Ana Guerrero

Mayor-elect Eric Garcetti has selected Ana Guerrero, a former community organizer who has worked in his council office for the last dozen years, to be his chief of staff.More »

Jane Usher: Sticking around?

When he arrived in the City Attorney's office in 2009, Carmen Trutanich was alarmed to find some of his predecessor's political appointees still working there. Trutanich fumed that it was "like Barack Obama walking into the White House and finding Karl Rove waiting for him."More »

Frenemies: Villaraigosa and Garcetti

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's goodbye party has sparked some transition drama this week with Mayor-elect Eric Garcetti.More »

Office of state Senator Ron Calderon

Will Ron Calderon be smiling this time next year?

Update: Top Sacramento officials deny earlier official reports that the FBI took files from the Latino Caucus offices. See at bottom. First posted at 11:53 a.m.

The FBI is investigating California state Sen. Ron Calderon, a Los Angeles-area legislator exposed by L.A. Weekly for putting his own name on laws ghostwritten by the very special interest groups who benefited from the laws. Calderon has lawyered up with celebrity attorney Mark Geragos.

Ghostwriting laws is illegal in Congress. But the unsavory practice is legal in the legislature and dismissed as normal by the Sacramento press corps, especially the L.A. Times. The public was unaware of the practice until "sponsored legislation" was unmasked in a San Jose Mercury News probe, "How Our Laws in California Are Really Made." After that, the Weekly reported that three L.A. legislators -- Ron Calderon, brother Charles Calderon and Felipe Fuentes -- (just elected to the L.A. City Council after the Times endorsed Fuentes) sank to new lows putting their names on laws they didn't write. Yesterday, the FBI took Ron Calderon's files. Connected to ghostwriting? Consider:

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Photo by Marta Evry

Rich Llewellyn, at left, consults his phone on election night. With Jeff Millman, Bill Carrick and Douglas Herman

So you want to work in Eric Garcetti's administration, but you don't know who to talk to? We're here to help. Today, the mayor-elect announced that his transition team will be led by Rich Llewellyn, a longtime adviser.
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Eric Garcetti

Eric Garcetti did poorly in Westchester in the March primary, finishing third behind Kevin James and Wendy Greuel. But in the runoff, he came out against moving the LAX north runway. That changed everything.More »

Darrick Rainey

Updated below with Villaraigosa responding to the Weekly's coverage, saying "I live in a bubble, and I love that bubble."

Please see today's L.A. Weekly cover story, "L.A. Mayor With Baggage Seeks Job: Antonio Villaraigosa's quest for Wall Street, Washington and wealth," and check out the mayor's original, unedited schedule, obtained by the Weekly, at the end of the next page.

In 2008, L.A. Weekly obtained Mayor Villaraigosa's official work schedule and discovered that he spent only 11 percent of his time on direct mayoral work. Critics dubbed him "the 11 percent mayor." Four years later, as he leaves office, we revisited his calendar. We found that Villaraigosa is deeply devoted to photo ops, ceremonies and travel, spending just 15 percent of his day on core duties such as deciding upon policy or weighing laws. He spends 42 percent of his working hours traveling outside Los Angeles.

During the 15-week period from September 1 to December 16, 2012, he logged roughly 1,234 hours of official work, 12 hours a day. He divides his time into the same five categories we unearthed in 2008: Trips, Gap Time (getting from event to event), Personal Time/Blacked Out, Ceremonial or PR, and City Work.

Here's the breakdown by category of how he really spends his time, 2012 versus 2008:

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Ted Soqui

A defaced Antonio Villaraigosa mural in East Hollywood

Read the scathing L.A. Weekly cover story "Antonio Villaraigosa's Quest for Wall Street, Washington and Wealth."

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa sure knows how to live it up on other people's money and the taxpayers' time.

Elected in 2005 to be the chief executive officer of Los Angeles -- the second largest city in the nation -- voters undoubtedly expected Villaraigosa to roll up his sleeves and tackle such issues as traffic, the proliferation of billboards, improving city servies, the city's shaky financial standing, and numerous other things. Instead, he constantly left town, held countless press conferences, and a lived a 1-percent lifestyle.

