Politics

It is one of the curious side effects of modern politics that, suddenly and without warning, a private person becomes public. That lesson has come home to Betty Hosie, retired real estate agent, bridge and tennis aficionado, mother of two and–in current context–former wife of Pete Wilson, the California governor who has designs on the … Read more

Joe Biden speaks during the First State Democratic Dinner in Dover, Delaware, on March 16. 2019. (Saul Loeb / AFP/Getty Images) Joe Biden is carrying a 20th century voting record into a 21st century political dogfight. During more than 40 years in public life, Biden has taken an array of stances at odds with today’s … Read more

WASHINGTON — Employees of a major coal industry donor to Republican causes have raised complaints about their participation in an event earlier this month organized for GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney in the crucial swing state of Ohio. Several miners at Murray Energy’s Century coal mine in Beallsville, Ohio, contacted a nearby morning talk radio … Read more

Party activist Nancy Pelosi won the Democratic nomination Tuesday night in a special election to decide who will succeed the late Rep. Sala Burton in the 5th Congressional District, which encompasses three-fourths of the City of San Francisco. In a district where Democrats outnumber Republicans 3 to 1, Pelosi’s primary victory virtually assures her of … Read more

From left; Antonio Villaraigosa, Barbara Boxer and Fabian Nunez have left one of the state’s most powerful lobbying firms, Mercury Public Affairs. (Getty Images) Former prominent Democratic elected officials Fabian Nuñez, Barbara Boxer and Antonio Villaraigosa led the mass resignations from one of the state’s most powerful lobbying firms, Mercury Public Affairs. The departures are … Read more

Joe Shell, a former assemblyman from Los Angeles who seriously challenged Richard Nixon for the Republican gubernatorial nomination in 1962 with a candidacy that highlighted the emerging strength of the GOP’s right wing, has died. He was 89. Shell, who was captain of the 1939 USC football team, died Monday at his home in Bakersfield, … Read more

Cenk Uygur, host and co-founder of “The Young Turks” online talk show, defended the Harvard University men’s soccer team for rating the sexual appeal of female students. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times) Bernie Sanders withdrew his endorsement of California congressional candidate Cenk Uygur on Friday following reports about the online talk show host … Read more

Paul Laxalt’s campaign for the presidency starts with his friends. As Ronald and Nancy Reagan’s closest political ally outside the White House–Washington insiders call him the “First Friend”–the former two-term U.S. senator from Nevada claims endowment rights to the Reagan conservative legacy, as well as Reagan’s Western-state constituency. After all, as Laxalt puts it: “During … Read more

Immediately after Proposition 8 passed, many who supported same-sex marriage tried to make sense of the results. A set of assumptions gained wide acceptance. Some are correct. Most, however, are just plain wrong. And it’s crucial that we know what happened in the last election before launching another attempt to legalize marriage for all. I … Read more

When Elizabeth Warren first ran for the U.S. Senate from Massachusetts in 2012, her opponent mocked her as a Harvard elitist, addressing her in debates as “Professor,” dripping out the syllables so it sounded more like an epithet than an honorific. Warren won anyway, swamping the Republican incumbent, Scott Brown, who had campaigned in a … Read more