Political Literature

A Democratic activist said he and some San Fernando Valley high school students were rattled last Saturday when Simi Valley police cruisers seemed to "tail" them while they knocked on doors and handed out political literature. But Simi Valley police responded that if the young political canvassers saw officers, it was only because police are always on the streets in a city that FBI statistics show to be among the nation's safest.

The list of Nobel literary laureates is long on writers fated to be forgotten. Nadine Gordimer is not among them. "Telling Times: Writing and Living, 1954-2008" brings together 91 pieces of her nonfiction written over 55 years: This is a collection that often inspires and seldom fails to reward. Gordimer, 86, is the most distinguished of the South African writers who bore witness to the grinding evils of Apartheid and sought its end. She was born in one of South Africa's Transvaal mining towns, the daughter of Jewish immigrants — her father, a watchmaker from Russia, her mother a London-born opponent of segregation, who founded a crèche for local African children.

The organizers of city of Orange festival established to promote community and international understanding cannot limit political expression, Orange County Democrats claimed in a suit filed Tuesday in federal court. The suit--which names as defendants the Orange International Street Fair Inc.

Prominent supporters of Los Angeles City Council candidate and Assemblyman Paul Krekorian denounced two mailers sent last week by the campaign of his opponent, former Paramount Pictures Corp. executive Christine Essel, that accuse Krekorian of sexism and anti-Semitism, based in part on comments on a blog. Tuesday's runoff race for former City Councilwoman Wendy Greuel's seat in the San Fernando Valley has grown increasingly caustic in the final weeks, but Krekorian condemned one of Essel's new mailers as "the most disgusting and grotesque political communication" he had ever seen.

For one of the more dramatic images floating around in the current flurry of political literature, look no farther than a flier by Assembly candidate Tony Cardenas in which he proclaims his opposition to a new oil pipeline in the northeastern San Fernando Valley. The mailer's cover features a vivid photograph of a pipeline explosion in the Northridge earthquake. "The Roar of the Earth . . . A Devastating Explosion," reads the cover, and inside: "That's how oil pipeline explosions happen.

Political signs will not be allowed on any school campus in the Brea Olinda Unified School District beginning Dec. 1. School board trustees voted 4-1 this week to prohibit anyone from posting political signs anywhere on campus, including buildings and fences, at any time. The policy "will be challenged immediately because it's ridiculous," said board member Todd Spitzer, who voted against it. "It insulates the incumbents."

Two large boxes of a City Council candidate's political literature have been missing since a mystery man picked up thousands of mailers from a downtown printer and drove away, campaign officials reported Thursday. "It's an act of sabotage," charged Bill O'Hare, candidate Ann Christoph's campaign manager. The literature consisted of campaign letters and cards soliciting donations and volunteer help, O'Hare said. Because it was immediately reprinted, Christoph's campaign did not suffer, he said.

A Mexican legislator charged in Los Angeles Wednesday that the weekend slayings of four youths in Mexico City were political assassinations aimed at intimidating those contesting the results of the recent presidential election Gerardo Unzeuta, a member of the National Democratic Front, a leftist party that supported opposition presidential candidate Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, linked the killings to "extreme right-wing terrorist" forces "attempting to provoke a violent response from the Mexican people."

A federal judge in Santa Ana approved an agreement on Monday that will allow Orange County Democrats to distribute political literature at a September street fair in the city of Orange. U.S. District Judge J. Spencer Letts, ruling in a case brought by Democrats, said fair organizers could not restrict materials distributed by political parties at booths set up at the fair, which was established to promote communication and international understanding.

Inglewood City Clerk Yvonne Horton on Friday denounced a campaign "hit" mailer that falsely used her name to castigate one of the candidates in next week's special election for the District 4 City Council seat. "This is the very thing I ran for office to prevent," Horton said in a press release. "Nothing positive can happen with this type of negative campaign literature."

