Thread: L.A. mayor's star on the rise again as higher office beckons

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L.A. mayor's star on the rise again as higher office beckons
By Peter Hecht
phecht@sacbee.com
Published: Monday, Feb. 02, 2009 | Page 1A
LOS ANGELES – Barely a year ago, Antonio Villaraigosa's political star seemed anything but luminous.

His wife divorced him after he admitted an affair with a Spanish-language television reporter. A court blocked his high-profile move to seize control of Los Angeles' troubled school system. News columnists charged that a notorious self-promoter was getting his public comeuppance.

And yet the Los Angeles mayor is soaring again in the City of Angels. He is running virtually unchallenged for re-election in March against a field of under-funded unknowns. He is widely discussed as a likely 2010 gubernatorial candidate.

Villaraigosa, who emerged from a difficult upbringing in the tough urban district of City Terrace to take over City Hall in America's second-largest city, is leading again with passion and swagger.

Despite questions of personal character, Villaraigosa has consolidated his power with public charisma and backroom chutzpah. With a month to go before the election, he has chased away serious challengers, vacuuming up campaign dollars despite the city's $1,000-per-person limit.

"He is a powerful politician with a brand name across the nation in political circles," said Jaime Regalado, director of the Pat Brown Institute of Public Affairs at California State University, Los Angeles. "The perception is that he can do somebody harm if you get on his wrong side. Politicians who want a future in L.A. have pretty much decided not to challenge him."

In an interview in his office, beneath a panoramic oil painting of the city skyline, Villaraigosa boasted of reshaping the sprawling metropolis.


He's touting his record

The former Assembly speaker pointed to his campaign leadership in winning 67 percent approval last November for $40 billion in transportation programs featuring a much-hyped "Subway to the Sea." He touted downtown revitalization and a 26 percent reduction in street gang murders. He even bragged about adding left-turn traffic signals and filling potholes.

"My predecessor … did 297,000 potholes," Villaraigosa said. "In three and a half years, I did a million potholes."

He didn't close the door on running for governor next year in the Democratic primary, barely a year after Los Angeles' March 3 mayoral election. Yet he strongly suggested that he couldn't imagine leaving the gig he has now.

"The pundits all think they know what I am going to do," Villaraigosa said. "But I'm gonna tell you something. When I say I love this job, I really do. I was born and raised here. I believe this is the city of America's hope and future. This is the city where you come to reinvent yourself. This is the city that really judges you on the content of your character and what you do."

Villaraigosa amassed $1.5 million in a blizzard of fundraising last summer. That apparently was enough to keep at least one widely discussed potential challenger – Rick Caruso, a wealthy developer who served on the city's police commission – out of the race.

"I think that was his strategy – to avoid serious competition for a second term – and he did it," said Victor Griego, a Democratic political consultant and veteran labor activist in east Los Angeles.

The $2.7 million that Villaraigosa raised by Dec. 31 dwarfs the $200,000 raised by his closest mayoral rival, attorney Walter Moore. His haul also exceeds the $1.2 million raised by San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom for an exploratory campaign for governor.


Mayor's race a warm-up?

Under California election law, Villaraigosa could legally transfer unused funds from his mayoral bid to a gubernatorial run. But the mayor scoffs at holding anything back. "I intend to spend it all," he said.

In fact, the former teachers union organizer plans to blanket Los Angeles with a ground game of multiple campaign field offices and a strong media campaign in California's largest television market.

No Los Angeles mayor has ever become governor, but the mayoral race could well boost Villaraigosa's political power if he does run in 2010.


Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa


Popular Comment
In L.A. he is referred to as the Pot Hole King. He claims that he filled a million pot holes, yet when John and Ken (KFI 640) asked for verification, an aid to the mayor could only provide verification for 1/5 that amount. He said he would get back with verification for the rest later. The data was never provided and repeated calls from KFI went unreturned.


Six month ago the L.A. Weekly through the freedom of information act got the bozo mayor's appointment book and published it. All said and done he spends 11% of his time on city business and the rest schmoozing in from of any camera or microphone he can find. But to his credit, he has managed to raise more fees and taxes than any mayor in the last 20 years. The article also missed the tree planting debacle. A million trees? More like 7000.



Huuuummm, Moonbeam Brown, Gav Newsom or Tony Villar? All clowns!



"Los Angeles covers 40 percent of the California media market," said Allan Hoffenblum, a Republican who edits the nonpartisan California Target Book on state politics. "That's a plus for running for governor. And he should do well among Latino voters, a major constituency. … If it weren't for the affair, he would be in a very strong position."

"The affair" would be Villaraigosa's ultimate hurdle in a statewide run. San Francisco's Newsom also took heat for an illicit romantic relationship. But Villaraigosa's fling with Mirthala Salinas, an anchor at NBC-Telemundo, stirred a spectacular civic soap opera.

