Profiles

The advertisement was catnip to the MAGA faithful. “This is Republican state Sen. Doug Mastriano,” said the spot that blazed across Pennsylvania’s television airwaves, touting the candidate’s staunch opposition to abortion and mail-in balloting, and his whole-hog embrace of the stolen 2020 election lie. “If Mastriano wins,” the ad declared, “it’s a win for what Donald…

Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom was the winner of the California gubernatorial recall, with voters choosing by a wide margin to keep him in office despite critics' jabs that he bungled the state's COVID-19 pandemic response, let homelessness run amok, and had otherwise proved to be a failed leader. The former San Francisco mayor and lieutenant…

[caption id="attachment_112" align="aligncenter" width="300"] Political strategist Garry South in his Marina del Rey home. (Cheryl A. Guerrero / Los Angeles Times)[/caption] The question was rhetorical. “Can a boxer be a Christian?” Garry South asked. “Because you know what he does: He pounds the crap out of another human being. He draws blood!” South, a famously…

[caption id="attachment_117" align="aligncenter" width="300"] Former California Gov. Gray Davis' former campaign manager Garry South recently donated a collection of the governor's election campaign documents to the UCLA Library.[/caption] The UCLA Library recently announced it has added a collection of election campaign documents from a former California governor to its archive of political documents and materials. An assortment…

[caption id="attachment_119" align="aligncenter" width="300"] Democratic strategist Garry South inside his home office at Santa Monica, CA.[/caption] Sharp-tongued Democratic strategist Garry South has long specialized in behind-the-scenes skulduggery that has shaped decades of major political races in California – and the fortunes of many candidates. Now, like a magician drawing back the curtain shrouding his biggest…

California's 2010 governor's race is becoming a war of words, complete with fireworks, YouTube videos and comic relief - but it is the high-priced campaign consultants, not the candidates, who are frequently stealing the show. Months before the first ballots will be cast - and as some of the nation's top political guns gather at…

Controller Steve Westly has emboldened his campaign for the California governorship in 2006 by hiring a top Democratic political consultant. The former eBay executive appointed veteran Democratic strategist Garry South as senior adviser, shaking up a contest that until recently had seemed like GOP Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s to lose. South was a longtime strategist for…

Garry South has a gift for gab, no doubt about it. Along with many other gifts, not least among them astonishing recall. At the end of a five-hour interview, I find my jaw sagging, perhaps from exhaustion, but also because he has just rattled off the names of all the state officeholders in Montana in…

Garry South, the pugnacious political strategist who masterminded Gray Davis’ last three election victories, is signing on as a senior campaign advisor to Democratic presidential hopeful Joseph I. Lieberman. South’s appointment, to be announced today in Washington, comes as Davis faces the threat of a recall, and means the governor will have to fight back…

Garry South leans forward in his chair, smiles slyly and steals a line from a Grateful Dead song: “What a long, strange trip this has been.” South, Gov. Gray Davis’ senior political adviser, close confidant and political mastermind, is referring to this year’s gubernatorial race. But he could be talking about his own journey from…