Los Angeles will make history when voters elect a new mayor on Tuesday but the runoff race between two Democratic candidates isn’t drawing much interest as turnout could reach a record low despite the more than $33 million that’s been spent on the nearly two year-long contest to succeed outgoing Mayor Anthony Villagarosa. 

The race pits City Controller Wendy Greuel, who would be the city’s first woman elected to the post, against City Councilman Eric Garcetti, who would be the first elected Jewish mayor.   

Garcetti, the son of former Los Angeles County District Attorney Gil Garcetti, has maintained a lead in the polls throughout the race, but most expected the runoff contest between the two to tighten. 

Greuel has racked up the most high-profile endorsements in the race, including ones from former President Bill Clinton, Sen. Barbara Boxer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, and six members of the state’s congressional delegation.  Garcetti has been endorsed by former DNC Chairman Howard Dean and two California members of Congress. 

Greuel has also been the biggest beneficiary of outside money in the race, with groups combining to spend $7.7 million on her behalf, compared to juts $2.7 million for Garcetti. $5.6 million of that cash for Greuel has come from unions, with just $1 million from labor groups for Garcetti. 

Despite the high-spending contest, few people in Los Angeles seem to be paying very close attention. In the March primary, only 21% of 1.8 million registered voters went to the polls, and runoff turnout is typically much lower than that. According to a Los Angeles Times review, the winner may not even exceed the vote totals of the city’s 1938 contest. 

Los Angeles County Democratic Party Chairman Eric Bauman  said based on early absentee returns, he believes runoff turnout will actually exceed the primary.

But that doesn't mean that voter turnout won't still be low. 

"Voters in Los Angeles have voter fatigue," said Bauman, pointing to a string of not just statewide and congressional elections, but also numerous ballot measures and city and county elections. 

But as Los Angeles has also found itself in financial straits in recent years, Bauman said the race has dealt more with how to just maintain city services, instead of big ideas Villagarosa campaigned on during the last open seat race twelve years ago. 

"You don't have that dramatic flair to drive people to the polls," said Bauman. 

Still, Greuel hasn’t been able to overtake the city councilman in the race, and a USC Price/Los Angeles Times poll released this weekend showed her still trailing seven points, 48%-41%. Garcetti also leads among several critical constituencies – women, Latinos and Democrats, though Greuel has made small gains with each. In the race’s waning days, Greuel has said she remains optimistic the remaining undecided voters will break her way. With African-American voters still breaking nearly even, both candidates spent the weekend visiting black churches in the city’s South side to get voters to the polls.

One of the main reasons Greuel hasn’t been able to overtake the lead – her main labor backer, the city-controlled Department of Water and Power is highly unpopular in the area, especially in the crucial San Fernando Valley, even though she represented the area for seven years on the city council. Garcetti has painted her as a puppet of the city’s public works sector, while Greuel has hit back that Garcetti supported raises for the DWP.  

This story was originally published on Tue May 21, 2013 7:41 AM EDT

The U.S. Supreme Court has set aside two days in late March to hear oral argument on the same-sex marriage cases.

On Tuesday, March 26, it will take up the fight over California's Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage in the state.

The next day, Wednesday, March 27, it will hear the challenge to the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which bars the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages in the states where they're legal.

LOS ANGELES, Calif. -- With a touch of humor and at one point admonition, President Obama urged supporters at a Los Angeles fundraiser here not to lose enthusiasm for his campaign just because he had one lousy debate performance.

The president kicked off his remarks with an allusion to last Wednesday night that the whole crowd seemed to pick up on. Praising his opening acts at the Nokia Theater here, which included Stevie Wonder, Jon Bon Jovi and Katy Perry, Obama said, “These guys perform flawlessly night after night.”

“I can’t always say the same,” he continued, waiting a beat for comic timing.

And later he reminded his audience that he had some imperfect moments during the last campaign as well.

“Everybody always remembers the victory but they don’t always remember the bumps in the road; things always look good in retrospect.

“But in the middle of it, we were – we made all kinds of mistakes. We goofed up, I goofed up, but the American people carried us forward,” urging his supporters not to forget that they stuck by him even when he hiccupped in 2008 – something he hopes they do over the next 30 days.

COSTA MESA, Calif. — Mitt Romney said Monday evening that his comments about voters who don't pay income taxes were "not elegantly stated," but did not distance himself from the substance of his surreptitiously recorded remarks at a closed-door fundraiser in May.

