Political Candidates

City Councilman Dennis Zine holds a significant lead among likely voters in his race against Ron Galperin for the city controller's seat in the May 21 runoff election, a USC Price/Los Angeles Times poll shows. Zine, a three-term councilman, is the choice of 34% of respondents, according to the bipartisan survey of 500 likely voters conducted over three days last week. That compares with 22% who said they would probably vote for Galperin, a city commissioner and attorney. Poll director Dan Schnur, of USC, said the findings indicate that Zine has the advantage at this point in what has largely been a low-profile campaign.

City Councilman Dennis Zine holds a significant lead among likely voters in his race against Ron Galperin for the city controller's seat in the May 21 runoff election, a USC Price/Los Angeles Times poll shows. Zine, a three-term councilman, is the choice of 34% of respondents, according to the bipartisan survey of 500 likely voters conducted over three days last week. That compares with 22% who said they would probably vote for Galperin, a city commissioner and attorney. Poll director Dan Schnur, of USC, said the findings indicate that Zine has the advantage at this point in what has largely been a low-profile campaign.

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.

Court decisions sometimes spark dramatic political backlashes. Brown vs. Board of Education, which struck down school segregation laws in 1954, temporarily retarded progressive racial reform in the South and advanced the political careers of racial extremists. Furman vs. Georgia (1972), which strictly limited capital punishment, increased support for the death penalty, and Roe vs. Wade (1973) catalyzed a powerful right-to-life movement. The Massachusetts Supreme Court's 2003 ruling in favor of marriage equality led 25 states to enact constitutional amendments barring it. One possible outcome of the Hollingsworth vs. Perry litigation currently before the Supreme Court, which challenges California's Proposition 8, is a broad ruling in favor of marriage equality.

What's interesting about this fall's City Council race isn't who is running. It's who's not running. Councilman James F. Krembas' decision to retire from the council surprised political observers here, who have watched the school administrator help lead the community through the incorporation effort and then guide the city through its early, roller-coaster years. "His leadership will be missed," said Councilman Thomas W. Wilson.

Campaign season has just begun in the most electorally lopsided county in the state, where "two-party politics" means Democrat and, well, Democrat, and the Republican Central Committee recently met to make its big quadrennial decision: which Democrat to endorse for mayor. Hard on the heels of the Pledge of Allegiance, addressed to the kind of miniature flag that sticks out of graves on Memorial Day, the committee launched into fight No.

Broadcasters should provide some free air time to political candidates on a voluntary basis, a presidential commission concluded in a report sent to the White House on Friday. Specifically, the commission recommended that broadcasters, along with cable networks and satellite companies, provide five minutes of free air time a day in the 30 days leading up to an election. Stations would choose the candidates, elections--federal, state and local--and the formats.

Reversing course, the Supreme Court for the first time struck down a forced drug-testing program Tuesday, ruling that Georgia violated the 4th Amendment by requiring political candidates to undergo tests for purely symbolic purposes. While Georgia is the only state to pass such a law, the court's opinion voiding it is expected to have a broad impact in limiting the government's use of drug testing to situations involving public safety.

When 32-year-old theoretical physicist Ron Unz decided to run for governor, even some friends tried to talk him out of it. "Politics is not the kind of thing you expect geniuses to go into," said Eric Reyburn, who attended Harvard University with Unz. Rivko Knox, Unz's aunt, worried that the race would be brutal. "I said: 'Can you take criticism? What if you speak and people laugh at you?' " David Horowitz, the conservative activist, was more blunt.

Javier Perez de Cuellar, the former U.N. secretary general now running for the Peruvian presidency, has injected his campaign with all the excitement of a 300-page U.N. report on South American shipping regulations. Opponents of President Alberto Fujimori had hoped that a diplomat of Perez de Cuellar's stature would inspire the confidence of Peruvian voters, thwarting Fujimori's try for a second term in power. But it hasn't happened so far.

