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If the first Community Forum for City Council candidates — two afternoons ago at the Senior Center — is an indication, the April 8 election will have to be postponed for four or five months to allow the Forums to play out.

The loosely supervised inaugural Forum ran so lengthily that the youngest visitors in the room at the Senior Center nearly qualified as seniors themselves before the program chugged to a merciful finish.

Neither audible groaning from the exhausted candidates nor dropouts departing the audience impressed the master of ceremonies.

Attempting to anoint her successor, the retiring County Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke will endorse Los Angeles City Councilman Bernie Parks in the June election for the Board of Supervisors, the Downtown News reported this morning.

Jon Regardie wrote that Ms. Burke, who was deferring an announcement until after Super Tuesday for bigger play, likely will make her choice public next week.

During an election season when the value of even supposedly prestigious endorsements is being openly questioned, political sources said Mr. Parks obviously will welcome the support.

Albert Vera, three-time former Mayor and City Councilmember, today has endorsed Dr. Luther Henderson for the City Council election on April 8.

“I support and endorse Dr. Henderson for the City Council,” Mr. Vera said. “He has the right vision, the experience and the leadership qualities Culver City needs.

“I know he will do what is best for Culver City,” said Mr. Vera, employing a phase he frequently used during his own Council days.

Fresh off of his shiny new endorsement from the Chamber of Commerce, City Council candidate Andy Weissman said there are major differences between his first run for office in the 1980s and the present campaign.

“The first time, everything was new, and I was still pretty green,” he said. “Now I have smoothed out a bit.”

That can happen when an aspirant for office transforms from a 36-year-old into a more mature 57-year-old.

A blockbuster development this afternoon in the National Guard Armory murder case of last summer:

Even though National Guard Staff Sgt. Erik Hein informed the Culver City police — more than two weeks before the messy killing — that a co-worker was scouting for help to harm his girlfriend, authorities did not take any action.

Why, remains unanswered for now.

Crucially, this means that the pregnant victim, JoAnn Crystal Harris, 29 years old, never knew, was not warned, that her life was imperiled.

Randy Scott Leslie. Cary Anderson. Jeff Cooper. Gary Russell. Dr. Loni Anderson. Andy Weissman, Dr. Luther Henderson. Christopher Armenta. Mehaul O’Leary.

These are names to clip and save for the next two months.

Late in the morning of the first Community Forum of the campaign season, the nine candidates for three City Council seats in the April 8 election are a blend of nervous, anxious, curious, eminently relaxed as their first group appearance looms at 1:30 this afternoon at the Senior Center.

To the surprise of none but, no doubt, to the disappointment of a goodly number, Andy Weissman, the putative favorite in this spring’s City Council race, is the runaway leader at the end of the first financial filing period.

With only four of the nine candidates required to produce an accounting by Jan. 31, Mr. Weissman was converting his prominence into dollars.

A note from the editor:

We are indebted to the Sunkist Park activist Bonnie Wacker for the following exchange of opinions between engaged parties on the heatedly disputed Entrada Tower development project. With Ms. Wacker’s help, the case provides an instructive lesson in how concerned persons, acting separately and collectively, can make a difference in the quality of daily life in Culver City. Because of her role in last spring’s South Sepulveda Boulevard folly, she received an email yesterday from George Young of Culver City. Here is the timeline: On Sunday, Mr. Young received an email from his son Scott, majoring in architecture, telling of a letter he received from a Culver City activist about the dimensions of the Entrada Tower. In the third piece of correspondence, Scott Young shared with his father his response to the activist. When Ms. Wacker received the three pieces, she was so impressed she sent them to the newspaper very early this morning.

Part 2

[Editor’s Note: See “And Now for Someone a Little Different — Russell for City Council,” Jan. 23.]

City Council candidate Gary Russell says “Anyway, where we were we?” a lot. He seems to be chronically nervous, and he is eager to cover a maximum amount of philosophical ground when he is being interviewed for the first time.

The bouncing ball on the bottom of a television screen has nothing on Mr. Russell, verbally and physically.

For the hundreds of thousands of Californians who may be befuddled by the four Indian gaming casino propositions on Tuesday’s primary ballot, here is an insider’s view that has not yet been aired.

Twenty-eight years ago, Larry Zeidman of Culver City founded the L.A. Slot Machines Co., which grew into a multi-million-dollar international enterprise.

As the name of Mr. Zeidman’s company unabashedly announces, he is in the business of providing slot machines to casinos across the world.