No More Baby Kissing

By Paul A. Witteman/Carmel

Sequestered at a corner table in the bar of his restaurant, Clint Eastwood slowly drains a Corona beer and muses about this week's Oscar awards. Suddenly a stranger approaches, cradling a bundle in his arms. Eastwood squints at the intruder and says, "Hey, I won the election. I don't have to kiss babies anymore."

Time does fly. Not long ago, Hollywood's lone-wolf hero was touring neighborhoods, pressing the flesh and even puckering up in a successful last- minute campaign for the $200-a-month job of mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea, Calif. Next week Mayor Clint will celebrate the first anniversary of his victory.

Unlike a certain fellow actor turned politician, Eastwood has had a pretty good year. Of course, the scale of his achievements is a tad more modest. Eastwood pushed for a new parking lot to ease congestion during the annual plague of tourists, and he has allowed a local shop to sell ice-cream cones, a commodity the previous regime restricted. Says Mike Lajigian, who owns Chocolate Dreams and dispenses 22 flavors at $1.50 and up: "He's cut through the bureaucracy and still maintained the integrity of the village."

Others are not so sure. "He's a total enigma to me," says former Mayor Charlotte Townsend. To David Maradei, a former city council member and Townsend ally, "He's a mayor without vision. Like Reagan, he's an ideologue." Adds Sandy Swain, one of six members of the planning commission given their walking papers by the new mayor: "He's a vindictive man. You don't want to get on his hit list."

Still, even the critics praise Eastwood's solution to the thorny Mission Ranch dilemma. Developers coveted the bucolic 22-acre parcel along Carmel's southern border. To keep them at bay, the new mayor sought a solution that would not burden taxpayers. "I thought I could come up with a dream philanthropist," he says. After canvassing the candidates, Clint found his man: "The guy I talked into it was me." Last December he closed the deal for about $5 million and has begun modest restoration work on some of the rental cabins. Says Mac McDonald, managing editor of the Carmel Pine Cone: "What really surprised people was that he bought it to preserve it." Concedes Staunch Foe Swain: "It was a magnificent thing that he did."

Being a celebrity mayor has its drawbacks. Local Merchant Paul Laub, an unsuccessful candidate against Eastwood last year, has renamed the basement of his store Clintville and sells a dizzying array of Eastwood schlock, including a brief, amateurish video at $19.95 and women's underpants inscribed with a suggestive message. "I've asked him to stop," says Eastwood. "Unfortunately, it's been a gold mine to him." Crows Laub, who says he will embark on a two-month vacation in England after a three-month stay in Hawaii: "Who do you think really won the election?"

Eastwood neatly dodges questions about plans for another campaign when his two-year term expires next April. He is more adamant about persistent rumors that Republicans want him to run for Governor or Senator. "I don't give them a chance to breathe between sentences" before saying no, he growls. Meanwhile, he takes a kind of bemused pleasure in the minor crises that bedevil any small-town mayor. "If someone had told me two years ago that I'd be spending time in someone else's garage, deciding if it could be moved three inches to the north," he says ruefully, "I would have said he'd lost it."