Political Aides

When Pete Wilson becomes governor next month, he will bring with him one of his closest friends--the man he has always trusted to tell him when he is wrong. He is Bob White: loyal adviser, political strategist, keeper of the gate and hatchet man. To some, he is Wilson's alter ego. Without question, he is the man Wilson relies on to make things work. "He is politically very adept and sensitive," Wilson says. "He is not a yes man. I have great personal affection for him.

An incumbent who styles herself as an outsider and a reform-minded community activist and political aide will face each other in a runoff election Tuesday for the final seat on the Los Angeles Community College District Board of Trustees. Unlike the hard-fought Los Angeles mayor's race, the match between trustee Nancy Pearlman and challenger David Vela has been conducted with little public scrutiny and virtually no contact between the two candidates. It's a source of frustration for Pearlman and Vela, running for a seat in the largest community college district in the nation - with nine campuses serving 240,000 students in communities spread across 882 square miles, from Sylmar to San Pedro.

Bill Garcia walked briskly back into his office, wiping his hands after hauling trash cans around Echo Park in a pickup truck. He had been there several times, cleaning trash from vacant lots and scrubbing graffiti off neighborhood walls. Garcia, a 38-year-old field deputy for Los Angeles Councilman John Ferraro, spends much of his time out in the district listening to residents' concerns and lending a hand in such roll-up-your-sleeves-and-pitch-in activities.

SACRAMENTO - Federal prosecutors recommended Monday that former campaign treasurer Kinde Durkee - who pleaded guilty earlier this year to mail fraud involving the theft of more than $7 million from her clients - be sentenced to about eight years in prison. Among those who said Durkee had raided their campaign funds were Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Democratic Reps. Laura Richardson of Long Beach, Loretta Sanchez of Garden Grove, Linda T. Sanchez of Lakewood and Susan A. Davis of San Diego, and the Los Angeles County Democratic Party.

Garry South, the pugnacious political strategist who masterminded Gray Davis' last three election victories, is signing on as a senior campaign advisor to Democratic presidential hopeful Joseph I. Lieberman. South's appointment, to be announced today in Washington, comes as Davis faces the threat of a recall, and means the governor will have to fight back with only part-time help from his closest political aide.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Deane Dana, forced into a runoff election by the upstart campaign of Rolling Hills Mayor Gordana Swanson, has fired his longtime political adviser and brought in a new team to plot a different course for the November election. The shake-up in the campaign comes after Dana's surprising weakness in the June primary, in which he polled just 42% of the vote, far less than the 50% plus one vote need to win the election outright.

Clashing sharply over what kinds of political payments are lawful, attorneys in the federal corruption trial of two former legislative aides made their final arguments to the jury Friday. There was general agreement between the two sides over what was said by defendants Tyrone Netters and Darryl Freeman, because the prosecution in the seven-week trial relied heavily on secretly recorded videotapes and audiotapes.

It was Inauguration Day in Washington, and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and his top aide bumped into Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld invited the governor to visit him at the Pentagon. Schwarzenegger agreed and even said he wouldn't trouble the secretary by talking about possible base closings in California. The aide, Patricia Clarey, jumped in: I'll talk to you about base closings, she said. "You must be the chief of staff," Rumsfeld answered.

For at least five years, Mayor Tom Bradley's staff operated a political fund-raising network inside City Hall, according to interviews and internal campaign records. City telephones and postal meters were used by Bradley campaigns. During one month, City Hall aides took nearly 150 phone calls from a single Bradley campaign office. Campaign-related memos were typed by city secretaries on city equipment.

Tripped up by his own telephone number, an aide to Assemblyman Jim Battin (R-Palm Desert) was caught this week using a false name in attacking a Battin political rival in a local newspaper. Blaming "youth and inexperience rather than maliciousness," Battin suspended Chris Brown, who heads the assemblyman's district office, for two weeks without pay for a letter to the editor Brown wrote and signed "Jorge Rosa." The letter appeared in the Desert Sun of Palm Springs on Dec.