The Republican presidential nominee hastily arranged a press conference to do damage control related to comments he made at a private fundraiser, which were secretly recorded and first brought to light by the liberal magazine Mother Jones.

"Of course individuals are going to take responsibility for their life, and my campaign is about helping people take more responsibility and becoming employed again — particularly those who don't have work," Romney said at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa, Calif.

At the fundraiser, held at the home of a supporter in Florida, Romney was captured responding to a questioner who asked what he would do to ensure Americans take care of themselves.

"There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it. That that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what," Romney said.

Romney added: "My job is is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives. What I have to do is convince the 5-10 percent of people who are independents, that are thoughtful, that look at voting one way or the other depending upon, in some cases, emotion, whether they like the guy or not."

Tonight Romney argued that those comments showcased the extent of the differences between himself and President Barack Obama on the role of government in American lives, and sought to link them to his regular stump speech remarks about what he calls the democratic vision for an "entitlement society."

"This is, of course, something I talk about a good deal in rallies and speeches and so forth, which is the president and I have very different approaches to the future of America and what it takes to ignite our economy and put people back to work," Romney said. "The president believes in what I’ve described as a government centered society where government plays a larger and larger role, provides for more and more of the needs of individuals and I happen to believe instead in a free enterprise, free individual society where people pursuing their dreams are able to employ one another, build enterprises, build the strongest economy in the world."

VIDEO: David Corn of Mother Jones discusses the Romney recording

But when he was asked whether he was distancing himself from his comments on tape, and whether he worried that he had offended a number of Americans, Romney suggested that Obama's message on taxes is, in fact, "attractive" to Americans who aren't paying any taxes, "and therefore, I'm not likely to draw them into my campaign as effectively as those who are in the middle."

Today's firestorm over the leaked fundraiser comments marked the second time Romney's overheard remarks at a finance event have generated national headlines. In April, he told a group of donors in Florida he would consider eliminating the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and dramatically reshaping the Department of Education (among other details not regularly shared on the campaign trail).

Tonight, the GOP nominee denied that he delivers two separate messages to his fundraisers and the American people at large, saying most of what he says in his remarks at finance events is the same as his stump speech. But Romney acknowledged that, in question and answer sessions, donors like to ask process questions about the campaign — issues in which Romney said Monday evening that Americans have little interest, but that donors like to have answered by the candidate.

Under increasing scrutiny, Romney campaign turns to details

"At a fundraiser you have people say governor how are you going to win this? And so I respond well, the president has his group I have my group. I want to keep my team strong and motivated and I want to get those people in the middle, that’s something which fundraising people who are parting with their monies are very interested in knowing can you win or not and that’s what this was addressing," Romney said.

Romney's comments quickly developed into more of a story after the release of the video, prompting an attack from President Barack Obama's campaign manager late Monday afternoon. 

"It's shocking that a candidate for President of the United States would go behind closed doors and declare to a group of wealthy donors that half the American people view themselves as ‘victims,’ entitled to handouts, and are unwilling to take ‘personal responsibility’ for their lives," said Jim Messina, the president's campaign manager. "It’s hard to serve as president for all Americans when you’ve disdainfully written off half the nation.”

The Romney campaign tried to act quickly to deal with the fallout from the potentially damaging story, releasing a statement early evening from communications director Gail Gitcho looking to add context to the former Bain Capital executive's remarks. 

RELATED: Romney: Senior staffers 'work extraordinarily well together'

But for the Republican's campaign, the emerging firestorm associated with these recordings couldn't have come at a worse time. 

A series of polls conducted in the week following the back-to-back party conventions found that Obama had strengthened his advantage over Romney. These polls and Romney's attack on the president's handling of a siege on a U.S. diplomatic mission in Libya prompted a new round of open grousing from within the GOP about the state of the Romney campaign. 

On top of that, POLITICO reported Sunday about infighting and blurry lines of authority within the Romney campaign — an ominous sign, given that this sort of finger-pointing is usually more characteristic of losing campaigns. 

Romney himself addressed those reports, telling Telemundo this afternoon that his "senior campaign people work extraordinarily well together."

The Republican's campaign also tried to regroup with a new messaging effort they said would add detail to Romney's existing proposals, an initiative which may well be consumed by the uproar associated with the fundraiser video.

Romney said he would "certainly appreciate" if the leaker — whose identity isn't publicly known — would release the entire tape to provide more context for his remarks.

