client

A bipartisan package of bills aimed at punishing unethical attorneys and hedge funds that have flourished within California’s legal industry is headed to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk.

The two bills would bar lawyers from prioritizing the desires of private investors who fund lawsuits, and ramp up penalties for lawyers who scout for clients at hospitals, jails and accident sites.

Assemblymember Rick Chavez Zbur (D-Los Angeles), one of the bill authors, said the legislation is intended to police the state’s bruised legal profession in response to “a wave of inappropriate attorney conduct” reported by The Times.

Times investigations last year found some clients within L.A. County’s $4-billion sex abuse settlement said they were paid to sue and, in some cases, fabricate claims.

“When attorneys are exploiting vulnerable people, including paying folks to file fraudulent claims, they’re not just breaking the law, they really undermine the credibility of the legal system and every attorney,” Zbur said.

Both bills were sponsored by the Consumer Attorneys of California, a powerful trial lawyer trade group that says it wants to beef up punishment for misconduct.

“If we are going to demand that corporations, government, and powerful institutions be held accountable, we must be — and we are — willing to hold ourselves to that same standard,” Doug Saeltzer, head of the association, said in a statement.

California law already bans a practice known as capping, in which non-attorneys directly solicit or procure clients to sign up for lawsuits with a law firm.

Zbur’s legislation, Assembly Bill 2039, would require that attorneys lose their license if they’re convicted of felony capping or a misdemeanor capping conviction in which they “acted knowingly and for financial gain.” The lawyers could also be fined $25,000 per violation.

The bill also creates whistleblower protections for law firm employees who report misconduct, and would enact new restrictions on loans that attorneys give their clients. California is one of the few states where lawyers can lend money directly to plaintiffs.

Lawyers who use the loans to sway the client’s decision-making around “legal strategy, settlement decisions, or continued representation” can be fined $15,000 per offense.

The second bill aims to bar private investors from influencing a case — for example, telling a lawyer how many clients to take on or when to settle — in lawsuits they fund.

California allows lawyers to take high-interest rate loans from investors, such as private equity firms or hedge funds, who expect to profit from the payout when a case is settled. Critics of this litigation funding claim investors sometimes exert themselves in legal strategy to the detriment of the clients, such as requiring a case to settle prematurely so the law firm can repay the loan faster.

“We don’t want them having any influence in the outcome of a case,” said Assemblyman Ash Kalra (D-San José), who authored AB 2305. “We want the lawyers to be able to represent their clients, and then not have those financial pressures play any role.”

A spokesperson for Newsom’s office said they don’t comment on pending legislation.

Lawyers already are barred under State Bar rules from allowing a third party to dictate case strategy. Kalra has said the goal of the bill is to provide additional “clear statutory safeguards.”

Law firms would also be barred from using money from private investors to market for cases, Kalra said. The State Bar would be tasked with disciplining lawyers that flout the rule.

A Times investigation last year found law firms that have filed thousands of sex abuse claims in California are funded by private investors, meaning an unknown chunk of the $4-billion settlement will go into the pockets of opaque funders.

It’s unclear how violations of the law would come to the attention of the State Bar. Litigation funding agreements are typically private between the funder and the law firm, and clients often don’t know their cases are being funded by private investors.

Jaime Huff, the head of the Civil Justice Assn. of California, which advocates for lawsuit reform on behalf of business interests, said her group — a frequent foe of California trial lawyers — ultimately pulled their support from the bill because they found it toothless.

“I don’t trust the State Bar to tie their own shoes in the morning, much less govern this stuff,” said Huff. “It’s basically gaslighting the public into thinking, ‘Yes, they’ve done something.’”

“It’s like the mall cop of self-policing,” she added.

Kalra said the point was to send a blunt message to the state’s legal bar.

“There may be loopholes that folks find in this one, and they have to follow up and close those loopholes,” he said. “But ultimately, it makes a very clear rule as to how that funding can be used. Once that rule is in place, it’s the law. And lawyers have to follow the law.”

They were two killings that rocked the rap world.

In 1996, Tupac Shakur was gunned down off the Las Vegas Strip. Then, less than a year later, Christopher Wallace, aka Biggie Smalls or the Notorious B.I.G., was killed in a drive-by shooting in front of the Petersen Automotive Museum on Wilshire Boulevard.

The two killings have long been tied together in popular culture.

Now, a detective says the investigation into Wallace’s death helped lead police to the suspect on trial in Las Vegas in Shakur’s slaying.