Sarah Palin wanted to meet Rebecca Mansour. It was the summer of 2009 and the former Alaska governor was in Del Mar, Calif., working on her book "Going Rogue. " Earlier that year, Mansour had co-founded a website that offered detailed defenses of Palin's record and acidic attacks on her critics. Palin was impressed. The pair hit it off. Mansour helped Palin with research on her score-settling bestseller, and a few months later, Palin offered Mansour a job with SarahPAC, Palin's political operation.

Federal inspection of the runaway Toyota Prius that took a wild ride on a San Diego County freeway was delayed several hours Wednesday when a California congressman insisted that someone from his office witness the examination. A team of inspectors from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration was already at Toyota of El Cajon examining the car -- which reportedly had a stuck accelerator, causing it to speed for half an hour before the driver got it stopped -- when a staffer from the office of Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista)

She arrives unseen at the Capitol each morning, entering through an underground garage and riding an internal elevator to the governor's office to take command. Rarely venturing out into public, she instills fear in legions of state workers, lobbyists and lawmakers even though many would not recognize the 5-foot-2, wiry woman with close-cropped blond hair who is likely to be remembered as the most enduring force in state government of the last decade. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, upended the political establishment late in 2005 when he hired Susan Kennedy as his chief of staff: She is a gay Democrat who began her career 30 years ago as an activist for liberal causes and served as a high-ranking aide to the governor's recalled predecessor, Gray Davis.

David Nexon had a big problem. An early version of national healthcare legislation contained a $40-billion tax aimed squarely at members of the medical device trade association he represents. Nexon, a former advisor to the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), went to work. He marshaled 14 people like himself -- lobbyists who were once congressional aides, many of them from staffs of congressional leaders or committees that had a hand in crafting the healthcare overhaul. When Senate Democrats unveiled their bill in mid-November, Nexon's handiwork was evident.

If he were a basketball star instead of a statehouse staffer, he'd be Kobe Bryant or Magic Johnson -- a veteran playmaker, feared by foes, his best moves unleashed just before the buzzer. But like so many Sacramento insiders, Kip Lipper plays out of the limelight, in the back corridors of the Capitol, unknown to the public whose air and water and ecological ethos he has made his specialty over the last three decades. As the environmental expert for the state Senate's ruling Democrats, Lipper has helped craft many of California's groundbreaking laws in that realm -- and become a foil for Republicans irked by what they view as regulatory excess, and by the economic fallout.

In an expected development, White House Communications Director Anita Dunn is stepping down after a brief tenure marked by a dust-up with Fox News Channel over its coverage. She will be succeeded by her deputy, Dan Pfeiffer. Dunn joined the administration in the spring with the understanding that she would stay only a few months because of family considerations. In her time with the Obama administration, she came to epitomize a more combative White House approach in dealing with critics.

A first-time GOP legislative candidate charged Wednesday that Republican Assembly Leader Curt Pringle's chief of staff warned him to stay out of the 70th District race, "threatening" to use the party's resources against him if he took on the incumbent. Despite what he described as a last-minute demand from Pringle aide Jeff Flint at the Orange County registrar of voters office Nov. 29, Jacob "Jim" Rems of Irvine took out nominating papers to challenge Assemblywoman Marilyn C.

A Ventura County jury Friday acquitted the chief of staff of a state assemblywoman on charges of assaulting protesters outside a political fundraiser last year. Jose "Joel" Angeles, the top aide to Assemblywoman Audra Strickland (R-Thousand Oaks), was found not guilty of misdemeanor criminal charges stemming from a scuffle in which a 69-year-old Episcopal priest alleged that he was body-slammed by Angeles. Angeles testified during the trial that it was he who had been roughed up during the scuffle, and that he had not hit or shoved anyone.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa announced on Thursday a shake-up of his administration, bidding farewell to two top advisors and elevating his anti-gang czar to chief of staff. Villaraigosa announced the departure of Chief of Staff Robin Kramer, who has run the mayor's office since the start of his first term in 2005. Replacing her will be the Rev. Jeff Carr, who has won praise for his handling of the city's anti-gang program. Kramer, who also worked for former Mayor Richard Riordan, said she informed Villaraigosa two months ago that she planned to leave.