THE POLITICAL LANDSCAPE:

After checking with Los Angeles Times leadership, it appears that the biggest newspaper in California has not, in fact, endorsed Gary Monahan in his bid for Costa Mesa’s City Council.

Not that the paper has anything against Monahan — the leadership of the international paper is just not in the habit of inserting itself into city council races.

Still, that did not stop whoever is putting up signs for the candidate from plastering one to the fence of the paper’s Orange County office.

Campaign signs have been posted all over the Newport-Mesa area in hopes of telling passersby something about the candidates for office.

For instance, driving down 17th Street one can’t help but notice a veritable totem pole of signs promoting more than a half-dozen candidates for the city councils of Newport Beach and Costa Mesa alike.

Atop the pole, above all the others and no less than 15 feet in the air, sits Newport Beach Councilman Steve Rosansky’s flamboyantly colored sign.

It was put there, no doubt, to tell voters that Rosansky owns the tallest ladder in town.

If Mayor Eric Bever is ever being stalked by an obsessed fan of his political speeches, the first place police should check is a small house on Placentia Avenue.

The house is speckled with not one or two, but a handful of prominently displayed Bever signs.

Councilwoman Katrina Foley might not be the biggest fundraiser so far, but the Costa Mesa incumbent makes up for it with the immense size of her bright green yard signs.

When someone puts another sign directly in front of one of hers, it hardly makes a difference in visibility.

But when a Foley booster puts one of her signs in front of a competitor’s, the competitor’s sign never sees the light of day.

If the amount of trouble a candidate goes through to make signs were an indicator of his or her chances in the election, it seems as though Costa Mesa challenger Chris McEvoy would win in a landslide.

The young teacher and lifelong resident of the city who is running a low-budget campaign appears to have reserved his hand-painted, black-and-white, wooden signs for the front yards of supporters, perhaps because it would take a team of laborers and a small forest worth of lumber to scatter them all over public places like many of the other candidates have chosen to do.

OC Weekly awards local writer for Best Blog

Community blogger Geoff West — one of the most prolific writers about Costa Mesa political issues around — was given the award for Best Blog in 2008 by the alternative newspaper OC Weekly.

His blog, which he calls A Bubbling Cauldron, beat out some much more widely known blogs such as the Liberal OC, Red County’s OC Blog and Orange Juice!, as well as his local blogging nemesis the CM Press, whose creator, Martin Millard, often provokes West’s ire and vice versa.

On the website, abubblingcauldron. blogspot.com, West comments on all sorts of municipal issues, writing about everything from traffic congestion to the upcoming city council elections.

In the recently released annual issue, the Weekly says “West writes with wit, outrage, investigative gusto and — most important and unlike the Big Three — doesn’t have a horse in the race other than a genuine desire to turn the rascals out.”

A longtime Costa Mesa resident who became active in the local political scene after retiring, West was surprised and excited to get the recognition.

“Wow! This is pretty darn heady stuff for a geezer who just writes the occasional entry in his little old blog and hopes a few people will find it interesting and/or informative,” West wrote on his blog after finding out about the award.