L.A. City Hall skirmish cracks NYT

Mayor Jim Hahn's dust-up with the city council over hiring new cops -- that's what it was ostensibly about anyway -- breaks into the pages of the New York Times today, in a piece by Los Angeles bureau chief John Broder. For Hahn it's a mixed bag, as usual. His rep for being a soft leader is voiced by an authoritative source, Jaime Regalado of the Pat Brown Institute of Public Affairs, but his firing of LAPD chief Bernard Parks is analyzed as a political win for the mayor. (Some win -- it cost him dearly among the black voters who provided the margin that allowed Hahn to defeat Antonio Villaraigosa.) The odd thing about the Broder piece is there's no mention of the council presidency fight, the behind-the-scenes storm swirling over everything in city hall right now. Even Hahn talks about it in a Sunday story by Peter Nicholas, the new guy in the recently strengthened L.A. Times bureau in city hall. Both analysis stories are essentially interviews with Hahn, which feels like the handiwork of mayoral advisers Matt Middlebrook (official) and Kam Kuwata (unofficial). They were right -- now is the time to begin repairing the mayor's image. Incidentally, the Daily News' Rick Orlov -- the dean of L.A. city hall reporters -- manages to mention both the council presidency scrap and an L.A. Observed item in his political notes column today.