Carmen Trutanich

Whoever is elected mayor Tuesday could garner fewer votes than any newly elected mayor since the 1930s, The Times concluded after analyzing voter turnout over the past century. As many as 1.6 million of the 2 million Angelenos who are eligible to vote are likely to skip casting a ballot Tuesday. In the March primary, at least two-thirds of registered voters in every neighborhood failed to cast ballots, with the highest participation in the Pacific Palisades and the lowest in Watts.

California Gov. Jerry Brown has weighed in on the bitter battle for the Los Angeles city attorney post in next week's election. In a recorded phone message to city voters, the governor says that City Atty. Carmen Trutanich's attacks on challenger Mike Feuer are ”misleading.” The Feuer campaign said it is paying to spread the governor's recorded message to voters “all across Los Angeles” on Wednesday. At issue is a mailer the Trutanich campaign sent attacking Feuer for his support, while he was in the state Assembly, of controversial legislation that transferred some state felons to county jails or probation supervision to comply with court orders to relieve overcrowding in state prisons.

After months of slashing at each other's integrity and trustworthiness, mayoral candidates Wendy Greuel and Eric Garcetti largely put aside their differences with one week left before the May 21 election as they supported non-controversial education policy changes before Los Angeles school leaders on Tuesday. The school district decided to retain a program that provides students breakfast in classrooms and to discontinue a policy of suspending students for "willful defiance," proposals that Greuel supported as she testified at the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Former lawmaker Mike Feuer and City Councilman Dennis Zine continue to hold leads in their races for citywide Los Angeles offices, new polling released Monday showed. In polling conducted April 29 through May 7 by the Edmund G. "Pat" Brown Institute of Public Affairs at Cal State L.A., Feuer, a former member of the state Assembly and L.A. City Council, led City Atty. Carmen Trutanich, who is seeking reelection in next week's balloting, 35 to 24%, with 41% of voters still undecided.

In the final days of the contentious contest for Los Angeles city attorney, some of the area's political leaders, once reticent to make endorsements, are choosing sides. Former lawmaker Mike Feuer picked up a big endorsement Tuesday from Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Jackie Lacey, who also slammed Feuer's opponent, City Atty. Carmen Trutanich, for what she called a false campaign mailer. At a news conference outside City Hall East, which houses the offices of the city's top lawyer, Lacey said she needed a city partner, especially in helping the county implement the state's controversial prison realignment plan, which transfers certain types of felons to local jails to relieve overcrowding in state facilities.

All he asks, Los Angeles City Atty. Carmen Trutanich frequently says, is that voters judge him on his record. As he wages an uphill battle to hang onto to his job in the May 21 election, Trutanich rattles off a list of reasons he should be "rehired" to head one of the nation's largest municipal law firms. He cites a substantially reduced reliance on costly outside attorneys, favorable outcomes in lawsuits that he says have saved taxpayers more than $300 million and a crackdown on illegal billboards that activists called scourges on their neighborhoods.

In his campaign to become Los Angeles city attorney, Mike Feuer has touted himself as someone who will work cooperatively with the mayor and City Council and avoid the squabbles that have marked the incumbent's tenure. During previous stints on the council and in the Legislature, Feuer repeatedly won over colleagues to approve pioneering laws on contentious issues, including gun control. But even some supporters say Feuer's stubborn, driven approach can also be antagonizing. Former colleagues describe the 54-year-old politician as a sometimes overly zealous - albeit intelligent - advocate for liberal causes.

Challenger Mike Feuer continues to lead Los Angeles City Atty. Carmen Trutanich in fund-raising, reports filed late Thursday showed. According to documents the campaigns sent to the city Ethics Commission, Feuer, a former city councilman and past member of the state Assembly, raised $208,753 during the latest reporting period, April   7 through May 4, bringing his total for the upcoming general election to $524,776. Trutanich brought in $109,897 during the same period, for a total of $313,497.

With under two weeks to go until election day, the race to become the city's next mayor is extremely volatile. A new poll shows Wendy Greuel and Eric Garcetti in a virtual dead heat , a vast improvement for Greuel, who was down by double digits in a USC Price/L.A. Times poll a month ago. The new poll also shows a growing gender gap as Greuel has increasingly emphasized that she would be the first female mayor of Los Angeles. A new television ad by a union representing city employees trumpets the historic nature of Greuel's bid. Simultaneously, new financial disclosure reports show Greuel's campaign committee has roughly one-tenth the cash on hand of Garcetti in the final days of the campaign.