Calling Michael Shane Ellis a good-for-nothing, drinking-and-driving, hitting-and-running, all-around no account member of the Long Beach school board is simply not right. Not anymore. Not the good-for-nothing part, anyway.
A month after the re-election of two school board incumbents supported by the Long Beach Area Chamber of Commerce, the organization’s CEO and president acknowledges that Ellis’s [...]

Electioneering always looks like more fun in the movies–and it’s never looked better than in this 1940 sequence from Paramount Pictures’ Preston Sturges-directed “The Great McGinty.”
Preston Sturges? He’s the guy who brought you “The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek,” and of course “Sullivan’s Travels”–this last, the tale of a noted comedy director who has to be [...]

Long Beach Vice Mayor Bonnie Lowenthal was all smiles Saturday after receiving 67.3 percent of the vote at the Democratic Party’s Pre-Primary Endorsement Conference. But Councilwoman Tonia Reyes Uranga escaped as the short-term survivor by keeping Lowenthal from getting the 70 percent needed to qualify for the party’s official backing in their race for the [...]

We’d heard the rumors that State Senator Alan Lowenthal was considering a run for Long Beach Mayor in 2010. In fact, we’d passed them along [click here and check out the sixth paragraph] – complete with our own political musical-chairs scenario that had Second District City Councilwoman Suja Lowenthal running for her father-in-law’s senatorial seat and current Mayor Bob Foster running for [...]

Josh Lowenthal, a thus-far-private citizen from Long Beach’s most-prominent political family, has been contacted by top officials of the Long Beach Area Chamber of Commerce about running for the Board of Education seat that may soon be vacated by the Chamber’s effort to recall Michael Shane Ellis.
Altogether now: “What th–?!?”
“We sat down with Josh,” confirms Randy Gordon, [...]

Although Long Beach City Councilmember Bonnie Lowenthal has made extensive preparations to run for the California Assembly in 2008, her candidacy ultimately depends upon the result of a February ballot initiative that would loosen term-limit restrictions and allow incumbent Democrat Betty Karnette to run again.
Lowenthal would not challenge Karnette, a fellow Democrat who has represented the 54th Assembly District [...]

Oil spilled in San Francisco came from Port of Long Beach
In the most important story on the Nov. 8 spill, LBReport.com says the bunker fuel dumped in San Francisco had its origins in our backyard–and editor Bill Pearl isn’t just talking about the fact that the Hanjin freighter took on its load at the Port [...]

Warren Furutani, the Democratic Party’s now-officially endorsed candidate for Laura Richardson’s vacant 55th Assembly District seat, has what he admits may be a cheeky plan to improve air quality–if he’s elected, and if they let him.