2 Quit L.A. Primary and Support Hahn

Dark-horse candidates Betsy Mogul and Charles Zinger withdrew from the Los Angeles city attorney’s race and endorsed the front-runner, City Controller James Hahn. The two veteran deputy city attorneys said that Hahn, a former deputy himself, is the only qualified candidate with a chance to win. They said that the apparent second-place challenger, Lisa Specht, who has never worked in a city attorney’s office, lacks sufficient experience for the post. Hahn predicted that the joint decision by Mogul and Zinger to endorse him would have a “dramatic effect” on next Tuesday’s municipal primary election. But Hahn declined to declare that his battle to avoid a runoff with Specht has been won. Specht and the other remaining candidate, attorney Murray Kane, played down the Zinger-Mogul development as “insignificant.”