Duane “Keffe D” Davis, a onetime Compton gang member, is accused of orchestrating the Sept. 7, 1996, killing of Shakur. Prosecutors say the killing was rooted in a war between Southside Crips-Burris Street, led by Davis, and Mob Piru, a gang long associated with Death Row Records. Shakur was closely affiliated with the record company.

Authorities say Davis was in the car with his nephew, who grabbed the murder weapon and fired the fatal bullet.

On Wednesday, former LAPD Homicide Det. Daryn Dupree said Davis set out his role in Shakur’s killing in detail in 2008 to a joint LAPD federal task force that was formed to investigate Wallace’s murder.

To force Davis’ cooperation, Dupree said investigators gathered evidence that Davis, now 63, had sold a large quantity of PCP through his home, exposing him to a potential life sentence and leaving his family open to charges.

The task force questioned Davis about a car he owned that was similar to the one used in Wallace’s L.A. killing. Davis was given a proffer agreement, according to Dupree, meaning he agreed to provide information in exchange for possible benefit.

Davis said he knew about the Smalls shooting and then indicated, “we did the other one,” Dupree testified. That statement, he said, shifted investigators’ focus to the Shakur killing.

“We were talking about Christopher Wallace,” Dupree said. “We didn’t ask him any questions about Tupac. He offered that on his own.”

In a second interview, Dupree testified Davis stated that his nephew Orlando Anderson had been jumped, spurring Davis and cohorts on a hunt for revenge against Shakur.

The attack on Anderson occurred at a Mike Tyson fight earlier on the night of Sept. 7 in Las Vegas, according to Clark County prosecutors. Earlier in the trial, video was shown of Shakur’s entourage attacking Anderson, allegedly in retaliation over a chain that Anderson had previously stolen.

“They went looking for Tupac, Suge and anybody who was involved basically in the beatdown of Mr. Anderson,” Dupree said. Death Row Records boss Marion “Suge” Knight was in the car with Shakur the night he was killed.

When they found Shakur, the former detective testified, Davis “had the gun at first, but they came up on the passenger side,” where Knight was seated, “so he could not shoot across the driver. So he handed a gun to Dre in the back seat.” Deandre “Big Dre” Smith was among those in the white Cadillac in addition to Davis and Anderson.

“Davis said Deandre Smith was afraid to shoot,” Dupree testified, so “Anderson grabbed the gun and shot across Mr. Smith into Mr. Knight’s car.”

Davis told the task force they used a .40-caliber handgun, according to testimony.

Prosecutors said they would begin playing all five hours of the interviews to jurors on Thursday.

Dupree said Davis was signed up as a confidential informant in March 2009. He said Las Vegas police were not aware of the secret conversations at the time.

Dupree testified that Davis told investigators that former rapper and music mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs had been involved in targeting Shakur and Knight through East Coast drug dealer Eric “Von Zip” Martin.

He testified that Davis pledged to rekindle his relationship with Martin to gather evidence. But Martin had cancer, and that was not possible, Dupree said. Martin died in 2012.

Combs was never connected to the Shakur case and has denied ever being involved. Others have questioned Davis’ credibility on this and other points.

The Times in 2008 published a story suggesting a Combs link to Shakur’s killing. But it later retracted the story, saying it was based on documents that appeared to have been forged.

Prosecutors in Davis’ trial say the motive was straight revenge for the beating of Anderson, and that Martin allegedly gave Davis a gun. But they have made no allegations against Combs, who has long denied any role or connection to Shakur’s killing.

Michael Sanft, Davis’ defense attorney, told jurors in opening statements there would be no evidence linking his client to the shooting. Sanft noted that previous investigations did not take his client’s statements seriously because they were not credible. The defense attorney, in an unusual move, repeatedly undermined his own client’s credibility, saying Davis’ memoir, “Compton Street Legend,” where he talks about the Shakur killing, was a work of fiction for money and his client wasn’t in Las Vegas.

Under cross-examination, Dupree said Davis faced a life sentence in the PCP case and that his wife and family were in jeopardy because of it, so he needed to help authorities.

He said that LAPD Det. Greg Kading, the task force leader, left the department after investigating the Shakur and Smalls cases and published a book in 2011 that revealed Davis’ interview.

Dupree said the task force was trying to determine if money was really offered to kill Shakur. He said they were trying to build a racketeering case. “This is trying to solidify that Death Row Records was built on narcotics and Bad Boy Records.”

Dupree said he personally did not doubt Davis when he talked about Anderson killing Shakur.

“I knew he loved his nephew.”

For all the notoriety of the rapper killings, neither has yet led to convictions.

