EDITORIAL PHONY MARTYR DON'T PITY MARTIN LUDLOW.

UPON stepping down from the powerful position as head of the County Federation of Labor, Martin Ludlow chose to invoke the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. rather than to address the accusations of serious political corruption that led to his downfall.

The reference to Dr. King was a deliberate ploy by Ludlow to cast himself as both a great moral guide of Los Angeles and a symbol of the persecuted labor movement.

Others indicated there were sinister forces trying to hurt the labor movement in Los Angeles by taking down Ludlow, who gave up his City Council seat after just two years to take over as the chief of the Federation of Labor - a position left vacant by the death of Miguel Contreras in May.

Ludlow does a disservice to the civil-rights movement, the labor movement and to his friends and followers by pretending to be a victim when he's only quitting to avoid jail time.

This is no tragic story of a wronged leader taken down by the powers that be. This is a mere case of a politician who got caught taking donations illegally and covering it up in order to win his first political seat. Ludlow's big mistake was to involve federal authorities by reportedly funneling thousands of dollars from the Service Employees International Union, Local 99, which represents Los Angeles Unified School District's nonteaching staff, during his closely contested 2003 campaign for Los Angeles City Council.

Final settlement in the joint city-county investigation is still under way but will likely lead to, at the very least, huge fines and a ban on his running for public office or holding a union post for a decade.

In its simplest terms, the accusation is that Ludlow stole the election with illegal money - which is ironic since everybody else at City Hall rounds up fortunes in campaign money by selling access and paying modest Ethics Commission fines for overstepping the boundaries.

Think of it: If Ludlow had merely followed the corrupt practices of everyone else at City Hall, he might have gone on to a great career as a civic leader. Instead, he's wearing the cloak of a martyr and deepening the divide in our community while copping a plea.