Here are the three days the mayor slacked off the most between September 1 and December 16, 2012...

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Jose Gardea (left), Gil Cedillo (right)

Update: Gardea is closing the distance to Cedillo. See details at bottom.

Updated at bottom to explain that the city election web site's confusing "7.52 percent reporting" is wildly misleading. Far far more votes have been counted. First posted at 9:05 p.m.

Gil Cedillo is leading Jose Gardea in early vote results for Los Angeles City Council District 1, with Cedillo getting 2,715 votes or 56.57 percent and Gardea 2,084 votes or 43.42 percent.

Cedillo and Gardea are vying to represent an Eastside council seat in a community with a dense population of Latinos, mostly immigrants from Mexico and Central America. CD 1 is one of the poorest neighborhoods in L.A., extending from Northeast Los Angeles to the Pico-Union area. The two men share some fascinating similarities and differences:

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Charges of election fraud are flying in Little Armenia, as council candidates John Choi and Mitch O'Farrell have filed complaints with the district attorney accusing each other of stealing votes. The latest sign that something suspicious might indeed be going on is the above photo -- posted last month on Instagram -- which appears to show a large number of vote-by-mail ballots sitting on somebody's bed.
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Wendy Greuel

In an internal memo this weekend, Wendy Greuel's pollster took aim at the new USC/L.A. Times poll and argued the race is a "dead heat" heading into Tuesday's vote.More »

Eric Garcetti

Eric Garcetti has a 7-point lead over Wendy Greuel in the race for L.A. mayor with just four days to go before the runoff election, according to a new USC/L.A. Times poll out this evening. The results:More »

Wendy Greuel attacked Eric Garcetti on his home turf today, challenging his jobs figures and blaming him for a recent spike in rapes, which she called the "dirty little secret" of Hollywood.More »

Antonio Villaraigosa

So much for staying neutral. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has said that he would not get involved in the campaign to succeed him, saying he wants to maintain good relations with both Wendy Greuel and Eric Garcetti.More »

Garcetti for Mayor TV ad

We're already getting a little nostalgic for the L.A. mayor's race, which will be over next Tuesday. Call us crazy, but we think we'll miss the attack ads the most. There's just something compelling about seeing fundamentally decent public servants portray each other as child-killing monsters.
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Trutanich mailer

Gov. Jerry Brown has weighed in on the race for L.A. city attorney, recording a robocall attacking incumbent Carmen Trutanich for "misleading voters" on the issue of prison realignment.

Trutanich supported Brown's realignment plan when he ran for district attorney last year. But now that he's running for re-election as city attorney, Trutanich has turned against realignment and is attacking opponent Mike Feuer for supporting it.

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Scott Ochoa had never met Brian D'Arcy, the head of the powerful electrical workers' union, when D'Arcy called him up in a rage last year. Ochoa, the Glendale city manager, was trying to work out an agreement on behalf of Glendale Water & Power, the city utility. D'Arcy didn't like how the negotiations were going.
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Garcetti and Greuel debate

The last televised mayoral debate is tonight on KCAL, which means one more opportunity to point out that the candidates agree with each other on everything. That's been one of the recurring themes of the race: Eric Garcetti and Wendy Greuel are fundamentally the same.

The problem with that is not that it's wrong. Hell, we've written several versions of that ourselves. The problem is that it's useless. Voters who are trying to make up their minds don't need to know how alike the candidates are. They need to know the differences.

Here then is a user-friendly guide to the five key differences between Greuel and Garcetti. Clip it. Save it. Take it with you to the polls on May 21.

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LA Jobs PAC ad

Eric Garcetti's Los Angeles

Mic check! Finally, someone has dragged (finally, someone has dragged...) Occupy L.A. into the race for mayor. In a web-only video released today, the L.A. Area Chamber of Commerce attacked Eric Garcetti for inviting the Occupy movement to "stay as long as you need to" on the City Hall lawn back in the revolutionary days of 2011.
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Wendy Greuel

Updated below. Campaign finance figures show Greuel is running on empty. More »