Wallace was leaving a music industry party at the Petersen Automotive Museum on March 9, 1997, sitting in the front passenger seat of a Chevrolet Suburban, when his killer pulled up alongside in a dark Chevy Impala.

As the SUV idled at a stoplight, the gunman opened fire, hitting the 24-year-old four times. He was rushed to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead shortly after 1 a.m.

From the beginning, police said they struggled to get leads and cooperation.

As The Times reported back in 1997, “although more than 1,000 people were said to be at the party, police said they had few eyewitnesses and even fewer solid leads … Detectives said they are investigating whether Wallace’s death is linked to bicoastal tensions within the rap world, but had nothing solid to go on.”

Despite many theories and a long LAPD investigation, the case remains unsolved.

There have been numerous books, documentaries and civil litigation that make allegations, but police said they could never build a case.

In 2017, an LAPD detective told The Times: “The shooter is most likely dead. You cannot ask him who paid him.”

Almost three decades ago, Joe Timko and Randy Neece were wandering through Disneyland, saw Goofy trailing around the gardens and made the connection.

This, but for dogs?

A Disneyland-inspired wonderland for their canine counterparts is what they were thinking. Timko, who Neece describes as “the most impulsive person in the world,” had no hesitation.

“That’s what we should do!” he says.

Dogs run around at the Wonderland yard.

That offhand vision has since expanded into Canyon View Ranch, a five-acre luxury retreat tucked into the hills of Topanga that its clients refer to as Disneyland for canines. Designed by married couple Timko and Neece, who worked as a trainer and TV game show director, respectively, this dog boarding retreat is like no other. Think multiple bone-shaped pools, a chauffeured shuttle service, behavioral and weight loss programs, 35 feet of underground tunnels and dedicated lands à la Disneyland, including Adventureland for the bigger hounds and Munchkinland for the little ones and older sports.

Dogs here wake promptly at 5 a.m. for morning exercise, eat breakfast at 6, take scheduled naps at 8, enjoy a “biscuit break” at 5:30 p.m. and are finally tucked in for “lights out” at 8. Ranch activities include hurtling through agility courses, swimming beneath a massive artificial waterfall and roaming sprawling fantasy playgrounds built expressly for their entertainment.

A map of the ranch drawn by Nina Rae Vaughn, the same artist who illustrates Disneyland’s official park maps.

(Canyon View Ranch)

Dog owners say that as soon as they pull into the driveway, their pups realize exactly where they’re headed and “start going bonkers,” says Neece. When they’re let loose, they enter Canyon View Ranch with the abandon of children running down Main Street, U.S.A.

Getting to the ranch requires a journey up winding hills, past signs that read “Please Be Kind,” on roads flanked by cacti, chaparral and coastal sage scrub. It looks nothing like the city.

Today, Canyon View Ranch boards around 60 dogs at once, often with a waiting list stretching six months or longer. There is no limitation on how long they can stay, and many of the dogs I meet today have been here for several weeks, totaling thousands with the ranch’s $100 nightly rate. Dogs travel from all over to get here, from Las Vegas to Dubai. Their owners include schoolteachers and secretaries alongside some of Los Angeles’ wealthiest families.

“We could be watching over all the jewelry in their safe,” Neece says, “and it wouldn’t matter as much as their dog.”

On this Wednesday morning, Neece and Timko lead the way through the property. Neece is calmly and casually kind, like a faithful bloodhound without jowls. Timko is sprightly, a live-wire Chihuahua. The two of them live on-site in what looks like a family home straight out of a 1990s Disney film, a white colonial home with blue shutters. There are 20 staff on-site. For Neece and Timko, the job is 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Munchinkland is for smaller and less energetic dogs at Canyon View Ranch.

Dogs follow animal care specialist John Highland.

“I have the best job in the world,” says John Highland, former veterinary technician and now one of the ranch’s animal care specialists, as the dogs stream into Adventureland.

A great many dogs run up to me, tails wagging, tongues lolling. Neece and Timko lead me eastward of Adventureland toward the dandelion-headed alpacas, Stumbelina and Sparkle. Other animals on-site include a stable full of horses and Cowboy the tortoise, who is about the size of a lawnmower and whose head protrudes from what looks like a Venus flytrap made of bone.

“They help bring the flavor of fun, and that’s exactly what we want to do here,” Neece says. “We want it to be an escape, just like Disneyland.”

Neece was raised 15 minutes away from Disneyland and developed an obsession with it early on. “I’ve read every book imaginable,” he says. “I have this really deep appreciation for Walt Disney’s vision.”

