By the time the ballots were counted in LA's mayoral race, it became clear that Eric Garcetti won because he did well with two key constituencies -- women and Republicans.
From the LA Daily News' Brenda Gazzar: "City Controller Wendy Greuel's lackluster performance in the San Fernando Valley and with women voters in Tuesday's Los Angeles mayoral election, along with Councilman Eric Garcetti's strong backing from whites and Republicans in the city were key factors in Garcetti's victory over the once prohibitive favorite, analysts said Wednesday."
"While Valley voters and women were split almost evenly down the middle, Greuel needed at least 54 or 55 percent of both those constituencies to carry the win, said Fernando Guerra, director of the Center for Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University." (An exit poll by LMU, released just before the polls closed, can be seen here. And voters also decided to cut medical marijuana dispensaries down to 135, less than a fifth of those currently operating.)
Meanwhile, Gov. Jerry Brown, that contumacious geezer and raconteur, had them rolling in the aisles during his address to a business group. Which goes to show that Sacramento can be funny after all.
From the Mercury-News' Steve Harmon: "Gov. Jerry Brown, who once had a frosty relationship with the business folks who ran the traditional Sacramento Host breakfast, had them rolling in laughter Wednesday with one quip after another in a 30-minute address."
"He joked about being the smartest person in the room, quoted a Zen master and college professor while coining a "Jerry Brownism," and drew a connection between being called "contumacious" by a federal judge and being kicked out of school as a youngster..."
"When I did (the Peripheral Canal in 1982), I didn't know there was such a thing as smelt. I never heard of smelt. Now, the smelt has probably got a more powerful lobbyist than most of the people in this room."
Speaking of contumacious, the federally appointed prison receiver says Brown's attitude shows that California isn't ready to run its own prisons.
From the LAT's Paige St. John: "The immediate focus of J. Clark Kelso's ire is California's refusal to implement his May 1 directive requiring the state to move nearly half the inmates from two Central Valley prisons afflicted withvalley fever. Brown's administration responded that the order was "ambiguous" and that the state would delay any action until receiving further input from the federal Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta."
"The state's refusal "even to take preliminary steps ... suggest that they may not yet possess the requisite concern for preventing unnecessary morbidity and death among inmates to justify further transition of the prison medical system back to Defendants' control," Kelso wrote.
Three years after a municipal corruption scandal engulfed the city of Bell in LA County, the office that tracks and disburses state money issued its final report.
From Ruben Vives and Hector Becerra in the LA Times: "State Controller John Chiang issued his final audit on Bell on Wednesday morning, nearly three years after the scandal uncovered overpaid city leaders, overtaxed residents and other financial mismanagement..."
"Among the audit's findings, Bell currently has a negative cash balance, caused in part by the city's move to stop collecting the excessive taxes. Bell promised to refund more than $3 million in overpaid taxes to residents and businesses, but auditors found that the city had not done so."
The saga of the Busted Bay Bridge Bolts continues, this time with with word that similar items had been installed a decade earlier on the Richmond bridge.
From the Chronicle's Jaxon Van Derbeken: "Caltrans decided to install high-risk steel rods on the Bay Bridge's new eastern span after a supplier pointed out that the agency had already approved them for the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, according to documents the agency released Tuesday."
"However, the galvanized, high-strength rods that Caltrans approved in 2001 for the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge's seismic retrofit were tightened to far lower tension levels than the 2,300-plus rods installed on the eastern span. Experts say tension is a key factor in causing high-strength steel to snap - something that has already happened with 32 rods on the new Bay Bridge."
There's interest in a shield law -- protection for reporters -- at the federal level in the wake of the Justice Department's seizure of AP reporters' phone records, but the issue has come up, and died, before.
From Roll Call's John Gramlich: "Bipartisan momentum is building for legislation that would give reporters new legal protections from government authorities who want them to reveal their confidential sources. But it’s far from clear whether the effort can overcome the objections that derailed similar bills in the Senate in 2007 and 2009."
"Reps. Ted Poe, R-Texas, and John Conyers Jr., D-Mich., appeared with a group of lawmakers from both parties Wednesday to announce growing House support for “media shield” legislation (HR 1962) that would create a judicial process to ensure that reporters are not compelled to identify their sources unless certain conditions are met. The conditions include requiring government investigators to prove that “the public interest in compelling disclosure outweighs the public interest in gathering or disseminating news or information.”
And from our "Someobody's Always Watching" file comes word that a tender moment in the wilderness was captured on film, but romance wins out and all is well.
"Mel Reyes got down on one knee and asked Jordie Egbert to marry him when they reached the top of Rattlesnake Ridge in North Bend, Wash."
"They probably felt very alone in the wilderness, but they weren't, and that might have been a good thing."
"Geoff Parker, a photographer, was hiking with his wife when she pointed out the couple. The two were out celebrating their first anniversary."
We'd never know about it, except for Instagram and Facebook ...
