Forfeiting a Brilliant Career

             Why this happened, why he evidently committed a doomsday-sized legal gaffe, is at the heart of today’s story. 
            The most entrancing game on the Westside is tracing the shadowy steps that Mr. Ludlow, the formerly bright, the formerly promising young politician, secretly took before swan diving into oblivion on Tuesday afternoon. 
            The reported accusation is that he allegedly approached leaders of the Service Employees International Union Local 99, asking them to hire people at the union who instead worked on his campaign. Four or more such persons are said to be cooperating with the feds.

            At a still tender forty-one years old, Mr.Ludlow now must re-invent himself. His old life is over. He will have to go to a cemetery to visit it.

            Until the news broke like a tidal wave last Friday morning that he was in steep trouble with the feds, he was on his way to the White House.

            Or was it the U.S. Senate?

            Perhaps the Governor’s Mansion in Sacramento.

            Glamourous, clean-cut, sharp, smart, driven, popular and tastefully starving for power, Mr. Ludlow converted strategically shrewd apprenticeships into a seat on the Los Angeles City Council. From there, it was a baby step, he said, to his dream job, as The Boss. On a sunny day last July, he ascended the ultimate throne as the executive secretary-treasurer of the muscular, and feared, Los Angeles County Federation of Labor.

           

 

            Once the first public report starkly charged that the mercurially advancing Mr. Ludlow was in career-ending trouble with the feds — accused of illegally channeling union funds into his City Council campaign three years ago — events moved swiftly. Breath-stealing heat spread like a fat man snatching the final seat on a bus. Mr. Ludlow skidded from admired Golden Boy to prospective convicted felon before your cereal could get soggy.

            Within seventy-two hours, he was out of there, the coldest stiff in town.

            You probably would not have wanted to be at his going-away party two days ago when he told the boys down at the union hall he was surrendering his dream job, among other precious possessions. Said he would be busy for the foreseeable future, somewhere between ten years and the rest of his life.

            Eyewitnesses say that Mr. Ludlow withdrew with dignity, befitting his stature as a frequently cited model for minority young men.

            He was surrounded by delusional friends who portrayed him as an altar boy. Fabian Nunez, one of the most regrettable legislators in Sacramento, suggested that his pal was of the victim of “overzealous prosecutors.”

            To demonstrate how far away from reality Mr. Nunez was, one political operative laid it out this way for thefrontpageonline.com:

            “I just know what I read in the newspapers,” she said. “But if Ludlow is talking to prosecutors about a deal, unwilling to risk a jury trial, that should tell you a great deal about what the truth is in this case.”

            Just as mourners reflect on a spent life at a funeral, follow me back to last spring and summer when, —unknown to all but a few people —Mr. Ludlow was at the apogee of a career that hardly anyone realized was wilting.

            For all of the deep bows he took and the Boy Scout smiles he flashed, something was terribly wrong.

 

 

 

            Was all of that boyish jubilation a sham? He was in trouble, but none of the approaching drama showed. When it looked to the world as if he had it all, didn’t Mr. Ludlow realize that he was walking on a foundation constructed of jello?

            Possibly he was distracted because destiny, that fickle dame, still was working overtime to make him a star.

            From the moment that the chief executive of the County Federation of Labor unexpectedly dropped dead in May until Mr. Ludlow, a union man to the bone, abruptly quit as a City Councilman so he could win an emergency election to become the new chief, everything was as good as life can be. It was so temporary.

            What do you make of the secret that he was harboring, about the alleged funneling of union funds in ’03 into his Council campaign?

            If disaster was beckoning, why did he go through the exaggerated ritual of resigning from his high-profile seat on the City Council, leaping into a brief campaign for the job, and then embracing the powerful chair that he had lustily desired for so long?

            One insider speculated that Mr. Ludlow may have calculated that he would shed potential heat by stepping from the glaring spotlight of the City Council to the more muted light rays of the Federation.

            The back story has not yet emerged, but speculation has. “This could have been done neatly and legally,” a source said. ”If Local 99 had just conducted an independent expenditure campaign, there would not have been any trouble. My guess is they didn’t because the union head probably realized she could not get the approval of the union board.”

            Janett Humphries, former president of Local 99, stands accused, too, and supposedly has been offered a plea bargain. Unlike Mr. Ludlow’s posture, her lawyers have said they will fight the charges.