Chief of LA County Federation of Labor resigns

Los Angeles -- The chief of a powerful federation of unions and an ally of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa resigned Tuesday amid an investigation into fundraising improprieties surrounding his successful City Council campaign three years ago.

"As a result of errors in my judgment, I must take these steps to begin to accept full responsibility for the mistakes that I made," Martin Ludlow, chief of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, said while announcing his resignation at the union's downtown headquarters.

Ludlow, who resigned from the City Council last year to take the labor job, said he was cooperating with investigators probing whether his successful 2003 election campaign benefited from a secret effort by leaders of Local 99 of the Service Employees International Union.

Investigators suspect Local 99 leaders illegally spent at least $53,000 in union funds to hire political operatives as phantom employees and pay for cell phones, computers and phone banks for Ludlow's campaign, according to The Los Angeles Times.

Ludlow, 41, has been offered a plea deal by prosecutors that would bar him from union leadership but spare him jail time, according to the Times.

Villaraigosa, who was in Sacramento on Tuesday, had no comment, said mayoral spokeswoman Janelle Erickson.

Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, D-Los Angeles, called Ludlow an "honorable and talented man."

I'm sure Antonio is distressed over hearing that his "ally" might have been a crook. /s

Los Angeles Times, February 17, 2006
His parents — who adopted him as a 9-month-old in Idaho — were active in a number of social causes, and it didn't take long for Ludlow to find his way into the Southern California labor movement. For a time he represented employees at Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center, and he was later Western regional director for the service employees union.
In 1998, Ludlow became deputy chief of staff for Villaraigosa, who at the time was speaker of the state Assembly. Three years later, Ludlow took a position as political director under Contreras at the County Federation of Labor. Then in 2002 he returned to the Assembly to work for Herb Wesson, who had succeeded Bob Hertzberg as speaker. Wesson now holds the seat Ludlow vacated on the City Council.
In 2003, with considerable backing from labor, Ludlow won election to the council over a crowded field that included incumbent Nate Holden's hand-picked successor. A year later Ludlow married Kimberly Blake, whose father, Bishop Charles Blake, heads the 24,000-member West Angeles Church of God in Christ.
Then Contreras died unexpectedly early last May in the final days of Villaraigosa's mayoral campaign.
Villaraigosa — with help from Contreras' widow, Maria Elena Durazo, and current Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez — pushed the county federation to hire Ludlow; labor had mostly backed James K. Hahn in the campaign. Some members of the federation were unhappy, hoping to replace Contreras with a labor veteran, not a politician.

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