Lawyers for two gay couples told a federal appeals court Tuesday that they need access to internal communications from last year's Proposition 8 campaign to show that the measure banning same-sex marriage was designed to sow "discriminatory animus" toward gays and lesbians. Supporters of the measure that ended a five-month period when gay marriage was legal in California argued before the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals that their 1st Amendment rights would be infringed and future political discussions "chilled" if they were forced to reveal the thousands of e-mails sent out to campaign associates.

Foes of Los Angeles City Council candidate Tamar Galatzan accused her Monday of unfairly promoting her candidacy by sending mailers touting her work as a sitting school board member. Galatzan's lawyer, Stephen Kaufman, said there was nothing improper about the mailers, which do not mention Galatzan's council candidacy. He said she was merely trying to communicate with her constituents about school issues. "These mailers are independent of her council campaign," he said. The three mailers, which Kaufman said were paid for with money from Galatzan's school board campaign committee, began arriving just before voters began casting mail-in ballots for the 2nd Council District special election, which will be held Sept.

With days to go before Tuesday's election, the hot contest for the 2nd District seat on the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors is sending volleys of attack brochures to voters' mailboxes. Both main contenders in the nine-candidate field are experienced leaders. State Sen. Mark Ridley-Thomas (D-Los Angeles) served on the L.A. City Council before being elected to the Legislature, and Councilman Bernard C. Parks was previously chief of the Los Angeles Police Department.

SACRAMENTO -- Adding a green twist to an old political tactic, an environmental group sent a mailer to 50,000 Los Angeles County homes Thursday urging residents to vote by mail to eliminate the "carbon footprint" they would leave by driving to the polls on election day. The mailer is being derided by some, while others are questioning whether it is improperly trying to influence a state Senate election in the West L.A.

Historian Michelle Nickerson still recalls with delight and awe the day she first visited a Pasadena house stuffed with a vast collection of political pamphlets, books and clippings documenting conservative and anti-communist causes since the 1940s. "My heart was jumping out of my chest. I could not believe it," said Nickerson, now an American history professor at the University of Texas in Dallas. "It was one of those moments that you only get a few of in the course of research.

Two teenage girls and the mother of one of them will not be charged with vandalizing campaign signs after the district attorney's office decided not to file a complaint, officials said Thursday. The Police Department had referred the case to prosecutors, alleging that 18-year-olds Keleigh Marshall and Christina Giammalva put stickers on the political signs of Glendora elected leaders, including Councilman Gary Clifford.

Paul Dawson and his wife were stuffing blue flyers under the windshield wipers of cars parked at a Greek festival when they were interrupted by an Anaheim police officer. "That's illegal," the officer said, confiscating their flyers and writing them both tickets, telling them that placing handbills on cars was in violation of an Anaheim ordinance. "That's a violation of the First Amendment," countered Dawson, whose flyers included one about the political situation between Greece and Turkey.

Compton Mayor Walter R. Tucker's son arranged for a private detective to follow the mayor's political opponent and the detective's findings were mailed to the voters a week before the upcoming municipal election on Tuesday. Campaign mailers show a photograph of Chuck (E. Boyd) Esters Jr., the 37-year-old, bespectacled son of a prominent Compton clergyman, outside a nightclub known for about 20 years for its nude dancers. Esters admits he has been to the club, the Golden Garter, at least twice recently to campaign.

Charges will not be filed against a former Orange County congressional candidate whose campaign mailed letters warning immigrants against voting, the state attorney general's office said Wednesday. "We looked closely at voter intimidation statutes but couldn't find any criminal intent," Gareth Lacy, a spokesman for the office, said of the letters sent by Republican Tan Nguyen's staff three weeks before November's election, in which he failed to unseat Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Santa Ana).

The campaign of an Orange County supervisorial candidate, whose slogan is "Honesty, Integrity and Leadership," has been caught doctoring a photo so that it places the politician close to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. The photo into which Trung Nguyen was inserted appeared over the weekend in two Vietnamese-language daily newspapers, Vien Dong and Viet Bao Kinh Te. The papers are heavily circulated in Little Saigon, home to the largest Vietnamese community outside Southeast Asia.