Morning Briefs on the Los Angeles Political Machine for Thursday

While the Wendy "The Villar Greuel" Campaign denigrates itself with cheap campaign stunts, Eric Garcetti gathers with former challengers, turned supporters. Plus, Garcetti gets the endorsement of the nation's largest Latino-owned newspaper chain, the Eastern Group Publications.

Former challengers Kevin James, Emanuel Pleitez and Jan Perry join Eric Garcetti yesterday in Hollywood.

As Eric Garcetti and Wendy "The Embraced Villar Greuel" prepare for tonight's first mayoral runoff debate, both campaign took divergent campaign paths yesterday, in the wake of Mayor Antonio Villar's last "State of a Fail Reign as Mayor Address".

The "Embraced Villar Greuel Campaign", on cue from Mayor Villar's "lack of education dialog" remarks, lower themselves with a cheap campaign stunt, that drew the ire of a Camino Nuevo Charter School Official, who documented Eric Garcetti's positive ties to the campus.

The school’s chief executive said she didn’t object but was disappointed when she later learned that Greuel had used the visit to attack Garcetti as a politician who would not be independent from the United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA), the union supporting his bid for mayor.
“Camino Nuevo should not be used for any negative campaigning,” Ponce said. “We worked really hard to get where we are, in partnership with a number of elected officials. It was disappointing to have Camino Nuevo used as a backdrop for negative campaigning.”
Ponce said that a $700,000 federal Community Development Block Grant — delivered after a council motion by Garcetti — was critical in the construction of the soccer field. 
After opening in October 2010, she said, the field “really revived the community and brought together a whole bunch of stakeholder groups and constituents.”
Ponce said that she and other school officials are not officially supporting anyone in the mayor’s race.

Meanwhile, Garcetti was gathering in Hollywood, with his former campaign challengers, who have now all endorsed his campaign.Further, the Latino-owned Easter Group Publications re-endorsed Eric Garcetti for Mayor, we post some excerpts below.

Every city official has backed bad choices that have had deep and painful consequences for Los Angeles. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa acknowledged his bad decisions Tuesday during his last State of the City Address as mayor.A true leader is one who will own up to the mistakes, learn from them, and has the courage to go back and try to make things right, if not at least better.Asking your employees to make larger contributions toward some of their benefits is not a pleasant thing to do, but as president of the city council, Eric Garcetti asked the city’s police and fire employees to do just that, and they did. We know he did not do it alone, or maybe always as quickly or willingly as some would have liked. As council president there were many things he could have done to skirt the issues, but he recognized that we are all in this together and set an example for the rest of the city’s employees to follow.We are impressed that in the run up to the May 21 election, Eric Garcetti has for the most part remained unflappable and less strident than his opponent, a characteristic we believe will bode well for the city of Los Angeles.  

FYI, you can watch tonight's debate, starting at 7 P.M. on ABC 7.

Your thoughts ..............
Scott Johnson in CD 14