Every detail of Canyon View Ranch evokes the legendary Anaheim theme park. The property has its own illustrated map, drawn by Nina Rae Vaughn, the same artist who illustrates Disneyland’s official park maps. The dogs’ sleeping quarters are modeled after the park’s Pirates of the Caribbean ride, with its fort-like corridors made of sun-dried brick, the walls strewn with overgrown jungle vines. At Christmas, snow machines cover the grounds while lights are strung through the trees and holiday music plays all day.

The Disney vision has now come full circle. Several members of the Disney family are clients: Roy P. Disney and his wife, Sheri. His sister, Susan Disney Lord, is also a client, along with her children.

Canyon View Ranch even has what Neece describes as its own “Mickey Mouse”: Max the Tibetan terrier. A statue of him sits out front, honoring the first dog Timko and Neece owned together. “Usually, Tibetan terriers come in black and white, but we wanted Max, who came in earth tones, because he matched the furniture,” says Neece. The terrier, it turned out, was a champion, and the owner wouldn’t sell him unless the couple promised to show him. They agreed, and in 1997, Max won best of breed at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. “All of this started because we made the decision to buy that dog,” says Timko.

Randy Neece, left, and Joe Timko spent years creating a “doggie Disneyland.”

Neece and Timko gaze over the canyon view from which inspired the ranch’s name. After 26 years, they’ve watched three generations of dogs come and go. “One of the things we didn’t count on when we started this was the emotional toll,” says Neece. “Yeah,” Timko adds, “every loss hurts.”

“When Max died, Joe struggled for weeks,” says Neece. “I later realized that a lot of it translated into him worrying about losing me next.”

In the late 1980s, while still working on TV sets, Neece learned he was HIV positive. “It was a death sentence then,” he says.

Larger dogs play in the Wonderland yard.

He survived, one of a comparatively small number of his generation who did. He returned to television briefly, working on two more game shows, one of which included one of his biggest paychecks. (“‘Match Game’ built Canyon View Ranch,” he laughs.)

But something had shifted. “When you go through something like that,” he says, “you really start taking inventory of your life. There’s something about that that frees you up to take a risk. I was ready to reinvent myself.”

The couple sold their house in Laurel Canyon and bought the Topanga property in the late ’90s from Melissa Sue Anderson, who had played Mary Ingalls on “Little House on the Prairie.” Slowly, year after year, they planted every tree alongside ranch foreman David Barrios, dug every tunnel, built every waterfall and themed land, until the place began to resemble the idea they’d first imagined while watching children crowd around Goofy.

Now, late in this hot August afternoon, dogs of every size race through underground tunnels and emerge from the other side even more manically happy than when they entered. The Pomeranian munchkins in Munchkinland skitter around, sniffing wagging butts. A Labrador sprays his friends with water soaked into his fur from the bone-shaped pool. If there is such a thing as the Rainbow Bridge, Canyon View Ranch must be what it looks like on the other side.

Dogs dip in a pool and follow John Highland at Canyon View Ranch.

Nearly 30 years after Tupac Shakur was gunned down near the Las Vegas Strip in a killing that rocked the rap world, the trial of the man prosecutors allege did everything but pull the trigger got underway Monday with new revelations.

Nevada prosecutors allege Duane “Keffe D” Davis, a one-time Compton gang member, orchestrated Shakur’s killing as revenge for an attack on his nephew hours earlier and are using Davis’ own words in interviews and a book he co-authored as evidence.

In opening statements, prosecutors said an ugly gang rivalry on the streets of Compton led to the slaying of Shakur, a famed rapper and actor, who died six days after he was shot.

The Sept. 7, 1996, shooting, they said, was rooted in a war between Southside Crips-Burris Street, led by Davis, and Mob Piru, a gang long associated with Death Row Records. Shakur was closely affiliated with Death Row, and the record company’s boss, Marion “Suge” Knight, was inside his car the night he was attacked.

In court testimony Monday, it was revealed that Shakur was conscious after the shooting en route to the hospital but did not cooperate with authorities.

The first witness, Garry Dale, a Las Vegas Metro police officer, testified that he saw Shakur pulled out of the car with gunshot wounds and rode in the ambulance with him.

When he asked Shakur who shot him, the rapper replied, “‘No, we’ll take care of it,’” Dale said. “I couldn’t get him to talk any further.”

Duane “Keffe D” Davis is accused of murder in the 1996 killing of hip-hop icon Tupac Shakur.

