CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
May 18, 2013 | By Michael Finnegan, Maeve Reston, Catherine Saillant, Los Angeles Times
After remarks by Magic Johnson and U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, it was Wendy Greuel's turn to remind a few dozen black supporters at a South L.A. rally on Saturday that African Americans could swing the mayoral election Greuel's way on Tuesday. "They always underestimate this community," Greuel, the city controller, told the crowd outside her Crenshaw Boulevard office. "They've always underestimated me too. And what do we do? We prove them wrong. " While Greuel cast herself as the underdog in Tuesday's runoff, her rival, Eric Garcetti, warned volunteers in Westchester not to take victory for granted in a contest that remains fluid to the end. "We're ahead, but we're not winning," the city councilman told them on a break from making phone calls to voters who might need some prodding.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
May 17, 2013 | By Michael Finnegan, Los Angeles Times
Eric Garcetti's lead in the Los Angeles mayor's race has narrowed to seven percentage points, but his strength among conservatives has blocked rival Wendy Greuel from securing a San Fernando Valley base that is vital to her chances, according to a new USC Price/Los Angeles Times poll. As the candidates and their partisans swarmed across the city in advance of Tuesday's runoff election, Garcetti, a city councilman from Silver Lake, held a 48% to 41% lead, the survey found. Voters in the Valley and every other key region of Los Angeles favored him over Greuel, the city controller.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
May 16, 2013 | By Maeve Reston and David Zahniser, Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa on Thursday waded into the heated contest to choose his successor, calling for two ads aimed at Latino voters that attack candidates Eric Garcetti and Wendy Greuel to be taken off the airwaves. Both were financed with independent donations not controlled by the candidates. Villaraigosa, who has not made an endorsement in the race, said a TV ad from the super PAC Lots of People Who Support Eric Garcetti falsely portrayed Greuel as a supporter of Proposition 187, the 1994 state ballot measure that sought to deny illegal immigrants access to public education and other services.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
May 15, 2013 | Steve Lopez
In exactly one week, Los Angeles will wake up with a newly elected mayor. The lucky leader of 4 million restless campers with cracked sidewalks could be Wendy Greuel, the business-suited Valley kid who worked for Mayor Tom Bradley and President Clinton and would be the first female mayor in city history. Or it could be Eric Garcetti, who seems to have done everything in his 42 years except pitch for the Dodgers and kayak to Borneo, and whose adopted daughter may one day celebrate both a bat mitzvah and a quinceañera . Last week, I wrote about a Greuel visit to Tolliver's barbershop in South Los Angeles, where she was relaxed and sharp in front of a crowd that thinks she's the one. Today I'll report on my outing with her opponent, who, like Greuel, helped create some of the city's problems but now promises to deliver peace and prosperity to one and all. L.A. ELECTIONS 2013: Sign up for our email newsletter When Garcetti walked into a Westwood Village pizza parlor late Monday night, he was not recognized until after he'd selected artichokes, olives, onions and peppers as toppings.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
May 15, 2013 | By Kate Linthicum and Seema Mehta, Los Angeles Times
The importance of Latinos in next week's mayoral election was highlighted again Wednesday as a new round of dueling attacks ads emerged seeking to undermine both candidates' appeal to Spanish-speaking voters. In one spot appearing on Spanish-language television channels, longtime Democrat Wendy Greuel is criticized for having been registered as a Republican in the early 1990s during the era of former Gov. Pete Wilson - a figure reviled by many Latinos for his sponsorship of a ballot measure to deny immigrants in the country illegally certain government benefits.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
May 14, 2013 | By James Rainey, Los Angeles Times
Wendy Greuel and Eric Garcetti ventured into school district politics Tuesday, lending support to non-controversial actions and mostly taking a respite from their recent sniping in the Los Angeles mayoral contest. A week before voters go to the polls, Greuel addressed the Los Angeles Unified School District board, coming out in favor of a program that provides students breakfast in classrooms and for discontinuing a policy of suspending students for "willful defiance. " The school board, as expected, approved both items.