The Romney campaign began to allow reporters to cover some of their finance events in early May. Typically, a small group of reporters is allowed to sit in for the candidate's formal remarks on behalf of all their colleagues, then file a report for the pool. Events where Romney does not give formal remarks, or where he speaks at a private home or business are exempted from this coverage, so many of Romney's finance events happen far away from the eyes of the press.

Coincidentally, the Romney campaign told reporters just this morning, they would begin to allow video and news photo coverage of their large finances events as well — including planned events in Utah and Dallas.

NBCNews.com's Michael O'Brien contributed to this report.

IRVINE, CA -- After a weekend in which the presidential race took a back seat to a national period of mourning for the victim's of Friday's shootings in Aurora, Colorado, the Romney and Obama campaigns resumed their attacks against one another with gusto on Monday.

At a fundraiser here in Southern California, Mitt Romney spent almost no time resuming his attack on the president's economic policies, and what he said was the president's failure to "do what's necessary," to pull the United States out of a recession.

"Instead, he pursued his liberal agenda," Romney told a crowd of some 400 donors. "He's a liberal through and through."

Romney's supporters said that the Obama campaign's top strategist David Axelrod was the first to break the campaign's weekend ceasefire, in which the two men refrained from personal attacks or aggressive campaigning, and took political ads off the air in Colorado.

"Tax returns. Bundlers. Bain. MA records & now key docs from Olympics. When it comes to secrecy, Mitt takes the gold!" Axelrod tweeted earlier this morning.

A new ad from the Obama team, which features the president speaking directly to the camera, pulls back from the campaign's dissection of Romney's tax returns and tenure at Bain Capital but offers a broad contrast between both men's economic visions

"Sometimes politics can seem very small," the president says in the ad. "But the choice you face, it couldn’t be bigger."

While Romney's fundraiser was ongoing, the Obama campaign also held a conference call with reporters, looking to undermine the presumptive GOP nominee's upcoming trip to the United Kingdom, Israel and Poland.

"He'll need to prove to the American people that he sees foreign policy issues as worthy of substantive discussion rather than just generalities and soundbites in this campaign," former White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said on the call.

Meanwhile, true to form, Romney picked up where his campaign left off on Thursday by returning to the president's "You didn't build that," remark at a fundraiser one week ago Friday, calling it an "extraordinarily revealing" insight into the president's economic ideology.

"With the president's logic, by the way, that somehow everything is owed to government, would extend in some remarkable ways to the perception of an achievement nation," Romney said, adding later: "It's an ideology that somehow says its the collective and government that we need to celebrate. The truth is, we do celebrate our government and our collective goodness as a nation, but we also celebrate and extol the accomplishments of the individual."

At his only public event of the day, a roundtable with small business owners in Costa Mesa, Romney's criticisms were more muted. He mostly sat and listened, while business owners, carefully selected by the campaign, complained of onerous regulations and job-crushing tax burdens.

Romney's only direct attack on the president came in the form of a snarky bit of advice for the president, who Romney pointed out in his closing remarks, had not met with his Jobs Council, a bipartisan group of business leaders who's stated purpose is to advise the president on creating jobs, in more than six months.

"I would suggest between the fundraisers, get together with jobs council and learn from people who are working hard to create jobs," Romney said.

And while Romney did not directly refer to the "You didn't build that," controversy, behind him hung a visual reminder of the unstated message: A brand new banner sign reading: "We DID built it."

NBC's Carrie Dann contributed reporting

NBC's Garrett Haake

Mitt Romney (R) on the campaign press bus heading to the former site of the company Solyndra.

UPDATED AT 3 PM ET

FREMONT, CA -- When Mitt Romney arrived at the gates of the bankrupt solar energy company Solyndra this afternoon, he didn't do it before cheering supporters or backed by a large coterie of staff.

He pulled up on the press bus with the rest of his traveling media contingent.

Romney's staff, fearful, they said, of being blocked by the administration from holding an event here, kept the location of today's press conference secret, even from the press who cover the candidate.

On Wednesday, reporters who cover the candidate were told to get themselves from Las Vegas to San Francisco for an "event" in the bay area on Thursday. No other details were given, except to be ready at a hotel parking lot early this morning.

Professionally curious, the Romney press corps set about cracking the secret code of the event and breaking the story.

"I've got nothing for ya," one aide told NBC.

"Sorry, can't help you," replied another Romney staffer via email, complete with a frowny face emoticon.

