Elections

Trial judges are, on the books, elected officials, and even the vast majority of those whose names never appear on a ballot are subject to election challenge every six years. Should voters not call them to account for their performance, as they do with any other politician, on election day? Should they not encourage opponents to challenge incumbent judges? Or are judges different from members of Congress or city councils? Judges are most definitely different. The last thing we want or need in California is trial judges who sit on the bench with one eye on justice and the other on how any particular ruling is going to play with the public.

As Mayor-elect Eric Garcetti assembles his new administration, it is interesting, and encouraging, to note the odd confluence of circumstances that will leave him beholden less to factions or special interests and more to the people of Los Angeles. Garcetti may be the most politically progressive mayor Los Angeles has seen in recent history. He has been a friend to organized labor, including the city's public employee unions. But the biggest city unions, the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor and the unions representing Department of Water and Power workers, firefighters and police officers all cast their lots with Controller Wendy Greuel, helping to raise and spend millions of dollars for her campaign and for independent campaigns backing her. Greuel came up short, and they came up short with her. Money sometimes makes the difference, and in fact the independent expenditure groups led by labor were relatively successful at electing many of the candidates on their slate to the City Council.

In 1986, lawmakers decided the problem of illegal immigration had to be dealt with. More than 3 million people were living in the United States after crossing the border illegally or overstaying their visas. A new law signed by President Ronald Reagan gave legal status and a path to citizenship to most of those unauthorized residents - helping many secure a slice of the American dream but also giving fuel to critics who sought to turn "amnesty" into a pejorative. Less than 30 years later, the number of immigrants living in the country illegally is thought to have nearly quadrupled, and the freighted baggage of amnesty looms over new efforts to reform the nation's immigration laws.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa began the formal transition of power to his successor on Thursday, hosting Mayor-elect Eric Garcetti for breakfast at Getty House where he told reporters that the city councilman had his "full support. " Garcetti, who defeated City Controller Wendy Greuel on Tuesday, will not take office until July 1. But he and his team have already begun to prepare the policy initiatives that he hopes will allow him to "hit the ground running on day one," as he said during a news conference afterward.

After a contest for mayor of Los Angeles that has consumed the better part of two years, the two finalists, their staffs, the media and a largely disinterested electorate doubtless would welcome an end to the drama Tuesday, election day. But the large number of Angelenos voting by mail, the apparent tightness of the race and the peculiarities of the City Clerk's ballot-counting procedures open the possibility that the winner might not be known for...

Officials began counting ballots in presidential and parliamentary elections in Ghana. In courtyards throughout the capital, election officials put tape around plywood tables and began sorting ballots. Onlookers whooped as the stack for their choice grew taller.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper plans to dissolve Parliament on Sunday and call early elections in hope of strengthening his minority government's position. Harper's Conservatives need to win an additional 28 seats to gain a majority, and though he has played down that possibility, recent polls indicate that the right-of-center party has a chance to do so. Dimitri Soudas, a spokesman for the prime minister, made the announcement, saying that voting would be held Oct. 14. It will be Canada's third national ballot in four years.

Caroline Kennedy, who is seeking to fill Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's Senate seat, has not voted in several elections, including at least one race for the job she's seeking. According to New York City records, she missed several Democratic primaries and two general elections, including in 1994 when Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan was running for reelection for the seat she hopes to take over if Clinton is confirmed as secretary of State in the Obama administration.

Voters in four Southern California counties on Tuesday decided a number of candidate races and a range of tax measures for some cities and school districts. In Northern California, residents chose a replacement for former Bay Area Democratic Rep. Ellen Tauscher, who left the 10th Congressional District to join the Obama administration. For highlights, go to www.latimes.com. Complete local results can be found on each county's elections website: Los Angeles County -- www.lavote.

WASHINGTON - A sweeping bipartisan plan to overhaul the nation's immigration system headed to the Senate floor after a key committee approved it Tuesday, setting the stage for a debate next month that could lead to the biggest victory for advocates of immigrant rights in a generation. The centerpiece of the legislation - a 13-year path to citizenship for many of the 11 million people now in the country without legal status - survived intact. But the bill's supporters accepted amendments that tilted it to the right to attract GOP backing, including some to toughen border security.

