[img]1697|right|Mr. Carmen Trutanich||no_popup[/img]Observing the fascinating parade of politicians that passes through our town, you begin to feel like one of those old-fashioned, chair-sitting maiden ladies who used to operate department store elevators in the ‘40s and ‘50s. What floor, please? Customers enter, mumble, and they depart without a recognizable trace.

Occasionally, a gentleman the stature of Carmen Trutanich steps onto your elevator. A man whose time to go has arrived before he planned to exit, as happens in democracies.

Ethnically Eastern European, he is one of those amazingly resilient spirits.  He owns a sometimes-weathered-but-never-surrender face that says, “Boys, this is nothin’. I have seen, and will again, much worse. This not only is not the end, it ain’t even the middle.”

The Trutaniches, a tall, handsome  sixtyish couple, produced tall, good-looking, immensely successful children, most of whom flanked him on the spotlighted, elevated stage at Rocco’s. The main room was darkened, illumined only by a smattering of scattered lamps and cameras. Lined across the stage, the Trutaniches must have been the champions of a family beauty contest.

No Shock Here

It was passionate, emotional, without any threat of the heaves because this was not a moment for shock. The concession scene could have been predicted and scripted last Tuesday. The first citywide candidate to correctly interpret the black clouds, Mr. Trutanich called Mr. Feuer, over in Hancock Park, during the shank of the evening and congratulated him.

Later, Mr. Trutanich, who badly wanted to continue as the city’s attorney, told the crowd that he and the best hundred lawyers in the country had rallied the office to such a boil that when Mr. Feuer enters in six weeks, it almost will run on auto-pilot.

The main room could have been hosting an American Bar Assn. convention, so jammed was it with smart-suited lawyers who came to honor the San Pedro-born and bred genuine article.

No Downpour in Sight

Surely tears were raining on the inside of Nuch as he delivered an exquisite farewell. Reviewing his record of restoration of effectiveness the last four years during a period of severe downsizing, Nuch skip-jumped  across the pinnacles of a forest of spires that represented towering achievements.

He is a hugger, a squeezer, an embracer, a font and a fount of emotion whose focus never strays from his laser eye to yours.

After his putative farewell address, standing in the middle with each arm draped around a glowing daughter, television and print reporters pressed him to pinpoint a reason he lost the primary to Mr. Feuer by 14 points, the runoff by 24.

Couldn’t.

Didn’t.

“Afterward when you look back at the reasons you lost,” a stubborn television guy fruitlessly began again…

Nuch squared up to him, congenially, though.

“I don’t look back,” he said. “Only forward.”

Which means returning to private practice.

Nuch was explicit about the conditions under which he emerged from private obscurity five years ago and became a major public personality for the first time in his life at age 57.

“I didn’t go seeking this job,” he told a huddle of reporters. “I was asked to run.”

Just remember this, dear reader:

The only man who ever willingly gives up broad authority was pronounced dead five minutes ago.

Thanks, Nuch. It has been memorable.