`BORN ON FOURTH OF JULY' VET IS GETTING A PUSH INTO POLITICS

After the movies, could politics be next for Ron Kovic? The paraplegic Vietnam veteran, whose change from hawk to dove is portrayed by Tom Cruise in "Born on the Fourth of July," is being urged to run against conservative Rep. Robert Dornan, R-Calif. "Kovic is going to have to defend the Hollywood far left," Dornan said. "If he thinks he's going to recruit Oliver Stone and `Top Gun'-turned-top-malcontent Tom Cruise and bring the whole Jane Fonda team down here to Orange County, I welcome it." Dornan and Kovic aren't strangers. Dornan pushed Kovic's wheelchair into the 1972 Republican National Convention in Miami, where Kovic and another disabled vet disrupted the proceedings. "I personally wheeled him in," said Dornan, who was a television producer at the time. "Against my better judgment, but he promised he'd be polite. He broke his word within the hour." Kovic also appeared three times on Dornan's TV show in Los Angeles in the 1970s. "We kind of get along because he knew I respected him for not dodging the draft and for serving," Dornan said.