A vandal who defaced the Quetzalcoatl sculpture in Plaza de Cesar Chavez this week may have helped align the piece with the intentions of the artist who created it. The notoriously monochromatic statue of the mythological Mayan plumed serpent now looks out at the downtown San Jose skyline with red eyes aglow. That is probably closer to what the renowned sculptor Robert Graham had in mind when he conceived the artwork.

Having handily knocked off Dolores Carr in November’s election, District Attorney Jeff Rosen has so far delivered on his promise to make changes big and small in his department. In addition to reinstating the Cold Case Unit, Team Rosen is reinvigorating the Government Integrity Unit, a do-nothing department under Carr, which has been renamed the Public Integrity Unit and put in the hands of John Chase. Rosen also circulated a memo that bars blanket challenges on judges—a pointed (and entirely symbolic) gesture referencing one of his predecessor’s most controversial ploys.

After receiving an invitation from acting Police Chief Chris Moore to address the troops at a series of shift briefings, Mayor Chuck Reed might have taken it as an opportunity to mend some fences. But according to several cops in attendance, the mayor did little to try and dispel the acrimony from the election season battles over Measures V and W. Instead, in the first meeting, Reed reiterated his judgment that San Jose’s finest were riding a “gravy train.

Will the last one out shut off the lights—and sound? Four downtown nightclubs—Wet, Pearl, Toons and Motif—have “closed for remodeling,” taken a break or gone dark for good in recent days. The closures follow a series of enforcement actions, and more could be on the way

This past summer, Cisco Systems, the biggest employer in Silicon Valley,  announced plans to build 2.5 million square feet of office space on 140 acres near its Tasman Avenue campus over the next 20 years. To help grease the skids with the city on this and other projects and initiatives, the San Jose–based network giant has hired longtime political aide Mike Potter. The local government affairs position is clearly a step up for Potter, who has pretty much had the same job for 15 years.

They’re calling him “RF Jay” at the district attorney’s office after a newspaper columnist compared him to late Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. And deposed DA Dolores Carr probably wishes she hadn’t demoted the office’s newly named chief assistant, Jay Boyarsky, back in 2007. That move ultimately wound up costing her her job. Oops….

A visit to the website fordandbonilla.com is not as entertaining as it once was. For a few weeks this summer, visitors to the site were redirected to a cell-phone video capturing a heated exchange between San Jose political consultant Ryan Ford and council candidate Aaron Resendez, who was then running against Xavier Campos, the brother of Ford’s then-boss, Nora Campos. (Whew!)

The vid was blurry and the sound was bad, and it would have made no sense to any potential client shopping for services from Ford and his partner, Rolando Bonilla. But local insiders got a kick out of it—that was the point. The redirect was a prank pulled by another political consultant, Jay Rosenthal, who had registered the URL when he found out Ford and Bonilla were launching their enterprise.

Longtime local pol-turned-mass-transit-fanboy Rod Diridon suddenly has a fight on his hands. His pet project, the California High Speed Rail Authority, has come under attack from U.S. Rep. Jerry Lewis, soon-to-be head of the House Appropriations Committee. It’s not that Lewis doesn’t like trains—this is purely political gamesmanship.

Like most people paying attention to the District 7 council race, Fly was surprised that the runoff between councilmember Madison Nguyen and Republican furniture-store owner Minh Duong ended up being a squeaker. After the revelations about the Chamber-endorsed Duong’s pile of bad debts and financial screwups, Fly was expecting that District 7 residents would re-elect the increasingly independent Nguyen by a landslide. Not so.

Julie Constant, the wife of San Jose City Councilmember Pete Constant, officially entered the realm of local politics when she won a spot on the Campbell Union School District Board earlier this month. And already Fly is hearing rumblings that this could be a sign that the mother of five has aspirations for the District 1 seat that is now occupied by her husband’s newly slender derrière.

In the last few weeks, San Jose City Hall fixture and failed District 9 candidate Jim Cogan‘s Facebook posts have jumped from the occasional cryptic message about being “tired of being sick and sick of being tired,” to a recent barrage of updates referencing ‘90s pop culture.

From Homer Simpson quotes to ruminations on “Reality Bites” and updates on changing his default ring tone to Chumbawamba’s “Tubthumping,” it seemed that JimCo suddenly had a lot of free time on his hands. Turns out that he does.

While Xavier Campos seemed to recover from his scandal-induced loss of the ability to speak this week, all but announcing victory in his tight race Magdalena Carrasco on Tuesday, the Carrasco camp is claiming voter fraud in the Eastside San Jose City Council race. Kevin de León, the LA state assembly member (and Carrasco’s ex), says he’s been hearing from eyewitnesses who claim to have spotted some shenanigans by members of the South Bay Labor Council (SBLC) in District 5.

Blue skies and 75-degree temperatures were good news for Democrats, who generally lose a couple of points in bad weather, academic researchers concluded in a recent study.

Still, we have to ask the question, “What were voters smoking?” The state voted not to legalize pot, but in 420-friendly San Jose, we voted to tax it anyway, by a 4-to-1 margin. And we re-elected that crazy ole Jerry Brown over the eBay scold who got confused. “Election?” Meg Whitman must have been saying. “I thought you said auction.” No Meg, high bids don’t win. Maybe someday democracy will come with a blue “Buy It Now” button.

Though trailing to Xavier Campos, District 5 candidate Magdalena Carrasco’s election night party was nonetheless packed with about 100 exuberant wellwishers.

Downtown San Jose councilman Sam Liccardo attempted to set a mood for the evening: “You guys took on the machine, and I know your going to win tonight!,” Liccardo shouted, to a round of applause.

Like an underwater homeowner on an adjustable-rate mortgage in late 2008, Team San Jose was unfazed by money issues in the months leading up to its being slapped with a default notice. And like a feckless federal regulator, the city official charged with overseeing the local business-union-municipal alliance was upbeat—right up until the report that $750,000 had fallen off the truck.

Last week, Nora Campos took City Council candidate Magdalena Carrasco to task for accepting campaign money from a controversial L.A. lawyer named Francisco Leal. Campos’ brother, Xavier Campos, is facing off against Carrasco for Nora’s soon-to-be-vacant District 5 seat, and the outgoing East Side councilwoman publicly questioned Carrasco’s ethics. She also wondered aloud whether the $250 Leal contribution is evidence that Carrasco is selling her district out to Southern California interests.