Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, of all people, should have known better.

The Department of Water and Power, for all its allure and cash, can do more to harm a political career than help one. Just ask former Mayor James Hahn, whose image was tarnished by some of the good things the agency was doing with green projects and paying for business trips.

But with the prospect of the loss of $73 million from the planned $220 million transfer to the city's general fund at stake, Villaraigosa found himself leading the charge for a DWP rate hike of 6 percent on the Energy Cost Adjustment Factor.

"This is not good for me politically," Villaraigosa noted at one of many events last week. "The last thing I want to do is ask people to pay more."

But the mayor made it a personal political campaign, seemingly borrowing from President Barack Obama and his talk of the stimulus program.

At another event, Villaraigosa chided the council: "You can't take credit for something after voting no."

But, after the council's rejection of the proposal, Villaraigosa sought to put it all in perspective.

"I was joking earlier that we all remember (William) Mulholland and what he did for the city," Villaraigosa said. "No one remembers who was mayor then. The reason why is the DWP has been an agency unto its own."

For the record, the mayor in 1913 when the Los Angeles Aqueduct was completed was Henry R. Rose, when Mulholland famously said of the water: "There it is. Take it."

One of the more visible figures from the DWP was missing in action during the controversy.

Interim General Manager S. David Freeman has been on what aides say was a long-planned vacation to Israel.

But there has been a lot of talk that Freeman, 84, will not return to the DWP job, to be replaced either by First Deputy Mayor Austin Beutner or acting General Manager Raman Raj remaining in the post until a permanent manager is selected.

There has been a lag in trying to find someone, with city personnel folks originally focusing only on those with experience with public utilities. Beutner has said he wants the field widened to include executives from private utilities as well.

Another person not seen was Brian D'Arcy, business manager of International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 18 and considered one of the more powerful figure in city politics.

But, if the DWP board had listened to him, there might not be all the hand-wringing seen in the past week.

D'Arcy released a statement saying he supported the City Council's proposal of a .6 cent per kilowatt hour increase.

"After a lengthy discussion and prior to the DWP commission meeting, I recommended to Mayor Villaraigosa that he accept the City Council's proposed increase because I thought it was fair and reasonable."

It is unclear why the mayor's folks thought they could get an additional .1 cent increase by the council.

Councilwoman Janice Hahn and San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom had a little showdown last week before the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO.

Perhaps because it was her home field, Hahn was said to have done better than Newsom, who has had to take some risky moves in recent months to balance his city's budget, which is facing a $500 million shortfall.

A straw poll at the end of the event, in which each spoke privately to union leaders for about 5 minutes and took questions for another 10, ended with Hahn winning by a 19-1 margin.

While it has no official standing on how the union's political committees will act, it provides a bit of momentum for Hahn leading up to the state Democratic Party meeting in mid-April.

Hahn is also trying to score an endorsement from the group and has been arguing that she provides the gender diversity the party ticket needs with the likely nomination of Attorney General Jerry Brown for governor.