POLITICS (National): Congressional redistricting, report/analysis, "Texas-style redistricting vexes voters, puts map boundaries in perpetual motion"....

* Washington Post:  "Texas-style redistricting vexes voters, puts map boundaries in perpetual motion" - From the WP:

SAN ANTONIO — More than in any other state in the union, the redrawing of congressional district lines in Texas is a partisan blood feud that turns the once-a-decade event of redistricting into a protracted, almost continuous, political and legal battle, sometimes with dire consequences.

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But weirdness and confusion are the hallmarks of redistricting in Texas.

This year’s upheaval, for example, meant that the primary election day scheduled for March 6 had to be postponed until May 29. That delay crushed the presidential hopes of Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, both of whom thought a win in Texas would reenergize their bid for the GOP presidential nomination. . . . . . . .

The delayed primary also allowed former state solicitor general Ted Cruz, a tea party favorite, to mount an insurgent bid for the U.S. Senate against Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, the prohibitive establishment favorite to replace the retiring Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison. Now, it looks as if Cruz will force Dewhurst into a late-July runoff for the GOP nomination.

Instead of pitched battles followed by compromise and a single map for the next decade, as happens in the other 49 states, Texans gird for a longer fight. The result is that districts sometimes get redrawn more than once after each official census, often leaving voters unsure who their representative is or in which district they reside..................

MORNING MEMOS: Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, new TV show "breaks boredom in Sacramento"; editorial, San Francisco billboard law; Sacramento, state Senate elections, Democrats trying to capture supermajority control; L.A. County Dist. Attorney election, overview, six candidates vying to succeed Steve Cooley....

***Various items this morning from across the spectrum of politics and/or public policy....

* Sacramento Bee:  "Gavin Newsom breaks boredom in Sacramento with his TV show"

* San Francisco Chronicle (editorial):  "S.F. should stand up for billboard law"

* Los Angeles Times:  "6 candidates vie to succeed Cooley as L.A. County D.A." - "The June 5 election will be the first since 1964 in which an incumbent hasn't been on the ballot. If a candidate doesn't garner 50% of the vote, the top vote-getters will meet in a November runoff."

* Sacramento Bee:  "California Democrats bid for two-thirds control of state Senate"

L.A. CITY HALL: 2013 mayor's race, Wendy Greuel, Los Angeles Current Affairs Forum, Jim Newton op-ed, "Greuel's hot hand"....

* Los Angeles Times (Jim Newton op-ed):  "Greuel's hot hand" -  "It's very early in the L.A. mayor's race, but the city controller is making her mark." - From the LAT:

It's still very, very early in the campaign to become the next mayor of Los Angeles, but right now, it's City Controller Wendy Greuel who's playing the hot hand. The only independent poll shows her in a tie with City Council President Eric Garcetti and county Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, who still has not decided whether to run.

Greuel is personable and well liked and holds an office that allows her to make news. . . . . . . And more than any other candidate, she stands to pick up the business support that businessman Austin Beutner had hoped to corral; Beutner's campaign sputtered and he withdrew a couple weeks ago.

Greuel took her campaign to the Los Angeles Current Affairs Forum last week, following earlier appearances by Yaroslavsky and Garcetti. It's a useful venue for evaluating these early candidacies — large enough to see the candidates work a room, and populated by insiders who bring their own expertise to the event.

Greuel, who was celebrating her 51st birthday, was gracious and articulate, fluent in the intricacies of City Hall and deft at emphasizing the range of experience that differentiates her, if only slightly, from her leading competitors.

Greuel once worked at DreamWorks, and her family has long owned a small business. She highlights those aspects of her background to distinguish herself from politicians who have spent their lives seeking and holding elected office. And she stitches that together with her current work — supervising audits intended to identify waste in city spending. Those give Greuel standing to argue that although she's spent the last decade at City Hall, she's not entirely a creature of it.

In her remarks, Greuel sharply criticized Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and the City Council for the budget they have moved swiftly through the approval process in recent weeks. As they have so many times before, they merely delayed a reckoning with the city's fiscal shortfall, Greuel said, "tinkering around the edges" instead of making hard choices. She called that "dangerous and completely unacceptable."