(Steve Marcus / Associated Press)

The incident, according to Clark County Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. Binu Palal, followed a violent confrontation at a Mike Tyson fight earlier that night in Las Vegas. Palal showed video of Shakur’s entourage attacking Davis’ nephew Orlando Anderson. Travon Lane, a Mob Piru member, had spotted Anderson in the MGM Grand hotel lobby. Months earlier, Anderson stole Lane’s Death Row Records chain in the Lakewood mall during an attack.

The rivalry between the groups grew after the Southside Crips became the West Coast security for Sean “Diddy” Combs’ record label, prosecutors said.

“Let’s be clear, Duane Davis did not pull the trigger. But he did plan the shooting in retaliation of the beating of his nephew,” Palal said. “Remarkably, you will learn that from Duane Davis himself.”

Palal noted that Shakur’s shooting was followed by numerous slayings in Compton, including that of an 11-year-old girl.

“In this world, silence means survival,” Palal said. “The one person who has had a hard time being silent is Duane Davis.”

The prosecutor played parts of an interview with a Los Angeles Police Department federal task force in 2008 in which Davis acknowledged his role in the rapper’s fatal shooting. They also cited other interviews as well as his own memoir.

The prosecutor said Davis got the gun from Eric Zip Martin, an East Coast drug dealer associated with Combs’ Bad Boy Entertainment.

“He admits putting the gun he obtained that night in the back seat of the vehicle so the shooters could shoot,” the prosecutor said. “You will learn that Duane Davis got the gun. … You will learn that he got into a white Cadillac. You will learn when the opportunity presented itself for retribution, Duane Davis made sure that the shooter was armed and ready to execute their revenge.”

Palal said Davis and his crew set out in search of Knight and Shakur. In multiple accounts, including in his book “Compton Street Legend,” Davis wrote that they spotted the Death Row caravan stopped at a red light, with Shakur waving to female fans while hanging out of the BMW window.

“Tupac, he gave himself away,” Davis said in the recording played in court. “Otherwise, they would’ve got away.”

Davis was arrested in 2023 and indicted for masterminding the killing and providing the gun.

Rapper Tupac Shakur is show at Club Amazon in New York on July 23, 1993.

(Al Pereira / Getty Images)

Michael Sanft, Davis’ defense attorney, told jurors there will be no evidence linking his client to the shooting.

“There are no facts to point to Keffe — not one,” he said. “You’re going to hear about this over and over again.”

Sanft recounted decades of probes and noted that prior investigations did not take his client’s statements seriously because they were not credible. “He treats that book like it’s fact,” Sanft said of a lead detective in the case. The defense attorney, in an unusual move, repeatedly undermined his own client’s credibility.

Sanft portrayed Las Vegas police as incompetent, with lost records, and the LAPD and then Compton police as corrupt.

“What facts do they have to put Keffe D in a car in 1996? When you look at the video in 1996, do you see Keffe D?” he added, referencing the lobby beating.

Sanft said Death Row’s security chief was Reggie Wright Jr., a felon and former Compton police officer whose father led the Compton police gang unit. He said the former officer was not with Knight and ordered his security team not to carry firearms. The defense lawyer cast Davis’ memoir as fiction and said there was no evidence his client was in Las Vegas.

The prosecutor, however, told jurors that Davis, from 1998 to 2023, made several incriminating statements and, in 1998, admitted to the FBI to being in Las Vegas at the time of Shakur’s slaying.

Davis, according to prosecutors, told investigators during a secret meeting he “was mad about Orlando Anderson’s beating” and he was the boss who got the firearm and was in the white Cadillac. When Greg Kading, an LAPD detective who led the task force, left policing and later published a book revealing Davis’ role, it made Davis want to go public, according to the prosecution.

“Greg Kading is profiting off Duane Davis’ life story,” Palal said. By the time the book was released, the others who were allegedly in the car the night of the shooting were dead. Anderson was killed and Smith passed away. In 2019, after a series of interviews, Davis published his own book, which, full of bravado, gave a similar account of Shakur’s killing as that of the federal task force. The prosecutor then played an interview from the time of the book’s release, in which Davis justified his actions.

Rap mogul Marion “Suge” Knight appears in court in 2018 in an unrelated case.

(Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)

Ingrid Stokes, one of four women in a car that had been following Shakur the night of the attack testified that she freaked out and screamed, then fled the scene, telling police she “didn’t see anything” because “snitches get stitches.”

A third witness who testified Monday, former Las Vegas Metro Det. Brent Becker, said he interviewed Knight about the beating in the MGM Grand lobby, and Knight said he basically “didn’t know anything.” By 1997, detectives suspected that Davis was in the Cadillac that opened fire on Shakur, he testified.