Salinas covered the mayor's office and personally broadcast the news of Villaraigosa's break-up with his wife, Corina, with whom he has two children, without disclosing her own role in the saga. The mayor's divorce kicked up old reports about another Villaraigosa affair in 1994 and about his two adult children from past girlfriends.

"Who needs telenovelas when you have Los Angeles City Hall?" wrote Steve Lopez of the Los Angeles Times.


Apologetic about 'the affair'

Regalado said Villaraigosa's "personal problems" hurt him among Latinos, particularly women, and could well undercut a gubernatorial run. But in Los Angeles, Regalado said, the mayor's power and popularity have rebounded to the point where "nobody on the City Council will take him to task" on his political agenda.

Though Villaraigosa's braggadocio has returned on civic issues, he speaks carefully, haltingly, when reflecting on his sordid public failure.

"Yes, I do care. I hurt my family, and I let down my city and I take the responsibility for that," he said. "While I believe that most people have moved on, there may be some who haven't. I certainly respect that. But … I stayed focused on this job."

After the courts rejected his controversial bid to take over the Los Angeles school system, Villaraigosa built a formidable coalition, raised $6 million and fought the L.A. teachers union he once represented.

He elected a school board to his liking, got a superintendent he favored and was granted control of 10 of the city's most troubled high schools and middle schools.

He remains an irrepressible public presence.

"He is very, very visible, much different than his predecessor," said Jack Kyser, president of the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation. Villaraigosa defeated Mayor James Hahn in 2005. "When something happens, he is there."


Pushing for an urban revival

When 25 people were killed in a harrowing Metrolink commuter train crash, Villaraigosa was on the scene with first responders. He joined riders the next workday to offer public assurances the rail line was safe.

On any given day, Villaraigosa is the pitchman for an urban renaissance – conceived before he took office – that has energized downtown with upscale condos and a 7,000-seat performing arts theater. He pushed through a 20-year hotel tax rebate plan to add signature hotels to a glittering new L.A. Live district – the city's answer to New York's Times Square – that features actress-singer Jennifer Lopez's swank Conga Room nightclub and a Grammy music awards museum.

Samuel Garrison, vice president of public policy for the Greater Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, credits Villaraigosa with helping turn around a downtown sector "that was losing conventions to Little Rock, Ark."

But troubles loom. Los Angeles faces a $400 million city deficit. Its urban renewal has taken a header with the economy. Two major hotel and residential developments recently stalled when credit for construction dried up.

Meanwhile, LA Weekly, the alternative newspaper, has ripped Villaraigosa as an "all-about-me mayor" whose "frenetic self-promotion leaves little time for his job."

But promote he does. After a day in which Villaraigosa held a well-attended news conference to tout a new anti-gang initiative and granted multiple interviews, he appeared at a chic evening gala at the L.A. Live construction site.

He was introduced to the crowd by a Los Angeles television personality "as the one man who gets more air time than I do." That seems to be just the way he likes it.

"I've always believed that public service is about people," Villaraigosa said. "It's important to get public support for what you do. … I believe the success of what we've been able to do has everything to do with that."


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Call Peter Hecht, Bee Capitol Bureau, (916) 326-5539.


http://sacbee.com/topstories/story/1590994.html

Walter Moore is the answer.

How more blatant can you get? This piece totally ignores the fact that Walter Moore is running against Mayor Viva La Raza...the same Walter Moore that Antonio is too afraid of to debate in public. He won't do it because he knows he'd lose and probably have to explain himself in a debate with Moore. Moore would fillet Viva La Raza's lying rhetoric wide open for the whole world to see.

Well, how can Mayor Viva La Raza lose with drug cartel moneyand intimidation backing him to keep their drug distribution center, the city of LA, under their complete control? He's nothing but a puppet for the Mexican government/cartels. If there are any REAL Americans left in Southern California, the best way to get LA back on the track would be to get completely behind Walter Moore and vote him into the position of mayor.

If this POS wins the governor seat in 2010, you might as well just secede CA to Mexico. Having this do nothing traitor as a governor would mean the end of CA as we know it.

Originally Posted by dman1200

If this POS wins the governor seat in 2010, you might as well just secede CA to Mexico. Having this do nothing traitor as a governor would mean the end of CA as we know it.

You're absolutely right and this is the goal of MEChA, The NCLR, LULAC, MALDEF, The Brown Berets, the Mexica Movement and Villaraigosa himself. He was a rabid member of MEChA nd I'm sure he's still involved with them...in the shadows. It all falls into that AZTLAN fairytale that they've been whining about since 1968.

Can the Sacbee be anymore in the tank for mayor reconquista! So nice to see the sacbee has written off any one who dares to challenge the gang banging mayor!

And papers wonder why they are going broke. Good grief....

The day this POS is elected Governor is the day California officially belongs to mexico!