Some of the most powerful labor organizations in Los Angeles placed huge bets on mayoral candidate Wendy Greuel that went bust. All their spending and prodigious organization failed to ignite Greuel's campaign and allowed her opponent, Eric Garcetti, to turn the deep pockets against them, persuading many voters that they were trying to buy the election. Losses by Greuel and two other union-backed candidates in Tuesday's municipal election cost big labor its aura of near-invincibility in Los Angeles politics.

On its face, the election this week of a Los Angeles fifth-grade teacher to the Board of Education was a stunner. Monica Ratliff's low-budget effort included her boyfriend, a film school instructor, as her campaign manager. She had no paid staff and no meaningful help from her own politically active teachers union. Her strategy to achieve some name recognition was to mail out refrigerator magnets, which cost $5,000 in scarce campaign funds. Ten to 20 faithful volunteers knocked on doors every weekend.

SACRAMENTO - Democrats took another seat in the state Assembly this week, but a conservative Republican won a Central Valley state Senate district in an upset victory. The San Diego-area Assembly seat was a sure bet for Democrats - both candidates were from the majority party. Community organizer Lorena Gonzalez won a special election in that race with 72.3% of the vote, defeating small-business owner Steve Castaneda in the 80th Assembly District. To the north, in another special election, Republican farmer Andy Vidak of Hanford won a Senate seat, besting three Democrats and a candidate from the Peace and Freedom Party with about 52% of the vote.

Eric Garcetti defeated Wendy Greuel in the Los Angeles mayor's race by running up huge margins across a vast stretch of the central city, from the Eastside to Pacific Palisades, while denying his rival the San Fernando Valley stronghold that was essential to her candidacy. Greuel managed to score overwhelming support in the city's most heavily African American neighborhoods, turning South L.A. into an unlikely political base for a Valley native who, in the end, proved unable to carry her home precinct in Studio City.

In the campaign for mayor, Eric Garcetti spoke grandly about a city with plentiful summer jobs for low-income teens, a tunnel under the traffic-clogged Sepulveda Pass and even an end to homelessness. But a day after winning office, the mayor-elect faced some immediate and less lofty challenges: potentially bruising battles over employee salaries, police overtime pay and how to reverse cuts to ambulance staffing, sidewalk repairs and other basic city services. On Thursday, the City Council - a body that Garcetti will remain part of until June 30 - is set to decide whether and how to pay for a scheduled 5.5% raise for many city workers, a payout portrayed by the city's top financial advisor as a long-term budget buster.

TEHRAN - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Wednesday denounced as unjust the supervisory electoral body's disqualification of his top aide from next month's presidential poll and said he plans to appeal to the nation's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Ahmadinejad spoke a day after the powerful Guardian Council, which vets candidates, barred the outgoing president's confidant, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, and former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, one of the nation's most illustrious political figures, from the June 14 election.

It's strange how "scandal" gets defined these days in Washington. At the moment, everyone is screaming about the "scandal" of the Internal Revenue Service scrutinizing conservative nonprofits before granting them tax-exempt status. Here are the genuine scandals in this affair: Political organizations are being allowed to masquerade as charities to avoid taxes and keep their donors secret, and the IRS has allowed them to do this for years. The bottom line first: The IRS hasn't done nearly enough over the years to rein in the subversion of the tax law by political groups claiming a tax exemption that is not legally permitted for campaign activity.

In the NBA and in life, Kevin Johnson always seemed the guy who would do the right thing. This was the kid who survived Sacramento's toughest neighborhood to study hard and set scoring records, graduating to matchups with Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan. This was the man who returned to his old Oak Park neighborhood to work at restoring a place pockmarked by poverty.

With any luck, the campaign for mayor of Los Angeles will end Tuesday in a decisive victory for one candidate or the other. Then the winner can begin the task of building an administration and filling the ranks of commission appointments that will form the city's leadership core for the next four - or possibly eight - years. But this is a close race, and many residents have voted by mail or will cast ballots provisionally or by other means rather than simply going to a polling place and inking the ballot.

City Councilman Eric Garcetti's supporters began filling up the Hollywood Palladium theater long before the first results were released, as the Los Angeles mayoral hopeful awaited returns with his family at a nearby hotel. The choice of the cavernous venue - the campaign was expecting several thousand supporters Tuesday night - was a hint of the team's optimism about their chances. While his opponent, City Controller Wendy Greuel, stumbled in her fundraising efforts in the final days, Garcetti's campaign was comparatively flush, aides close to Garcetti said, to outgun her in advertising and get-out-the-vote efforts that will be crucial in a low-turnout race.