Political Candidates

washington -- Mitt Romney twice emphasized his unique business background when he and eight other Republican presidential candidates faced off in a debate last week in Iowa. "I've spent the last, as I've told you, 25 years in the private sector," former Massachusetts Gov. Romney declared at one point. "I understand why jobs come and why jobs go. I've done business in 20 countries."

Austin Beutner, the wealthy former investment banker who struggled to gain traction in his yearlong campaign for Los Angeles mayor, dropped out of the race Tuesday. In an email to supporters, Beutner said he wants to spend more time with his wife and four young children. And in an unusual move, he pledged to pay back every person who contributed to his campaign. His exit comes after months of fundraising struggles, churn among his campaign staff and a recent poll that showed him capturing a dismal 2% of the likely vote in next year's election to replace Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who will be termed out. Beutner says money wasn't a factor in his decision, and said he had been prepared to pump his personal wealth into the campaign to accrue name recognition.

24TH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT Name: Catherine Carter Political affiliation: Natural Law Born: Oct.

At a conference of first ladies the other day, Barbara Bush said that 2012 has "been the worst campaign I've ever seen in my life. " I disagree. My vote would be for the repulsive 1988 campaign that her husband,George H.W. Bush, waged against Michael Dukakis, in which he accused the former Massachusetts governor of being soft on crime, anti-Pledge of Allegiance and pro-flag burning. Bush the elder took the aristocratic view that games (like tennis, or politics) should be played to the death but that animosity should be suspended when the drinks cart arrives.

In this era of antipathy toward political insiders, the race for the 73rd Assembly District seat in Orange County has presented its eight Republican candidates with a peculiar difficulty: There is no incumbent to pick on. The fight for the 73rd District, which sprawls along the coast from southern Orange County to northern San Diego County, became a free-for-all after longtime Assemblyman Robert C. Frazee (R-Carlsbad) opted to run in another district to the south.

Grandpa navigated the nation through a 10-year economic quagmire, set a course for victory in a world war and cemented the foundation of the modern federal government. Del Roosevelt would be happy with hiring more cops and setting up some crosswalks in Long Beach. That's Roosevelt, as in President Franklin D., father of the New Deal and the only person ever elected to four terms in the White House.

In a surprise announcement, Mayor Maureen O'Connor said Monday night she will not seek reelection when her term expires in 1992. O'Connor, who at age 25 in the mid-'70s was the youngest council member ever elected in the city and who later became its first woman mayor, said she will not seek another term and instead will devote her time to pushing for a series of fundamental campaign and ethical reforms at City Hall.

Could this be an episode of "Family Feud," New York style? The contestants: Clintons, Kennedys and Cuomos, America's most famous Democratic dynasties. The prize they're sniffing around: a U.S. Senate seat, soon to be vacated by Hillary Rodham Clinton. This week, Caroline Kennedy made it clear that she, like Andrew Cuomo, wants Clinton's spot after the senator ascends to secretary of State.

Forget the covered bridges, languorous adultery and mellow Iowa of James Robert Waller's bestseller, "The Bridges of Madison County." This Madison County, near the Great Smoky Mountains in western North Carolina, is a place of ear-popping drives and breathtaking views of forested peaks carpeted with wild laurel thickets.

Two years after being forced out of office by term limits, former Assemblyman Richard Katz held a lead in early returns Tuesday over Los Angeles City Councilman Richard Alarcon in the San Fernando Valley's hotly contested race for a state Senate seat. The race, one of the most closely watched legislative campaigns in the state, pitted a 16-year Sacramento veteran against a home-grown Latino lawmaker who sought to appeal to the Valley's increasingly active Latino voters.

Los Angeles City Atty. Carmen Trutanich announced Thursday that he is jumping into the race for district attorney, drawing attacks from rivals on his integrity in what promises to be a bare-knuckled election fight to become L.A. County's top prosecutor. The announcement came after Trutanich insisted for months that he had not decided whether to formally enter the contest even as he raised nearly $1 million and sought political endorsements. Within minutes of Trutanich declaring his candidacy, a campaign strategist for county prosecutor Alan Jackson criticized Trutanich for violating his promise to voters during his successful 2009 city attorney's campaign not to seek higher office if he won. "It's a window into his soul that the man can't be trusted," said John Thomas, who is running Jackson's campaign but worked for Trutanich in 2009.

