Game 64: Kenneth J. Cory - Apple Nut Cake
California State Controller Ken Cory, a self-described “basketball bum,” retired from politics in 1986, just a year after contributing several recipes to the 1985 World Champion Los Angeles Lakers Are Cookin’ Family Cookbook. His declination to run for a fourth term came as a shock to leaders in the California Democratic Party, as the Orange County based politician had been in office for decades, starting as a state assemblyman, who was well positioned for a future gubernatorial run. Instead, his surprise retirement to become a partner in a securities firm indirectly led to the election of Arnold Schwarzenegger two decades later.
Cory was born in basketball-obsessed Kansas, but spent his formative years in a place that was slowly becoming the basketball capital of America: Southern California. After growing up in Long Beach, the future politico got his education at USC, UCLA, and UC Berkeley, earning degrees in engineering and political science. He got involved in Democratic politics in Orange County in the 1960s, which even then was already a solidly red county, and rose the ranks from state assemblyman to state controller. What is a state controller? And how is it different than a state comptroller? There is no difference. Both are essentially the overseers of accounting and bookkeeping. Comptroller is usually used for government offices, but as the world’s 6th largest economy, California is open… for business! Don’t ask me to explain the difference between controllers/comptrollers and treasurers.
Cory got to where he was with the support of two guys: Dick O’Neill, the scion of one of California’s wealthiest families, and Dr. Lou Cella, a guy who would be in prison for embezzlement by the time Cory quit politics. Cory described O’Neill as a member of the “landed aristocracy” who didn’t know what to do with his inherited wealth until he landed on “Building the Democratic Party in Orange County.” But the real reason was that he hated driving to Beverly Hills to raise money.
Despite getting Cory elected to one of the state’s highest offices, O’Neill only asked for a political favor once according to the basketball-loving controller. When Cory told O’Neill about a potential agricultural tax that would affect Dick’s large holdings, the Democratic fundraiser said he had no opinion. But when L.A. imposed a tax on drinks served in bars, O’Neill went full-court press on getting Cory to squash it. Why? O’Neill owned several bars in the city, including one of my favorite K-Town haunts, the HMS Bounty. O’Neill made millions each year from his land-holdings, but only $50,000 from his bars. So why did he care so much about not going in the red? Apparently his family members hated his investment but wouldn’t bother him as long as the bars made some money.
O’Neill and Dr. Lou Cella -- a registered Republican who was later imprisoned for running a Medicare scam -- essentially built the Democratic Party of Orange County. Whereas O’Neill didn’t try to push his influence, which is weird because influencing politicians is the whole point of rich guys donating money to politicians, Dr. Cella was much “harsher” with his beliefs. And when a $520,000 loan from both men to Cory became public knowledge, Cory started to feel the heat. Despite weathering this scandal and several others, Cory shocked the state by announcing that he would not seek a fourth term. Maybe he was tired of politics or maybe he had other skeletons in his closet that would prevent a successful governorship. In any case, his retirement cleared the path for Gray Davis, former aide to Governor Jerry Brown and a powerful state assemblyman with clear ambitions of higher office.
Davis easily won two terms and then set his sights on the open Senate seat vacated by incoming Governor Pete Wilson. But after a disastrous decision to air an ad comparing Diane Feinstein to Leona “The Queen of Mean” Hemsley, he was destroyed in the Democratic primary and returned to Sacramento with his tail between his legs. Davis looked at his options and designed the blueprint for what Gavin Newsom would do over a decade later: he laid in the cut of the Lt. Governor’s office, waiting for his opportunity to run for Governor. And in 1998, with Ken Cory succumbing to the prostate cancer that his doctors discovered just a year earlier, Davis finally fulfilled the promise that led O’Neill and Cella to pour money into Orange County’s Democratic political machine.
11 days after the election, Cory died at his Sacramento home. At that same time, Arnold Schwarzenegger was beginning to take stock of his movie career. His last two movies, Jingle All the Way and Batman & Robin, were major bombs. His next three movies -- End of Days, The 6th Day, and Collateral Damage -- would put doubts in the minds of both Arnold and studio execs about whether his movie star days were over. But thanks to one decision made by Ken Cory in 1986, a chain of events slowly began to coalesce that led to a governor being recalled for only the 2nd time in American history and an Austrian action movie star to be elected governor for the 1st time in American history.
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Apple Nut Cake
4 green apples, peeled and sliced
⅔ cup oil
2 large eggs
1 cup sugar
¼ teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 cup walnuts
1 cup brown sugar
2 tablespoons vanilla
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 cups flour
Frosting:
2 small packages cream cheese
1 ½ pound margarine
2 cups powdered sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla
Place apples and walnuts in a large bowl. In separate bowl with a beater, beat together oil, eggs, vanilla, and sugars. In a separate bowl, mix together remaining ingredients. Combine all with apples and walnuts. Place ingredients in 9x13 inch pan and bake for 1 hour at 350 degrees. When cool, beat together frosting ingredients; frost cake.
There’s a moment in baking when you’ve realized something’s gone terribly wrong. Like a nuclear scientist the moment before an… atom?... is mixed with the wrong… other atom?... causes a nuclear meltdown, there was a moment in this recipe when I realized my world was over. At least the world in which I was going to eat a delicious apple nut cake.
I mixed the apples and walnuts together. Then I mixed the wet ingredients together. Then I mixed the dry. But when I added the contents of the dry and wet bowls together, I realized the recipe had to have been missing an ingredient or step. Before I had added even half of the dry, flour-heavy bowl contents, the mix had gone from cake batter to cookie batter. I added the rest of the dry bowl and it became something I could not pour into a cake dish. I added a little bit of milk, just enough to get it mixing again. But I knew it was over.
An hour later, the cake popped out of the oven looking hideous and stuck to the pan, despite a flouring that the recipe declined to add. I took a bite and gave up on whipping up some frosting. Despite two cups of white and brown sugar, it tasted mostly of flour. It turns out I don’t like cake that tastes like flour. Another Goldstein and Gasol disaster in the books.
