Mayors

After each City Council meeting, Lancaster Mayor R. Rex Parris heads home, flips on his TiVo and watches a replay of the town hall proceedings. His wife makes notes of the sections she feels her husband should review, along with suggestions of what he could have done better: Temper an angry exchange. Soften a terse response. Listen. It may seem oddly reflective behavior for a man who has proudly forged a reputation as a no-nonsense, hard-boiled politician, more Old West sheriff than diplomat.

Dawn Zimmer is the mayor of Hoboken. No, Peter Cammarano III is -- a sign inside City Hall says so. No, David Roberts is the mayor. A sign outside outside City Hall says so. The political musical chairs has played out so rapidly in this Hudson River city lately that sometimes it seems the town can't keep pace. But while mayors come and go -- Zimmer took over July 31 from Cammarano, who resigned just a month after replacing Roberts following last spring's election -- one thing remains constant: Carlo's Bakery, the 99-year-old institution across from City Hall that is the subject of "Cake Boss," another in the stream of television reality shows.

When Greg Nickels became Seattle's mayor in 2002, global warming was hardly at the top of the municipal agenda. New York's World Trade Center had been attacked, and officials had to figure out how to protect their own city from terrorism. Boeing was laying off 30,000 machinists, so there was the declining regional economy to deal with. Surely the federal government would worry about climate change. Then came the winter of 2004, when the Cascade Mountains snowpack was so disastrously low that ski resorts -- facing their worst year on record -- laid off most of their employees.

It was a rare moment in the limelight for Los Angeles mayoral candidate Julian Nava, and all it got him was a loud chorus of boos. Mostly on impulse, Nava declared in a December debate that resident aliens--foreigners living legally in the U.S.--should be allowed to vote in some local elections. Such residents must pay taxes and are subject to military service, he reasoned, so it's only fair they should have a vote.

Everyone who does business in the city of Industry is required to sign up with Mayor David Perez's company. For years, a firm partly owned by the mayor has held an exclusive, multimillion-dollar franchise to pick up trash from the warehouses, manufacturing plants and other commercial enterprises packed into this oddly configured, avidly pro-business San Gabriel Valley city. And that is just one Perez investment thread that runs through town -- a place with fewer than 100 voters, tight-knit City Hall relationships and now a good chance of becoming home to an $800-million stadium complex and Los Angeles' next professional football team.

Stu Rasmussen promised a new administration if he was elected, and he's as good as his word: Silverton residents not only are getting a new mayor; they're also getting a new Stu. Rasmussen, longtime manager of the local cinema, was also elected mayor in 1988 and 1990, and served four years -- but that was when he was wearing slacks and sport shirts to council meetings.

Temple City's mayor, former mayor and an aide were indicted Wednesday on charges of perjury and soliciting and receiving bribes from a developer in exchange for supporting his $75-million mall project. Mayor Judy Wong, former Mayor Cathe Wilson and Wilson's campaign treasurer, Scott Carwile, pleaded not guilty to the charges after the 21-count grand jury indictment was unsealed by Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Patricia Schnegg.

The contest for mayor of Los Angeles is growing increasingly tense as Tuesday's election approaches, with much of the heat generated by attacks on the records of the most experienced candidates. But the assaults have not masked an essential truth: In politics, incumbency almost always provides a crucial boost. Its benefits are immeasurable: a battle-tested army of aides, ready attention from the media, and that most important political asset of all, access to money.

Elliott Rothman, Pomona's new mayor, stepped into City Hall on Monday and shook off the dreary night. He had a round face and a comb-over, and his expression was no less dour after he took off his overcoat, revealing a tie decorated with an image of Frosty the Snowman. Pomona, a city of 170,000 or so, was fresh from a messy election. Rothman had finished first among eight candidates. But with so many in the race, he had won with a third of the vote, hardly a resounding victory. At 7:04 p.m.

It is not the fanciest house on the block, nor is it on the fanciest block in the city. A three-story, two-bedroom mock English Tudor situated just above Wilshire in Windsor Square, the official residence of the mayor of Los Angeles has no outstanding characteristics--no flags flying, no impressive security fence. It differs from its neighbors in only two noticeable ways: There is a blue-painted handicap zone on the curb in front of the driveway, and no one lives there.

