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On this final Saturday of the mayoral marathon, the boys are heading back to the delis. After stopping in at three Shabbat services, Antonio Villaraigosa hits Art's in Studio City, the NoHo Arts District, two Little League openers and Farmers Market, then dresses up for a Beverly Hilton banquet with Bill Clinton. Jim Hahn does Factor's on Pico and Junior's on Westwood Boulevard, stops in at the Home Remodeling Show at Pierce College, greets at Palermo Ristorante on North Vermont then makes his own appearance at the NoHo festival. By Tuesday night, they will be dragging.
Saturday politics:
• Today's Times introduces to the public eye the young politics junkies whose job it is to stalk the opposition's events. Nathan James, Villaraigosa's 25-year-old spokesman and all-around go-to operative, comes from New Jersey, lives in Oakland with his girlfriend and cut his teeth doing oppo research for Demcorats in the East. His Hahn camp counterpart, 23-year-old Jeff Millman, is from Mar Vista, caught the bug at Harvard-Westlake then Penn, and worked on Gray Davis' campaign against the recall and the Prop. 55 school bond campaign. "The great thing about being involved in politics in L.A. is you get to totally fly under the radar," said Millman. "But then you get to walk around with pride knowing what you do is far more important. That's just your little secret."
• Villaraigosa's fundraising chest continues to swell, as money players smell a winner and want to get counted on the right side. He has now outraised Hahn by $2.3 million just in the runoff campaign. Makes those labor-financed independent expenditures for Hahn that much more valuable.
• On the tit-for-tat side of the campaign, Villaraigosa filed a complaint with the Ethics Commission over phone bank scripts the Times spotted on the wall of Hahn's headquarters, but which have not been filed as required. And Hahn continued to hit on Villaraigosa's vote in committee against the Tyler Jaeger Act. Times runs an ad watch on Hahn's TV spot about the vote and Villaraigosa's latest.
• AP's take on the TV campaign: "The ads being broadcast by Mayor James Hahn and challenger Antonio Villaraigosa depict a world so corrupt it's hard to figure out where one scandal starts and another ends."
• Councilman Tony Cardenas becomes (probably) the last one in to the Villaraigosa pool, endorsing him yesterday in the Valley. Everyone I talked to assumes a deal was cut and that Cardenas still had to swallow his pride, since they had a feud going back to the Sacramento days.
• Here's one way to get people to vote. On the last Friday before the election, City Administrative Officer Bill Fujioka proposed a $27 montly trash pickup fee — the first in the city's history, says the Daily News. Hahn was not amused by the timing.