The Latest in the Mayor Villaraigosa Soap Opera

Latinas in Los Angeles are reportedly dropping their support for the Mayor in droves. Many of them who supported Villaraigosa in the past are saying never again. One woman interviewed by the Whittier Daily News prays and lights candles for the Mayor and his estranged wife as a way of "handling her anger and disillusionment."

Reports are that Mayor V plans to begin a major rehabilitation effort starting Monday including an all out assault on potholes and alleged spiritual counseling from Cardinal Roger Mahoney.

A reader reports that "strings were pulled" in order to get a female police officer allegedly favored by Mayor Villaraigosa transferred to the LAPD's elite Metro Division and his security detail.

Yet another print journalist can't stand how blogs and other parts of the new digital media have reshaped how political reporting is done. Tim Rutten bitches about blogs saying "Clearly, the mayor would not be in the fix he's in — and it's quite a fix — without the emergence of a vigorous online media that is reshaping the city's political landscape." I think we here at the Sister City take that as a compliment. In a related post on Newsbusters Dave Pierre says Rutten's article exposes a double standard about the Times' coverage of Republican and Democratic philanderers.

Radar Online reports that Mayor Villaraigosa's situation definitely presents a big problem for Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

Luke Ford enumerates the number of entries on the growing list of Antonio's alleged girls starting with Mirthala, the latest one and many others. He also puts a number of you in the spotlight posting your comments on his well known blog. Luke also wonders aloud if getting on that list gets you a plum city position. No proof to that yet, let's hope we don't find it.

Writing in the Daily News Earl Ofari Hutchinson says that the Mayor's relationship with Mirthala Salinas "crosses the line" and raises troubling questions when an elected official has an affair with a journalist.

Newsbusters points out that he LA Times makes quite a dumb point in an editorial claiming that Republicans seem to get away with affairs more than Democrats. I guess they forgot about Bill Clinton avoiding conviction on impeachment. The more I think about it I don't see the point of the Times' logic.

The Inland Valley Daily Bulletin is living in some kind of fantasy world. The paper editorializes that these sex scandals won't hurt the Mayor and that he has some kind of "potential."

The Times has video of Mirthala reporting the Mayor's divorce on air (scroll down the page).

Lonewacko's hope has been it would be his radical ways that would lead Tony Villar to lead his political campaign down the tubes but if a sex scandal is what does, he's cool with it.

The LA Times Dana Parsons has discovered the "anti-Villaraigosa:" Laguna Woods Mayor Milt Robbins, 86 years old, married for 63 years to Marilyn and whose biggest guilty pleasure is his occasional weekend nine holes of golf.

Flap the Blogging Dentist has lots of tidbits and photos of the Mayor's alleged new girlfriend.

Here's what readers say about the Mayor and his recent troubles:

• One reader claims that The LA Times is doing damage control for the Mayor.
• In the meantime another Mayor Sam fan says that the Spanish language media is AWOL on the story.
• Another poster alleges that the Villaraigosa name was not a politically correct feminist display of hyphenization, but a way for the future Mayor to escape rumored credit troubles.