Turning on the jets *

Hear that roar? Those are the after-burners kicking in on Air Villaraigosa. For the period from April 3 to April 30, the councilman raised $2,211,367 to Mayor Hahn's $763,325. Viewed another way, Villaraigosa raised 74% of the money donated in the latest period, as reported Thursday to the City Ethics Commission (and posted on its website.)

Don't try adding up the rows, since I cherry-picked only the most revealing columns. You can see and play with the whole shebang online here. The field evens out a bit when the comparison includes so-called independent expenditures, or IE, that benefit the mayor and Villaraigosa. (The table below doesn't include $500,000 the California Teachers Association said Wednesday it would spend on Villaraigosa's behalf. Actually: I now think the CTA cash is counted.) For fun I also threw in how much each has received in matching public funds, and how much each has spent trying to become mayor this time. Including the primary, all the candidates who ran for mayor have so far spent $13.6 million.

Media stories: They will be linked here as they come online. First up is the L.A. Business Journal, but I think they picked up the wrong report on Hahn — they appear to be comparing Hahn's last-period totals to the new report for Villaraigosa. Perhaps it's an early edit for online [* Fixed now.]...The Daily News, which has different numbers than me or the LABJ, notes that Hahn refused Villaraigosa's call to return donations left over from 2001 by federal fugitive Charles Fitzgerald, who paid $70,000 toward anti-Villaraigosa mailings that year...The Times (whose numbers match mine and the Ethics Commission website) breaks out the out-of-state contributions this period: $258,000 for Villaraigosa, $76,450 for Hahn...Daily Breeze up now too.

Also in the campaign:

• Villaraigosa campaign manager Ace Smith complained to Times editors about omitted facts and the candidate being misquoted in last week's stories about Florida fundraising and LAX. In a letter sent to Assistant Managing Editor Janet Clayton and cc'd to John Carroll, Dean Baquet and Michael Kinsley, Smith also pointedly complained that the Times didn't disclose that lobbyist Clark Davis, who is quoted in the stories, is a Hahn contributor who was called to testify before a grand jury in the City Hall pay-to-play investigations. "Be assured, I do not believe nor am I suggesting that the omissions were borne out of any malice on the part of [reporters]," Smith wrote. "More likely, in the rush to follow-up on news reported in another newspaper and in an effort to 'break new ground,' errors were made."
• Jewish Journal senior editor Howard Blume, in separate pieces, analyzes how schools reform became central in the runoff campaign and reconstructs Villaraigosa's role in the Proposition 1A effort in 1998. Hahn has derided Villaraigosa's involvement, but Blume writes "the mayor correctly laid out the sequence of events, but imposed an interpretation largely at odds with firsthand accounts."
• Win or lose, Villaraigosa already has a date for June 1. The Campaign for America's Future says he will be in Washington, D.C., rallying "thousands of activists around the progressive promise and the failure of the right wing. Washington Hilton Crystal Ballroom, 1919 Connecticut Ave. NW."
• If Villaraigosa wins, we know what a key issue will be in his 2009 reelection race: on Thursday he pledged to expand the LAPD by 1,000 officers, something both he and Hahn promised four years ago.
• Tony Castro opines in the L.A. Independent that Hahn has taken away Villaraigosa's momentum.