Is "Chocolate City," as this town was famously called, on the verge of electing a vanilla mayor? That is the political question gripping New Orleans, where white candidate Mitch Landrieu, Louisiana's lieutenant governor, has emerged as a mayoral front-runner in a city where a black population diminished by Hurricane Katrina still holds a majority -- but where fear of the loss of black political power remains palpable. Landrieu, a 49-year-old Democrat, was defeated in the 2006 mayor's race by incumbent C. Ray Nagin, who is leaving office this year because of term limits.

Whether talking about electric cars or his much-promised "Subway to the Sea," Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has reworked his message during his second term to focus on a single overriding goal: jobs. With more than a quarter-million residents of his city out of work, the mayor has put a new emphasis on job creation after spending much of his first four-year term focused on a spectrum of policy issues such as the environment, education and crime. "I think this is a new appreciation at City Hall for the importance of jobs, since we have lost 340,000 in Los Angeles County since January 2008," said Gary L. Toebben, president of the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce.

Maywood City Councilman Sergio Calderon, who resigned his seat last month only to ask for it back days later, was admonished by his council colleagues for failing to be honest with them about his reasons for initially stepping down. The council rejected his request to reclaim his seat. Calderon had initially said he was resigning because of a council dispute over Maywood's police contract with the city of Cudahy. Maywood provides police services to Cudahy, but the contract is set to expire in two years.

Kasim Reed, an attorney and former Georgia state senator, will be sworn in as Atlanta's next mayor after a recount Wednesday confirmed he had won a runoff election. City Councilwoman Mary Norwood sought the recount after coming up 715 votes short in the Dec. 1 balloting, or fewer than 1% of the total cast. Reed's margin of victory ended up at 714 votes, Fulton County officials said. "Campaign season is over, and I want everyone to know I have the utmost respect for Mrs. Norwood and take no personal pleasure in her concession today," Reed said in a statement.

A week after a hotly contested mayoral runoff in Atlanta, the second-place finisher on Tuesday requested a recount, while her supporters complained of potential voting irregularities. City Councilwoman Mary Norwood trails former state Sen. Kasim Reed by 715 votes, or less than 1% of the total ballots cast -- the threshold for a recount under Georgia law. Fulton County officials said the process would begin this morning and could be completed by the end of the day. A group of Norwood's supporters also this week filed a complaint with the secretary of state's office.

A former mayor of Vernon and his wife were convicted Friday of voter fraud and conspiracy, capping a three-year legal saga that ended the family's long grip over the tiny industrial city in southeast Los Angeles County. Prosecutors accused Leonis and Dominica Malburg of engaging in an elaborate sham in which they pretended to reside in Vernon while actually living in a large home in Hancock Park, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Max Huntsman. "Many politicians . . . claim they can run for office where they don't really live," Huntsman said.

If mayoral candidate Kasim Reed survives a possible recount and squeaks into office in this majority-black city -- thus extending a 35-year tradition of African American leadership -- it will be in part because of white voters like Jim Lewis. Lewis, an attorney, voted for Reed on Tuesday in part out of a concern that the white candidate, Mary Norwood, would be too indebted to a conservative white element he suspected was supporting her just because of her skin color. "I think Kasim can come in there and not really be beholden to those kinds of groups," he said.

Israeli security forces arrested the mayor of a Jewish settlement Wednesday as he and other residents tried to prevent government inspectors from entering the community to enforce new restrictions on building in the West Bank. The skirmish in Beit Aryeh was the most serious in five days of confrontations across the territory between a government that appears intent on limiting settlement growth over the next 10 months and a settler movement determined to defy the effort. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced a partial construction moratorium last week under U.S. pressure, and the Obama administration applauded the decision in hope of coaxing the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority to resume peace talks with Israel.

A neck-and-neck mayoral runoff pitting a black man against a white woman has spurred some intense discussions about race and politics in the South's most important city. But in recent days, the two campaigns have also turned their attention to a demographic beyond race that may ultimately sway Tuesday's election: the gay vote. The support of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender, or LGBT, community has been a coveted political prize for some time in Atlanta, a bastion of live-and-let-live progressivism in the heart of the more censorious Bible Belt.

New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg may have narrowly won a third term this week but he also earned -- or, rather, very handsomely paid for -- a less-welcome distinction: becoming the latest in a long line of politicians to prove that money can't buy everything. It's something Californians know, having rejected a number of rich candidates, and something President Obama can attest to; his path to Washington was paved in 2004 when he beat a wealthy rival who spent $30 million in a U.S. Senate primary.