It's grueling (Wendy Greuel-ing) to run citywide in L.A.

I sat for a while with Janice Hahn and Wendy Greuel, her husband, Dean, and their son, Thomas. Wendy was an aide to Tom Bradley when he started LA's BEST. She's now a City Councilwoman and a candidate for City Controller.

I hadn't seen Thomas for a while. When he was a baby, Wendy would bring him along to events and I'd entertain him while she talked politics. He is clearly a very important part of her life. She's balancing being a politician - and a mother.

Now, as Thomas told me, he's "four and three-quarters years old."  He also informed me that we were wearing the same outfit, which means either I'm dressing like a child, or he's got incredibly good taste.

Three hours later, I met up again with Wendy and her family at the UCLA Alumni Awards. Our friend, Jeff Seymour, was being given the 2008 Alumni Award for University Service, an honor most of us thought he received years ago. He certainly deserved it. Jeff works his ass off for the school, and I'm sure he has a little bruin tattooed somewhere on his body.

Also in our row - people with kids sit in the back -- were our friends Richard Katz, Wendy Mitchell and their 15-month-old son Mitchell, who, Thomas pointed out, was wearing an outfit similar to ours. The kid's very clothes conscious.

All of us sat through the first half of presentations to see Jeff get his award and hear his speech, and then I took the boys out in the lobby. They were doing fine - their moms gave them their cell phones to play with (only in LA!)-- but no kid should be forced to sit through 20 or so acceptance speeches.

We had a great time. Mitch, who has been become a wonderful addition to my life since he was born, crawled around (he knows how to walk, his mother points out, he just chooses to crawl), while Thomas ranked the relative merits of Spiderman, Transformers and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for me. (Transformers won.) The only unsettling moment is when one of the students working the event asked if I was their grandfather.

After about an hour, Wendy and her husband retrieved Thomas. They were headed to yet another event.

I've been around politicians for 30 years and I've known Wendy a long time, but I was struck by what it's going to take for her to become Controller. She is arguably the smartest and hardest working member on the City Council, her Valley constituents love her and she would undoubtedly do a great job. But it's going to take months of spending weekends attending non-stop events all over the city and about $2 million to get there.

"You know, Thomas," Wendy said as we walked to the door, "Doug was the every first person who told me I should run for the City Council."

I quickly added: "That's true, kid, but I had nothing to do with this one!"

It was almost 5 o'clock. The candidate and her husband had started early and looked tired, but Thomas seemed ready to go. Twenty-five years from now, when he's running for mayor, he'll probably recall when he campaigned with his mother when he was just a boy.

Let's hope by that time, with his mother's help, we've done something to fix the problems that have plagued us for the past 25 years. If not, I have feeling he'll be up to the job.  I'm positive he'll be well dressed.