And so it was this morning, when 31 members of the national and local press boarded a bus in the parking lot of the Holiday Inn Express, armed only with educated guesses – no reportable confirmation – that Romney was headed to Solyndra.

Message discipline, and an inner circle that sees leaks as treasonous, won this round.

The secrecy, one top aide explained, was to prevent the Obama administration blocking the event from taking place. The aide did not explain how that might happen.

The aide also said the campaign did not fear protesters disrupting the event, as pro-Romney protesters and staff did to Obama senior adviser David Axelrod this morning at an event on the steps of the statehouse in Boston.

Then, Romney boarded the bus.

Beyond a cursory wave and good morning, he didn't chat with the press, but rode in relative silence with a small group of aides and a few Secret Service agents surrounding him in the front of the bus.

Romney was asked why the event -- which ultimately lasted only about 10 minutes on a Nimitz Highway median -- was kept so secret. He offered a somewhat conspiratorial answer.

"I think there are people who don’t want to see this event occur, don’t want to have questions asked about this particular investment, don’t want to have people delve into the idea that the president took a half-a-billion dollars of taxpayer money and devoted it to an enterprise that was owned in large measure by his campaign contributors," Romney said.

This is the former Massachusetts governor's first trip to Solyndra, but he regularly highlights its failing, despite support from governmental loans, in his stump speeches and fundraisers.

Updated 2:43 p.m. - SAN DIEGO, CA -- Mitt Romney assailed President Obama's comments to outgoing Russian President Dmitry Medvedev about increased "flexibility" after the election this fall.

Pablo Martinez Monsivais / AP

President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev chat following the conclusion of their bilateral meeting March 26 at the Nuclear Security Summit Seoul, South Korea.

At a medical device company in San Diego, Romney called the president's comments -- captured Monday on an open microphone -- "an alarming and troubling development" as part of a longer wind-up about the importance of missile defense and standing by our allies.

“This weekend, the president happened to be somewhere where the microphone was left open. You may have heard that. It can be revealing, in this case, it was. He was speaking with Mr. Medvedev, of Russia. And he said, ‘This is my last election, I can be more flexible after the election is over,'" Romney started.

"Now when the president of the United States is speaking with the leader of Russia saying he can be more flexible after the election, that is an alarming and troubling development," Romney said. "There's no time for our president to be pulling his punches with the American people and not telling us what he's intending to do with regards to our missile defense system; with regards to our military might and with regards to our commitment to Israel; and with regards to our absolute conviction that Iran must have a nuclear weapon."

Obama's comments were captured at the very beginning of the photo opportunity after the the bilateral meeting between the president and Medvedev, when the two leaders were leaned over and speaking to each other.

RELATED: Obama's hot mic moment

"This is my last election," Obama was heard saying, "After my election I have more flexibility."

Medvedev responded that he would "transmit this information to Vladimir," meaning Vladimir Putin, the president-elect of Russia.

A Russian journalist's recording indicates the two leaders were talking about missile defense, a touchy area in U.S.-Russian relations.

Before Romney's remarks had concluded, President Obama's campaign pushed back at the former Massachusetts governor's criticism.

“Once again Governor Romney is undermining his credibility by distorting the President’s words," Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt said in a statement. "Governor Romney has been all over the map on the key foreign policy challenges facing our nation today, offering a lot of chest thumping and empty rhetoric with no concrete plans to enhance our security or strengthen our alliances."

Romney delivered his attack of the president during a speech that began with a critique of the President's health care law. Standing before a sign reading "Repeal and Replace Obamacare," Romney said there were "a lot of reasons not to like Obamacare," and outlined a number of his issues with the law, but stopped short of his usual direct call for the bill's repeal.

In his more than twenty minutes of remarks, Romney also never mentioned the Supreme Court case beginning today that could decide the law's fate well before the November election.

A federal appeals court will issue its long-awaited decision Tuesday on the constitutionality of a 2008 ballot initiative in California banning same-sex marriages in the state.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals is expected to issue its decision on Proposition 8, which just over 52 percent of California voters approved during the 2008 election.

The case, Perry v. Brown, has been closely monitored for its possible implications not just in California, but nationwide as well. A bipartisan pair of prominent attorneys, Theodore Olson and David Boies, have represented the opponents of Prop. 8, raising speculation that the case may eventually make its way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

If the U.S. Supreme Court were to hear the case, the decision could possibly have a wide-ranging impact on marriage law due to any precedent established in that case.

msnbc.com's Michael O'Brien contribued