Davis, now 63, has pleaded not guilty to murder with a deadly weapon with the intent to promote, further or assist a criminal gang. In recent weeks, he’s denied being in the Cadillac or Las Vegas that night and, in interviews with Las Vegas TV stations, blamed a former head of Death Row Records security.

“I had nothing to do with nobody’s murder,” he told interviewers.

Prosecutors are expected to call witnesses to support Davis’ claims from over the years. Davis’ lawyers will seek to portray him as a fabricator — his bragging is all fiction. Davis has done the same with Las Vegas reporters.

“I did not write the book; a ghostwriter wrote that book,” Davis said in a recent jailhouse interview. “I was trying to make my family some money.”

KENDRA Wilkinson was reduced to tears recounting how she was fired by one of her clients at her ‘normal job’.

The star took to Instagram on Sunday to share the teary tale with her followers, where she was both upset and frustrated.

Chatting to the camera while crying, the 41-year-old Playboy star began: “We’re living in a world of struggle right now – I know that. But it’s just … it’s so hard – it’s so hard to know.

“I feel like I’m doing everything right in my life. I’m raising my kids and putting them first.

“I’m doing everything good – I’m a good person. It’s just such a struggle right now.”

Kendra then touched upon some of the issues she’s been facing at work lately, including “fighting people that work with me, getting fired [and] people being rude and mean.”

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Over the top of the video clip she posted, Kendra wrote: “When a client fires you… after all the work you put in. Ya, I’m struggling guys.”

Kendra rose to fame throughout the 2000s thanks to being the decade’s most famous Playboy Playmate.

Her fame led to her entering the world of reality TV, where she started her own reality show called Girls Next Door.

She also went on to star in I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! in 2014.

However, in the years that followed Kendra turned away from fame and instead began working in real estate.

In 2020 she passed the California real estate exam after taking several classes and qualified as a fully-fledged real estate agent.

She was soon taken on by luxury Los Angeles firm, The Agency, before moving to Carswell & Associates in 2021.

Kendra is still proudly working with the company to this day and sometimes posts about her 9-to-5 online.

In November last year she gushed about how happy she is in her role, sharing: “I’m so happy I’m evolving into myself and growing who I want to be. Everyday I’m pouring myself into this business.

“I just opened escrow on a property in Venice beach today and it just keeps growing. I’m so proud of myself.”

SAN FRANCISCO — Every election produces a campaign strategist whose victory bestows upon them, for at least a little while, the unofficial title of reigning political genius.

James Carville, Karl Rove, David Axelrod and Stephen K. Bannon have all worn the crown.

For many years, and many election cycles, California’s reigning political genius was Clint Reilly.

In an age before the internet, before social media, before the cable-TV chat shows and before Carville and the like, Reilly came as close to celebrity as a political operative possibly could. He was the subject of fear, admiration, contempt, envy and lengthy newspaper and magazine treatments.

His cherry-red Jaguar, Italian suits, designer eyewear and seaside mansion made Reilly an influencer before there even was such a thing. (A connoisseur of the finer things, he served visitors coffee in bone china when they called on his San Francisco office.)

“It used to be that political consultants and political mechanics were something that only a handful of people thought about,” said Eric Jaye, one of generations of campaign strategists who were trained or inspired — directly or indirectly — by Reilly. “Clint was the original star consultant who made news himself and shaped the political discussion.”

Reilly, a working-class product of Oakland who crossed the Bay and scaled the heights of San Francisco business, culture and politics, died earlier this month at age 79.

For someone who never held political office — a 1999 bid for San Francisco mayor was a notable flop — Reilly wielded considerable influence.

A list of the many Democrats he helped elect — among them Nancy Pelosi, Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer — reads like a scroll of modern California history. At one time, the sitting mayors of both San Francisco and Los Angeles were clients of Reilly.

He wasn’t flawless as an election strategist. Like any political operative, he had his share of defeats.

Reilly’s particular genius lay in the methodology — vertical integration — he brought to campaigns. Typically, one consultant would handle television advertising, another direct mail, another polling, another big-picture strategy, and so on.

“Everything was in-house with Clint and, at least in San Francisco, he was the first to do that,” said Jerry Roberts, who was a scruffy reporter for the city’s alt-weekly when he met a shaggy-haired Reilly more than 50 years ago. At the time, campaigns were a sideline for Reilly, who supported himself selling doodads and other salvaged wares in a movable flea market he operated on Fisherman’s Wharf.

“It was a smart business model,” said Roberts, who went on to lead two major California newspapers.

It made Reilly very rich.

