Bush's GOP Soiree Attracts a Veteran at Pressing the Flesh
By Richard Leiby
Thursday, May 19, 2005; Page C03
When a news release crossed our desk yesterday proclaiming that a porn star named Mary Carey would attend a June dinner with President Bush , we figured it had to be a hoax. But it's true. It just won't be an intimate dinner with the prez.
Carey's boss, hard-core porn producer Mark Kulkis of Los Angeles, has ponied up $5,000 for two tickets to a National Republican Congressional Committee event called the President's Dinner and Salute to Freedom. Kulkis, who locked in his tickets by credit card yesterday, tells us he will take the 24-year-old Carey (real name: Mary Cook ) as his date.
The star of such XXX videos as "Grand Opening," Carey ran as an independent candidate for California governor in the 2003 recall election, coming in seventh with 10,110 votes. Kulkis managed her campaign.
Committee spokeswoman Caryn Alagno assured us that the porno pair would be among hundreds of donors attending the June 14 dinner at the Washington Convention Center. "If he says that he's coming, he's coming," she told us. "This dinner is in a huge ballroom and there are going to be lots of people there."
Contemplating a run for California lieutenant governor next year, the voluptuous actress says she hopes to network with GOP officials here. "I'm especially looking forward to meeting Karl Rove," she cooed in a statement. "Smart men like him are so sexy."
Kulkis, who donated $500 to the NRCC earlier this year, said in his news release: "Republicans bill themselves as pro-business. Well, you won't find a group of people more pro-business than pornographers. We contributed over $10 billion to the national economy last year." He is also an honorary chair of the NRCC's business advisory council -- a title gained by contribution, of course.
Said Alagno: "There will be many honorary chairs."
Can't wait to see the seating arrangements.
ANYONE who donates so much as $20 dollars to any Republican party committee or candidate will likely find themselves barraged within weeks by fundraising letters from across the country for every "victory fund" and "election committee" you can think of.
Most include offers to be an "honorary" this or that for some ridiculous amount of money, and give time to hob nob with someone important.
BTW, I had the luck of wandering into the L.A. County Registrar of Voters office at the same time Mary Carey was there to file to run for governor in the recall. You can imagine my surprise when I stepped in, used only to seeing ancient busybodies and political hacks like myself there when I spotted a gorgeous blonde figure in a miniskirt and enormous boobs.
I overheard her filing out the paperwork as I was at another desk getting registration updates, and I was actually amazed that she could fill out the form for herself ("You mean registered voters have to sign? Wow...). How she strung a coherent sentence together I'll never know.
Even so, it was all I could do to resist offering my services, as a political professional, to her campaign ;)