Election showdown may be on again as city clerk reneges on his resignation.

ON SECOND THOUGHT: Torrance City Clerk John A. Bramhall announced a little more than a month ago that he would resign in July, citing public criticism of him by Dora Hong, his highest-ranking assistant.

Now, Bramhall has changed his tune. In a memo to the City Council last week, the clerk said he has decided to serve the remainder of his term, which ends in March.

The move has stirred speculation that Bramhall may be interested in running for reelection. If he does, he will have to lock horns with Hong, who sharply criticized the clerk in May as “little more than a self-appointed city greeter.”

Hong, who accused Bramhall of forgetting to sign important documents and mishandling paperwork, said that if her boss sought reelection next year, she would run against him. Bramhall, who could not be reached for comment last week, has called Hong’s criticism unfair and said that she has a history of clashes with superiors.

Last week, Hong said the clerk’s announcement that he will serve out his term means an electoral showdown is certain. “His intention is to run again, so I am going to run,” she said.

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FRIENDS FOREVER: Newly installed Los Angeles City Councilman Rudy Svorinich Jr. has announced that his old high school buddy, John N. Vidovich, will be his chief deputy. That is not surprising, since Vidovich was one of Svorinich’s campaign coordinators and served as his transition chief.

Vidovich is a city fire captain and, like Svorinich, a native of San Pedro. He left the Fire Department on Thursday, the date of the announcement. Vidovich, 32, served 13 years with the department and is a former president of the City Firefighters Assn. In his new post, Vidovich will oversee City Hall and field office operations for the new councilman.

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STRASER STEPS UP: A 20-year veteran of the Hermosa Beach Police Department, Val Straser, has been sworn in as the department’s new chief.

Straser became acting chief in March after former Public Safety Director Steve Wisniewski was put on paid leave during an investigation into alleged misconduct.

Hermosa Beach City Manager Frederick R. Ferrin fired Wisniewski, 46, on June 14, alleging that Wisniewski misled the City Council about a weapons trade his department made with a gun dealer. Ferrin said Wisniewski did not tell the council that assault weapons were involved.

Wisniewski is appealing his firing to the Civil Service Commission.

Straser, 47, beat out three other in-house candidates for the job by receiving the highest score on a Civil Service interview conducted by Palos Verdes Estates City Manager James Hendrickson, El Segundo Police Chief Tim Grimmond and Redondo Beach Police Chief Roger Moulton.

Other candidates for the job were Cmdr. Mike Lavin, Sgt. John Kearin and Sgt. Mark White.

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TV PIONEER: Truman Jacques, public information officer for the city of Inglewood, has joined the Watts Walk of Fame, a byway at Will Rogers Memorial Park in which the likenesses of Watts activists and luminaries are etched in concrete. A ceremony honoring Jacques and another walk-of-fame inductee, former Los Angeles NAACP President Celes King III, was held Friday at the park, at Central Avenue and 103rd Street.

Jacques was one of the first well-known black television personalities in the Los Angeles area. After the 1965 Watts riot, he created a job placement network to steer job-seekers to the Southland’s large corporate employers and, in 1967, became co-host, with news anchor Maury Greene, of a weekly KCBS (then KNXT) program on jobs called “Opportunity Line.”

Jacques went on to pioneer the audience-involved format now popular with personalities such as Oprah Winfrey and Geraldo Rivera. His first program was “Insider/Outsider,” in which special guests would talk with an audience of 20 or 30 people, answering questions and debating current affairs. In 1979, Jacques replaced the late Bill Stout on the KCBS program “Today’s Religion,” where he is still seen each Sunday morning. He is also host of “Religion on the Line,” a weekly, two-hour call-in radio program on KABC Talk Radio.

Other well-known personalities on the Watts Walk are Los Angeles County Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, former Supervisor Kenneth Hahn, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) and educator-philanthropist Sybil Brand. Officially, the walk is known as The Promenade of Prominence and is a county historic landmark.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“I touched a shark! I touched a shark!”

--Ethan Davidoff, 7 1/2, during a visit to the Roundhouse Marine Studies Laboratory on the pier in Manhattan Beach.