Official works his wizardry on L.A. Marathon route

Perhaps the most interesting thing about the Pierce case is that no one in City Hall seemingly anticipated that awarding millions of dollars to a man who unknowingly ate dog food would cause such a public flap.

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So did council President Eric Garcetti survive his marathon trip from Los Angeles to Seoul to Boston and back to L.A.?

Garcetti made the trip over the span of 5 1/2 days and arrived home Tuesday in time for the council's morning meeting. He was in Seoul for a leadership conference and then traveled to Boston to pick up a public service award from the John F. Kennedy library.

A transcript of the speech is online at www.jfklibrary.org. A sampling:

"Let us restore the virtue of national sacrifice and national service, and call young people from across our whole society to serve their world and to serve their communities.

"Let us demand that Americans sacrifice for one another and for the world again -- through service by every young American in our armed forces, the Peace Corps, and in local communities as teachers and service providers.

"As an officer in the Reserve component of the United States Navy, I proudly wear the uniform of our nation's armed forces. We should be equally proud of those who are teaching at struggling schools or helping stem the spread of AIDS in Africa."

Hmmm. Think Garcetti is going to run for national office one day?

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Is the campaign for the 14th Council District seat between incumbent Jose Huizar and his former staffer Alvin Parra going to be nasty?

Yes. Parra called Huizar on Nov. 11 and informed him that he was both quitting his job and running against him. As mindful readers of this column are aware, that's exactly the kind of "Rollerball" politics this column deeply appreciates.

Parra then fired the opening salvo in the campaign this week when he said he was filing an ethics complaint over Huizar's use of a nonresident to collect signatures to qualify for the ballot.

Yawn.

Signature-gatherers are supposed to reside in the city.

"Our response is that had we had nonresidents out" collecting signatures "and they were paired up with residents for safety and language reasons," said Parke Skelton, Huizar's campaign consultant. "The resident was always collecting the signatures."

The episode jogged this column's memory about an incident last year involving Parra when Huizar was running for his seat against former council member Nick Pacheco.

At the time, Parra was involved in distributing unflattering newspaper stories about controversies involving Pacheco. Parra was so good at it that Huizar eventually hired him.

The problem is that the articles were old and none mentioned that Pacheco was ultimately cleared by authorities of any wrongdoing.

When asked by a reporter last year to explain that, Parra declined to say whom he was working for or with.

Now that's ethics!

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steve.hymon@latimes.com