LA Observed

Rolling into the final weekend, the candidates are riding buses, filling the airwaves and sniping at each other. All in the name of getting out the vote.

• Times roundup: The coverage leads with Hahn still going at Hertzberg over Enron, and the former assembly speaker filing a complaint that labor groups backing the mayor are violating Ethics Commission rules. Villaraigosa wants the weekend to be about the high road, Alarcon points out that only he rejected writing a letter for drug dealer Carlos Vignali, and Parks calls Hahn's sudden push for 720 new LAPD officers "suspect." The Times also has a piece on how Jewish support for Hertzberg could prove crcuial, since up to 20% of the voters are Jewish.

• Daily News: ~~Ron Kaye~~ Dave Butler (* see below) decides to lead the paper three days before the election with a big headline and story aimed at the secession crowd: "Three years after Mayor James Hahn led the campaign against secession and city workers stormed the San Fernando Valley to trim trees, clean streets and repair cracked sidewalks, the questions remain: Does the Valley get its fair share and were the promises kept?" The other campaign story on the website focuses on Hertzberg's Ethics Commission complaint.

• Business Journal: A web-only story looks at Friday's campaign fundraising reports and finds Villaraigosa and Hertzberg both raking in the cash, while Hahn is struggling.

• Jewish Journal: The weekly leads with a Q-and-A of the candidates by new senior editor Howard Blume. Marc Haefele adds a piece on the Jewish community split between Hertzberg, Hahn and Villaraigosa, and Blume comes back wiith a piece on the LAUSD as an issue in the race.

• Also: James Sterngold in the San Francisco Chronicle reports, "For a city revered around the globe for its Tinseltown glamour and sun- charged optimism, whose cultural life is spiced by a brilliant array of ethnic communities, Los Angeles has gotten what most agree is a plain vanilla mayoral race."...AP's Michael R. Blood: "Anything can happen."...Monday's Life and Times on KCET (6:30 p.m.) will be devoted to profiles of the five leading candidates...Monday at 10 a.m. on KPCC, Larry Mantle takes a final look at the primary election ballot with Howard Fine of the LABJ, Peter Dreier of Occidental College and Martha Groves of the Times.

* I stand corrected: Dave Butler, editor of the Daily News, writes to set me straight on who runs things in Woodland Hills: "Dave Butler is the editor of the paper and made that decision and does so every day of the week. Mr. Kaye is the No. 2 editor at the newspaper and is in charge only when Mr. Butler is out of town. And even then, Mr. Butler checks in regularly. While Mr. Kaye is an important editor at the newspaper, the notion that he's making all of the decisions or is somehow got some agenda is totally wrong." Thanks for the fill-in. I accept it all except the part about Kaye not having agendas.