Mayoral candidate Kevin James clawed his way into the thick of the race for mayor of Los Angeles, but a harsh TV ad last month turned off twice as many voters as it won over, according to a USC Price/Los Angeles Times online survey. That reaction contrasts strongly with viewers' feelings about more upbeat ads for front-runners Eric Garcetti and Wendy Greuel, the survey found. The James ad, financed by the independent group Better Way L.A., blames the three sitting politicians running for mayor - City Controller Greuel, Councilman Garcetti and Councilwoman Jan Perry - for the city's "loss of services, crumbling streets" and "bankruptcy.

On a sunny Friday morning, men flitted around the MacArthur Park bathrooms like moths to a flame. "See that activity there?" Los Angeles City Council candidate Jose Gardea said. "Drug activity. That has got to stop. " The squat building that borders Alvarado Street, Gardea says, represents the problems with the park, which has long been a stronghold of illegal activity. Cleaning it up, which Gardea estimates could cost $18 million, would include adding police, restoring the red-flagged boathouse and putting boats back on the lake.

LONDON - First, Silvio Berlusconi, who was driven from power last year by Italy's economic woes and his own scandals, said he wanted back his old job as prime minister. Then Mario Monti, an appointed technocrat who succeeded him at the head of an unelected government, kept the nation guessing for weeks before suddenly declaring that he would dive into politics and seek to lead the next government. They're only part of a perplexing lineup of political candidates voters will face in February's elections as political parties begin a frantic search for coalition partners.

Looking to dramatically tip the scales in the race for Los Angeles' next mayor, a nationally prominent Republican media strategist has formed a "super PAC" that aims to spend millions of dollars to elect dark-horse mayoral candidate Kevin James. Fred Davis, a GOP advertising man who has worked on campaigns for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, U.S. Senate hopeful Carly Fiorina and former President George W. Bush, said the Better Way LA committee has raised nearly $500,000 on behalf of James and plans to collect at least $3.5 million more.

Warning that Los Angeles is facing insolvency, mayoral candidate and City Councilwoman Jan Perry outlined her plan Thursday for reforming the city's employee pension and benefits system. "The truth is that we cannot afford to continue to pay our city workforce in its current configuration," Perry said in an address billed as her first major campaign policy speech. Perry stopped short of opposing a controversial plan by former Mayor Richard Riordan to dramatically cut retirement costs by shifting employees to 401(k)

Politics is at best an imprecise science. Who knows what goes into an election victory? Was it the economy? Was it the advertising? Was it personal magnetism? Was it … the fast? If Mitt Romney wins the presidency on Nov. 6, consider the last of those. A group of his fellow Mormons is organizing a fast Sunday so "that he will be blessed in the debates" with President Obama, which begin on Wednesday. "I know that fasting and praying brings about miracles," reads an email reportedly sent by a fast organizer.

The three candidates for leadership of the ruling Conservative Party, a post whose occupant automatically becomes prime minister, turned to television Sunday to carry their campaigns to the people. By day's end, the consensus backed by opinion polls put political outsider Michael Heseltine, a former defense minister, in a neck-and-neck race with Chancellor of the Exchequer John Major, with Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd trailing behind.

State Assemblyman Mickey Conroy (R-Orange), a candidate for Orange County supervisor, shocked onlookers at a Republican Party headquarters rally this week by making obscene gestures--and some say shouting profanities--at his opponent. The controversial Conroy, 68, an assemblyman since 1991 who is leaving Sacramento because of term limits, acknowledged that he gave the finger to his rival, Todd Spitzer, a deputy district attorney.

The participants if this year's presidential debates are set - Republican nominee Mitt Romney will face off against President Obama in a matchup that's been obvious for months. But there are still other presidential candidates, and one in particular is keen on elbowing his way into the debates. Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson earlier this month filed a lawsuit against the Commission on Presidential Debates, claiming that the organization's practices violate antitrust laws and alleging collusion between the commission and the country's two dominant political parties.

Parade claims a circulation of more than 32 million. The weekend magazine supplement to scores of newspapers offers the perfectly vanilla, nonthreatening platform for political candidates to introduce themselves. Mitt and Ann Romney get their turn in the comfortable weekly's lap this weekend - the magazine's interview from late last month set amid a lobster supper at the couple's lakeside retreat in New Hampshire. Yet even in this relaxed setting, Romney is dependably himself.