In 1988, he managed what, at the time, was the most expensive political campaign in California history, a $64-million effort by the insurance industry to beat back a Ralph Nader-inspired reform initiative. Reilly lost, but his firm cleared at least $6 million on that contest alone — or about $17 million in today’s dollars.

“So that’s where our premiums went,” one guest observed with a low whistle as he arrived at the state-of-the art headquarters Reilly built not long after the Proposition 103 campaign. (Naturally, he threw an open house; for all his affluence, Reilly never did entirely shake the proletariat chip on his shoulder.)

A onetime seminarian — he left three years shy of being ordained a Catholic priest — Reilly was no saint.

He was hot-tempered, profane and egotistical. He embraced the nickname “Satan,” which a former client affixed after Reilly went to work for an archrival, as a reflection of his reputation for intimidation and mastery of the political dark arts.

In one fit of pique, Reilly took the unheard step of firing a client — Feinstein — via faxed press release because, he said, the former San Francisco mayor lacked the requisite fire to run for governor. The two eventually reconciled, though Feinstein stuck with members of the team that replaced Reilly and helped guide her to successive terms in the U.S. Senate.

If Reilly was at times overbearing — and known for being the kind of hellacious boss who gave employees night sweats — he was also generous and a genuine bleeding heart.

Before his career took off, Reilly volunteered for the United Farm Workers and lived an ascetic life, sheltering in church halls, as he ministered to the poor. Once he established his high-end consulting firm, Reilly retained his political staffers at no small expense, even during the lull between campaigns, rather than hiring and firing them as seasonal workers, which was the norm.

After leaving professional campaign consulting in the mid-1990s, and making a substantial fortune in real estate, Reilly gave prolifically to various charities and assorted civic caucuses. He started a charitable foundation of his own, Bay Scholars, which helps poor and underserved youth attend Catholic high schools throughout the area.

In 1987, when Reilly arguably resided at the height of his power and influence, he took on Pelosi as a client.

She was running for a rare open congressional seat in San Francisco and, though well known in political circles as a prodigious Democratic fundraiser and high-level activist, Pelosi was a blank slate to many voters. Reilly came up with a slogan that played on Pelosi’s Washington connections and many important friendships: “A voice that will be heard.”

More than that, he made a key tactical decision in the waning days of the campaign.

Pelosi was one of 14 candidates, several of them well-known Democratic officeholders. Ignoring Pelosi’s objections, Reilly sent out a mail piece to the city’s vastly outnumbered Republicans suggesting that a Democrat was bound to win the congressional seat and arguing that Pelosi was the best — or, at least, not the worst — of the bunch.

On election day, Pelosi lost the Democratic vote to Harry Britt, who succeeded Harvey Milk on the Board of Supervisors after Milk’s assassination. Still, Pelosi prevailed, by less than 4,000 votes out of nearly 108,000 cast. The winning margin was her Republican support.

The rest, as they say, is history.

An informal advisor to Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass handled communications for her office for free while simultaneously working on a three-year contract with Los Angeles World Airports worth nearly $600,000.

Yusef Robb, who runs the firm tk/Communications, was an unpaid spokesperson and advisor for Bass from February through the beginning of June.

On June 19, Robb began working for Lineage Logistics, whose cold food storage facility in Boyle Heights burned for more than a week last month. He continued to serve as an unpaid, unofficial advisor to the mayor, though no longer as a spokesperson, until The Times and other outlets reported on his work for Lineage on Saturday.

Robb said the airport contract was unrelated to his work for the mayor. But a legal expert said the arrangement raises questions about whether his free labor was a gift to the mayor and whether working for the city and private clients creates conflicts of interest.

“This was done through a transparent and public competitive bidding process,” Robb said in an email to The Times. “I provide communications support and training.”

The Bass administration said Robb’s unpaid assistance was “for the benefit of the city. It’s not a gift.”

In 2024, Robb signed the contract with Los Angeles World Airports, or LAWA — the city department that operates Los Angeles International Airport and the Van Nuys Airport — for $450,000 over three years.

He won the contract, which involved “executive media training” as well as “crisis communications,” over 10 other firms. It was updated in April to include additional work for $137,500.

A report from LAWA in support of the contract update said that “executive management at LAWA have benefited from successful, professional media training as well as support for LAWA crisis communications and response.”

Because tk/Communications has subcontracted to at least two other companies, Robb said his firm has earned no more than $315,000 over the three-year contract.

“There is no connection between the work Mr. Robb performs for LAWA and the assistance he provides for Mayor Bass’ Office,” said a spokesperson for Bass’ office. Bass is running for reelection against City Councilmember Nithya Raman.

