacramento.

“It wasn’t a secret that he really didn’t live in the district,” former Assemblymember Hannah-Beth Jackson of Santa Barbara told the L.A. Times. “He very rarely appeared in the district.”

McClintock, one of the legislature’s most conservative members, doesn’t seem embarrassed in the slightest for hoodwinking us southern California voters. His explanation: family values. He didn’t want to be a part-time dad, living in the district he claimed to represent and having to go all the way up to Sacramento to do the job voters paid him to do.

“We had a young family so when I was returned to the legislature in 1996, I brought the family to Elk Grove,” McClintock explained. His concern for the kids was laudable, so why didn’t he share this virtuous explanation with the voters? Did he think we wouldn’t understand?

McClintock says he owns a home in Thousand Oaks, which he seems to think makes all his years of absenteeism OK. Maybe it does legally, but the whole thing stinks. He says he visited his southern California district once every three or four weeks. To check on his place, maybe?

Now he has the nerve to say that going to Washington DC as the Congressional representative of a northern California district he doesn’t live in would help return the Republican Party to the ideals of his hero, Ronald Reagan. Well, the Gipper had his faults, but one of them wasn’t playing fast and loose with the voting public about where he lived.

McClintock says he plans to eventually move into the 4th Congressional District, where he wants to replace Rep. John T. Doolittle (R-Roseville), who’s stepping down amid (ahem) a federal corruption probe.

Just what 4th District residents will make of this remains to be seen. But they don’t need “another opportunistic career politician who needs driving directions just to find our district,” said retired Air Force Lt. Col. Charlie Brown, a Democrat who also is vying for Doolittle’s job. Surprisingly, by law a member of Congress doesn’t even have live in the district he or she represents. Besides that, merely by owning a seldom-visited residence in Ventura County apparently makes his carpet-bagging legal. What a country!

Meanwhile, Hannah-Beth Jackson is running for the Senate seat McClintock vacates in November. And she actually does live in Santa Barbara County.

Hard Dollars: “I attended the Hard Hat party at the Granada Theater Tuesday night,” reports Katherine James. “The Granada Garage parking lot had these really nice signs stating ‘$5 Special Event Parking’ upon entry. The attendant asked the parkers, ‘Are you going to the Granada?’

“ ‘Why yes.’

“ ‘That will be $5.’

“After doing some math in my head, that’s a good deal if you are parking for more than 5 1/2 hours, but if you're staying for, say three hours, then you just got ripped of $2! If you stayed three hours, it would normally cost $3. I assume that this will be the policy for future events. So it’s a better deal if you just take the ticket and pay for the time you are actually there.”

I checked with the city and here’s the explanation: That was the first event at the new Granada. The plan was to charge $5 in advance, in hopes of preventing a lineup of cars paying at the end of what promised to be a long evening. Paying for convenience, you might say, so you can scoot out. But you should have been given the option of just taking a ticket and paying as you left, a city official told me. However, the plan is that in the future everyone parking there at designated special events will be charged $5. But they’ll be given the option of leaving to park at another city garage, paying by time.

Summerland Looking Good: It’s hard to wind your way through Summerland these days with all the construction going on, but when the Measure D sales tax-financed curb, sidewalk, and other work is over, the whole main drag is going to be much improved.

Barney Brantingham can be reached at barney@independent.com or (805) 965-5205. He writes online columns for Tuesdays and Fridays and a print column for Thursdays.

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