Joe Buscaino is not a dockworker, and yet everyone at the longshoremen's union dispatch hall near the Port of Los Angeles seemed to know him. They approached from all sides -- a stream of friends, former classmates, athletes he had once coached and even a few proud relatives. Some slapped Buscaino on the back. Others posed with him for pictures. Nearly each interaction ended with the same pledge: "You've got my vote. " Buscaino, a 37-year-old police officer whose only previous political experience was a stint in 1992 as president of his senior class at San Pedro High School, is the favorite to win Tuesday's runoff election against state Assemblyman Warren Furutani for an empty seat on the Los Angeles City Council.

After Penn Jillette's analysis of why so many political candidates say "bugnutty Christian" things, we heard from a number of readers about putting such a modifier in front of the word Christian, especially in the headline: " Politics and the bugnut Christians . " Reader Larry Taylor of Berkeley wrote: "What would make you think that calling (by extension, all) Christians 'bugnuts' in your newspaper is acceptable, even for an opinion piece? "I'm a registered Democrat with a doctorate and am under 40 years old. I live in Berkeley.

Los Angeles City Controller Wendy Greuel pulled ahead of her early opponents in fundraising for the 2013 mayoral race, outperforming Councilwoman Jan Perry, former mayoral aide Austin Beutner and radio host Kevin James, according to reports filed Monday. Greuel collected more than $518,000, according to contribution statements covering the first six months of the year. She said her sizable haul showed that people want someone who can bring "needed reforms" to City Hall. "There has been such a tremendous outpouring of support all across the city, and that response has led to this strong fundraising showing," she said.

Candidates for governor and the U.S. Senate hopscotched around the state Friday, rallying their parties' supporters and urging them to vote as election day draws near. In the governor's race, Republican Meg Whitman swept through the Central Valley seeking to motivate the region's rich trove of Republican voters ? and getting inadvertent help from former Gov. Gray Davis, a Democrat. Davis had told the Sacramento Bee on Thursday that the next governor would be forced to ask voters to renew temporary tax hikes they approved last year to help balance the budget.

California's marijuana legalization ballot initiative, Proposition 19, is trailing badly, according to a new Los Angeles Times/USC poll, which found likely voters opposing it 51% to 39%. In the race for attorney general, Republican Steve Cooley holds a narrow lead over his Democratic opponent, Kamala Harris. Cooley, the Los Angeles County district attorney, is aided greatly by voter support on his usually Democratic home turf. In the survey, Cooley held a 42%-33% advantage among likely voters in Los Angeles County.

Fred Davis -- the man who introduced vermin, Paris Hilton, bad hair and now demonic mutton into our political discourse -- is a bit taken aback by the reaction to his latest creation. "More sheep in my day than I was expecting," he said after sorting through messages from reporters across the country, all of them wanting to talk about the online video -- an instant cult classic -- he created for Republican U.S. Senate hopeful Carly Fiorina. "You certainly never know what's going to catch on."

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.

Want to know how to tick off a funnyman quickly? Tell people not to take him seriously. Richard "Kinky" Friedman has staked out a career generating chuckles, guffaws and belly laughs. He started out singing often-outrageous songs in the 1970s fronting one of the few Jewish country music bands, Kinky Friedman & the Texas Jewboys, then for the last two decades he's kept readers smiling with his one-liner-filled mystery novels starring himself as a wisecracking but reluctant hero.

The great virtue of the last year's hysterical debate over healthcare — possibly its only virtue — was that it shoved another hysteria-inducing issue to the back burner. That issue is immigration. But now that healthcare reform is a reality, immigration has reemerged to slake our communal thirst for hallucinatory political discussion. The two extremes of the immigration debate line up like this: One side says legalizing the nation's estimated 11 million illegal immigrants will produce an economic boom — $1.5 trillion added to U.S. GDP over 10 years, says UCLA; $16 billion for California from legalizing undocumented adult Latinos alone, according to USC. The other side maintains that illegal immigrants steal jobs from native-born Americans and contribute mightily to our huge state budget deficit.