Gov. Schwarzenegger today named Keith Brackpool to the state horse racing board. Brackpool is the friend-of-Antonio and water speculator who employed Mayor Villaraigosa as a consultant when he was between elected jobs, palled around with then-Assemblyman Villaraigosa in Sacramento, and accompanied the mayor on his first official junket to Asia. Brackpool is also one of the boys that Villaraigosa vacations with in Iceland — the trip the mayor's office has been skittish about divulging details on — and hosted Villaraigosa's birthday party this year. Schwarzenegger recently lent his name to Brackpool's Cadiz water project in the Mojave Desert, and the governor's chief if staff, Susan Kennedy, also worked for Cadiz — pulling in six figures as a consultant while she was also on the state Public Utilities Commission. All of which is to say this appointment likely has a lot more going on behind the scenes than the $100 per diem paid to board members and the opportunity to act powerful around race tracks.

Previously on LA Observed:
Villaraigosa in the New Yorker