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The Jewish Journal story about forged Hahn endorsement signatures has legs. The Times and the Daily Breeze picked it up in Saturday's paper after Rabbi Weil and two others held a press conference with Villaraigosa supporter Jack Weiss to flog the story. A sub-plot has developed around the Hahn camp's explanation that they got the signed endorsements from Joseph Klein before the Jewish leader died last year. Weiss: "It's unconscionable to blame a deceased person for your own transgressions." Meanwhile, the last paragraph of the LAT story reports that Richard Alarcon was due to have dinner with Hahn last nght to discuss his possible endorsement of the mayor. Last time, Alarcon was with Villaraigosa (but then, so was labor.)
And: Ethnicity is less of a factor in the mayoral race this time around, says a piece by David Zahniser in the Daily Breeze...Bob Hertzberg won't dispute those inked-in ballots...Joel Kotkin notes that the point of his JJ piece (cited here Friday) was not that Westside Jews should vote more Jewish, but that they have not supported candidates whose views resonate with Jewish values and interests: "It’s a subtle distinction but an important one."
Also in L.A. Medialand this weekend (* newest at the bottom):
• Los Angeles Magazine senior writer Dave Gardetta got smashed with actress Jessica Alba for a piece in the latest GQ. Along with the photos are some saucy lines like "Now that you’ve gotten me good and drunk, you probably want to know about that stripping thing” and "I was not totally naked when we spoke. I had on leather chaps.”
• LAT Magazine freelancer Michael T. Jarvis is giving up the life after five years (and never meeting one of his editors.) Gov. Schwarzenegger has appointed him deputy director of communications for the state's Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. Who knew: Jarvis served four years as a Mono County supervisor, upstate in the Eastern Sierra.
• Nikki Finke pens an ode to the Plaza Hotel in Sunday's New York Times.
• City Controller Laura Chick's next big audit is the Department of Public Works, Howard Fine reports in the L.A. Business Journal. Also, Schwarzenegger's special election this year will cost the county $13 million it claims not to have.
• Veteran political consultant Harvey Englander is now in business as Englander and Associates, Fine also says. Englander left the MWW Group earlier this year.
• DA Steve Cooley schmoozes with the press at Tuesday night's Society of Professional Journalists mixer at the Figueroa Hotel.
• The L.A. Press Club has extended the deadline for entering this year's awards to March 25.
• Author Kay Mills appears with USC Annenberg Dean Geoffrey Cowan at an "Open Forum on Politics, War ... and more." March 24 at noon, Annenberg Room 207.
• Wagging tongues at the L.A. Times predict a new editor of the Business section will be announced this coming week.
• Brian Linse of AintNoBadDude posts a party report and photos of some gathered L.A. bloggers and friends.
• The Dodgers traded starting pitcher Kaz Ishii to the Mets for Jason Phillips, a backup catcher they intend to use as a regular.
• In a Sunday Opinion column titled "Girl Problems in Op-Ed Land," Michael Kinsley takes a guy's-eye view of the women-as-opinionists hubbub (without mentioning Susan Estrich) and praises the NYT's Maureen Dowd: [She] "proceeded to reinvent the political column as a comedy of manners and a running commentary on the psychopathologies of power. It is the first real innovation in this tired literary form since Walter Lippmann....Dowd is different, and better."