Padovan said his hand mower could barely make it through the grass.
Richardson's two-story craftsman-style house in Long Beach's historic Sunrise Boulevard district, where neighbors say she stays on weekends back from Washington, also has fallen into disrepair. The beige paint is peeling, a garage window is broken, and the grass has turned brown.
Richardson bought the four-bedroom, two-bath house for $135,000 so she could run for an open seat on the Long Beach City Council. Before that, she lived in the San Pedro house.
Richardson won the council election in 2000 and worked for then-Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante until she won the Assembly seat in 2006, lending her campaign $100,000, which eventually was paid back to her.
She barely had time to get a good meal in Sacramento, although she did have time to buy a house, before Rep. Juanita Millender-McDonald died in April 2007. In August, Richardson won a special election for the seat, this time lending her campaign $77,500.
"She obviously extremely wanted to win this race, and this was the way she invested in it," said Stern from the Center for Governmental Studies.
Many blogs have pounced on the Richardson controversy. LA.cityzine.com called it "One of the more bizarre political scandals in recent years."
Calitics.com said, "It seems like she's engaging in what amounts to a pyramid scheme -- buying new homes with little money down, and at the same time lending her campaigns for state Assembly and Congress tens of thousands of dollars. So the money that would be used to pay off the loan is paying for her political upward mobility."
Since she has moved on to Congress, Richardson doesn't have a mortgage to worry about there. She's renting.
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jeff.gottlieb@latimes.com
