1,000,000th pothole succumbs to rake-wielding pols!

There it is: pothole No. 1,000,000 succumbing to Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Councilwoman Wendy Greuel and Councilman Tom LaBonge. Times reporter Phil Willon took the pictures with his Blackberry. The pothole was in Toluca Lake. Not to pat myself on the back, but when I attended the 800,000th pothole press conference in South Los Angeles this spring, I recall predicting that No. 1,000,000 would be in the San Fernando Valley. No need to secede anymore!

-- Steve Hymon

Photos: Phil Willon / Los Angeles Times

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa: I love the smell of asphalt in the morning!

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's office put the word out over the weekend: The city this morning will fill the 1 millionth pothole since he took office in 2005. Who is keeping score, you might be wondering.

Answer: the city of Los Angeles.

The offending pothole is at the corner of Valley Spring and Strohm in the Toluca Lake area. From a political perspective, that's a great area. It allows Councilman Tom LaBonge to show up at the news conference, because it's his district and he loves, loves, loves news conferences.

It's also just east of the district represented by Councilwoman Wendy Greuel, who is also the chair of the City Council's transportation committee and could use some TV time: She's running for city controller in March, and if she wins -- a good chance, because she's unopposed -- she will be leaving the council in mid-June, forcing a special election to fill her seat. One big question: Will the city get to another notable pothole milestone before that happens?

And, of course, there's the mayor. His last big pothole conference came in the spring, also on a Monday morning. Why Monday mornings, you ask? Because the TV news folks are just starting their workweek and it's nice to have a staged event like this one waiting for them with easy visuals -- the mayor filling a pothole.

I'm curious what readers think. Does it feel like 1 million potholes have been filled in L.A. since summer July 2005? Or do you believe the roads in Baghdad may be better?

The comment board is open for business and Bottleneckers know the only thing more fun than filling a pothole is filling the board with nuggets of wisdom.

--Steve Hymon

The news release is after the jump.

Fighting traffic, meeting Barry Goldwater

I'm a sucker for campaign mailers and the things that politicians or aspiring politicians say on them -- particularly when it's about fixing traffic.

So it was somewhat puzzling when a colleague brought in a mailer she had received from Sonny Sardo, who on Tuesday was trounced by a 47% margin by incumbent David Dreier in the Republican primary for the 26th Congressional district.

One side of his campaign flier has a box labeled "Relieving Traffic Congestion" under which the following appears:

"Sonny Sardo supports continued funding for the Alameda Corridor East Project and the Gold Line Foothill Extension."

OK, fine. He wants to fix traffic. Who doesn't? But if you flip the flier over, there's a photo of Sardo, right, with a guy and the following caption:

"Barry Goldwater and Sonny Sardo meet to discuss the restoration of the Republican Party to its fundamental principles."

What makes it fun is that the dude in the photo isn't the guy most people identify with the name "Barry Goldwater" -- that is, the five-term, conservative Senator from Arizona who ran for president in '64, right.

So I called Sardo this morning, he promptly called back and I asked him if it's a little misleading to have that caption when trying to win the trust of voters to do big things -- like fix traffic.

“It’s funny you mention that,” Sardo said. “I had two calls on that out of all the mailings, and they said maybe you should have put ‘Barry Goldwater Jr.’ on there."

But of course: That’s Barry Goldwater Jr. in the photo, son of the late senator and seven-term Congressman who left office in 1983. D'oh! Sardo said they're not close friends, but that he knows the junior Goldwater.

“If you have a strong Republican background, I can guarantee that 99% of the folks know who that was,” added Sardo, who also said that the mailer was mailed mostly to Republican voters.

“If I was at the mall passing out fliers that would be a stupid mailer to put out,” he said. “The only thing I would have changed at all is [making the caption] Barry Goldwater Jr.”

So there you go. And to Sardo: better luck next election, sir.

--Steve Hymon

Photo of flier: Steve Hymon / Los Angeles Times