And yet she took care not to offend her labor supporters, stressing that merely laying off workers damages services to the public. . . . . . . . .

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We spoke after her address, and Greuel said she believes she's poised to gather broad support. Voters, she's convinced, are eager to elect someone who not only has a vision for a more livable Los Angeles but who is capable of bringing that vision about. Although she's been allied with Villaraigosa, Greuel acknowledges that a lack of follow through is what many of his most ardent supporters fault him on. By contrast, she insisted, "I have the ability to get things done."

The road ahead is long and full of potholes. . . . . . . . . .  Moreover, the field still could change. . . . . . .

Over the coming months, that field will shape and reshape. Front-runners will come and go. For the moment, it's Greuel who has momentum.

***NOTE:  Los Angeles Current Affairs Forum events are organized and coordinated by yours truly....

LOCAL GOVERNMENT (Washington, D.C.): Local politics in D.C., electoral scandal "dimming influence" of Mayor Vincent Gray and "brightening political prospects" of some other city leaders, speculation regarding 2014 D.C. mayoral election....

***Following up on most recent earlier reports noted here....

* Washington Post:  "Mayoral ambitions surfacing early in D.C." - From the WP:

The convictions last week of two of Mayor Vincent C. Gray’s former campaign aides have scrambled local politics in the nation’s capital, dimming Gray’s influence and brightening the political prospects of some other city leaders. Not even 18 months in office, Gray (D) is threatened with being a one-term mayor, political analysts say, and the electoral scandal has opened the door for at least two white candidates in 2014.

“I don’t see any scenario in which Vince Gray could win another race,” said Johnny Allem, a supporter of Gray’s 2010 campaign who has been active in city politics for four decades. “The issue of his last campaign won’t go away. You can make the argument that the city government hasn’t suffered, and I think it’s running fairly well. But that’s not what’s on people’s minds.”

The talk of Gray’s possible downfall intensified last week with guilty pleas from two former aides who paid a minor mayoral candidate, Sulaimon Brown, to stay in the race and harass then-incumbent Adrian M. Fenty (D). Already, potential rivals have begun laying the groundwork for a 2014 run, much earlier than normal in the electoral process. . . . . . . . . .

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Gray’s supporters say the mayor could mount a political comeback if the federal probe wraps up swiftly without directly implicating him. An early start on reelection and a crowded field could compensate for Gray’s weakened political punch.

Whatever happens, the District’s racial divisions, a factor in Gray’s defeat of Fenty in the 2010 Democratic primary, are likely to resurface in 2014 as some of Gray’s African American supporters are increasingly disillusioned. The possibility of two white candidates . . . could further expose the divide................

POLITICS (Bay Area): Poll, public perception, Mayor Ed Lee's suspension of San Francisco Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi; poll, arguments, reasons for support for moving Golden State Warriors from Oakland to San Francisco....

* San Francisco Chronicle (Matier & Ross): 

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Uphill fight: A new poll suggests suspended San Francisco Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi is having a tough time getting the public on his side.

The May 16-21 poll, conducted by Fairbank, Maslin, Maullin, Metz and Associates, found that 76 percent of the 601 city voters surveyed agreed with Mayor Ed Lee's March 20 decision to replace Mirkarimi with retired department veteran Vicki Hennessy.

Just 14 percent disagreed with Lee's call to toss Ross, who pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor domestic violence charge after grabbing his wife's arm during a New Year's Eve spat. The remaining 10 percent were undecided.

The poll was conducted for an unnamed client as part of a broader survey.

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The big sell: The Golden State Warriors did some pretty extensive polling to lay the groundwork for their big rollout pitch for a waterfront arena - and the best talking points were found to be no public money, no new taxes and the promise of construction jobs.

Ironically, the lowest-scoring argument for building the arena was that it would mean a return of the Warriors to San Francisco.

As for East Bay blowback over leaving Oakland, 66 percent of the 606 voters surveyed in Alameda and Contra Costa counties said they supported the idea of an arena in San Francisco.