The LAWA contract was Robb’s second with the city during the Bass administration. The city paid a total of $75,000 in 2022 and 2023 to Robb’s firm to provide “various communications services related to the start-up of the administration,” according to a contract.

Tk/Communications has worked for government agencies as well as political campaigns and private businesses, including the Los Angeles Department of Transportation, the Los Angeles Unified School District and the music and entertainment company AEG, according to the company’s website.

“We develop powerful narratives and engagement to accelerate and amplify our clients’ messages, whether they’re grounded in an investment proposal or a political campaign,” the website states. “We author and tell stories that build deep connections and lasting relationships that deliver more than you asked for.”

Robb has worked in and around City Hall for decades. He was a press aide in Mayor Jim Hahn’s administration, then worked for Eric Garcetti when Garcetti was a city council member and then mayor. He left Garcetti’s office in 2015.

Robb said he has provided “unpaid help to all sorts of people and businesses, to advance criminal justice reform, organize community movements, or just to find the right words.”

“I feel it’s important to help the city if I can,” he said.

Jessica Levinson, a professor at Loyola Law School and former president of the city’s Ethics Commission, said the airport contract shows how valuable Robb’s labor is, raising the question of whether he is providing a gift to Bass by working for her for free.

Another concern for the public, Levinson said, is that Robb is working for Bass at the same time that he has other clients and could potentially use his position at City Hall to advance those clients’ interests. His work for Bass could also make him more desirable for clients who believe he has the mayor’s ear, she said.

“What we’re worried about is undue influence, preferential access and backroom deals that benefit certain people, as opposed to the public,” said Levinson. “We don’t want public officials serving two masters.”

Still, Levinson said she does not believe that Bass has violated any laws by using Robb pro bono.

“This is an unusual setup,” she said. “That does not mean it’s illegal.”

When Brian Grazer has an idea for a movie, he now starts with a chatbot. The co-founder of Imagine Entertainment — the company behind “A Beautiful Mind,” “Apollo 13” and “Liar Liar” — said he sits down with Anthropic’s AI assistant, Claude, to rough out a story before handing it to a writer.

“You can build the whole thing into an outline. You still need a screenwriter. I always believe you need a screenwriter,” Grazer said during a keynote at UCLA’s Entertainment Symposium on Thursday. What once could have taken up to a year, he said, now takes him about a week — but the human writer stays.

That balance — AI as an accelerant rather than a replacement — captures where much of Hollywood has landed in practice. Amazon MGM, Lionsgate, Netflix and Disney have all made major investments in the technology. The sharper question at the symposium, which drew many of the industry’s top lawyers and dealmakers to the Westwood campus, was not whether to use AI but how: who authorizes it, how far it goes and who gets paid.

For the companies building the tools, the answer increasingly comes from the client. Studios, production companies and distributors regularly approach Promise, a generative AI company, to bring AI into their productions, and each arrives with its own usage guidelines, said the company’s president, Jamie Byrne. Those rules govern which AI models Promise may use and what protections apply — effectively letting each client decide how heavily AI figures into the work.

“It comes down to a risk appetite,” Byrne said during a panel on AI. “We know that there’s talent that are staunchly against it. We know that there are many who are okay with it.”

He framed adoption as a competitive necessity: “Every time there’s a technology change, certain studios or production companies rise. Others fall, and it’s usually the ones that are not leaning into the new tool.”

Ron Howard, also of Imagine Entertainment, argued the limits will ultimately be set elsewhere — by viewers. “Sure, it’s about efficiencies and budgets, but more than anything, audiences are going to tell us where those restrictions are,” he said. He expects AI-generated content to settle into its own subgenre over time, with audiences signaling what they will accept.

The most contested ground is labor, where consent has become the dividing line. The emergence of synthetic performers such as Tilly Norwood has made AI a central issue in SAG-AFTRA’s contract. The union’s most recent agreement draws a clear line between authorized digital replicas, which use a performer’s likeness with their consent, and fully synthetic creations.

Talent agencies are organizing around the same principle. In recent years, Creative Artists Agency began digitally scanning clients into what it calls the CAA Vault, building a replica of a client’s image, likeness and voice while leaving the talent in complete control of how it is used.

That control is beginning to carry real value, said Tammy Brandt, CAA’s deputy general counsel, who said she is seeing more deals that involve digital likeness. Hollywood has been slow to work out how to monetize these replicas, she said, but once it does, audiences will start to encounter them more often.

“You have to lean into the technology and understand what it can do, and honestly, how you can make money, work with talent and with creative assets in a way that the user is interested in,” Brandt said. “There’s a little bit of trial and error as you go with that.”