Uphill Battle

maverick [colloq.]--a person who takes an independent stand, as in politics, refusing to conform to that party or group. * When the Republican Jewish Coalition held a grand reception at the GOP Convention, the din of conversation was so loud that the emcee and others at Philadelphia's Park Hyatt Hotel shushed the crowd every few minutes just so they could hear. But when Republican U.S.

The downfall of former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham in a bribery scandal has cleared the way for a surprisingly competitive race for his San Diego County congressional seat, a contest that will test the strength of Democratic efforts to regain control of Congress.

Final results from Compton's primary election released Thursday showed longtime Mayor Eric Perrodin ousted and political newcomer Aja Brown headed for a runoff with former Mayor Omar Bradley, who is facing a corruption trial. Incumbent Perrodin, the city's longest-serving mayor, trailed in third place. A deputy district attorney and former Compton police officer, Perrodin ran on a reform platform in the 2001 election in which he defeated Bradley. Perrodin got praise for bringing businesses such as Starbucks and Home Depot to the city, but he came under fire over city contracts that went to friends and family members, absenteeism from meetings and, most recently, a $40-million budget deficit.

WASHINGTON - For more than a decade, conservative Orange County Rep. Dana Rohrabacher has formed an unusual alliance with liberals on an unexpected topic - the defense of marijuana. Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach) and his allies have so far waged a futile effort to pass legislation that would prevent federal authorities from interfering with medical marijuana use in California and other places where pot use is permitted by state law. But as more states have moved to allow the drug's use, Rohrabacher believes his Respect State Marijuana Laws Act may be gaining momentum in Congress.

Re "Iraq's struggle for unity," editorial, April 4 The fact that The Times' editorial and I agree that "it's in everyone's interest for Shiite unity to give way to Iraqi unity" is not sufficient to make it happen or produce an abatement of the violence between a bloc of Sunnis (let's call them "the insurgents") and a bloc of Shiites (let's call them "the Sadr militia"). It is not a slam-dunk that a unity government can control these groups and stop them from killing Iraqis and American troops.

The fifth annual Mountain Bike Pow Wow--a taxing tour through the Santa Ana Mountains--has sold out its 200 spots for today's races. Sponsored by the Warrior's Society, the pow wow is made up of three events: The Vision Quest, a 52.5-mile mountain-bike ride and 11,500-foot elevation gain, and its siblings, Counting Coup, a 40-mile, 8,000-foot ride and Seek the Peak, a 5,000-foot gain. The rides are increasingly popular alternatives to the shorter cross-country races at ski resorts.

All he asks, Los Angeles City Atty. Carmen Trutanich frequently says, is that voters judge him on his record. As he wages an uphill battle to hang onto to his job in the May 21 election, Trutanich rattles off a list of reasons he should be "rehired" to head one of the nation's largest municipal law firms. He cites a substantially reduced reliance on costly outside attorneys, favorable outcomes in lawsuits that he says have saved taxpayers more than $300 million and a crackdown on illegal billboards that activists called scourges on their neighborhoods.

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.

Ryan Lane is relatively new to competitive cycling. You can tell because he smirked and rolled his eyes after a race Thursday when a photographer asked whether he had time to take a picture or if he would rather "hydrate" first. "That means get, you know, get something to drink," Lane said, somewhat apologetically.

It had been a long way back for Kelly Perkins since her heart transplant in November, but the last 200 yards promised to be the toughest. Behind her were eight miles of steep trails leading to the implacable granite face of Half Dome in Yosemite. In front, the final 200 yards--a stretch of rock so sheer that steel cables are planted to help hikers pull themselves to the top. But compared to her heart problems of the past four years, the famous 4,100-foot cliff didn't seem insurmountable.