For a campaign strategist, does Ace Smith get a lot of coverage or what? In the LAT over the weekend, the consultant for Antonio Villaraigosa's mayoral campaign — and before that for Steve Soboroff's — is profiled by Robin Abcarian as a key factor for Hillary Clinton in North Carolina. Smith, of course, has his fans and detractors in the piece:

Soboroff recalls that Smith once promised a scoop to a reporter who had annoyed him, inviting the scribe to a meeting. But when the reporter arrived, Smith closed an elevator door in the journalist's face and said "Oh no, it's too late." The story weirdly calls the Fleishman-Hillard scandal that the Times covered extensively during the last Villaraigosa-Hahn match "a minor billing scandal in the DWP." Its effect on the race was parsed a bit more in a profile of Smith last year in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Photo: Karen Tam / For the L.A. Times