June 15, 2005

LOS ANGELES -- The day after he won election as the first Hispanic mayor here since 1872, Antonio Villaraigosa started getting calls about running for state and national office. "I just laughed," he says.

Villaraigosa: ''Any continued national prominence will hinge on how successful I am as mayor.''

Villaraigosa's May 17 victory vaults him into the top tier of Hispanic Democrats, along with statewide officials such as New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson and Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar. But he knows his star will fade unless he proves he can manage this huge, unwieldy city. "Any continued national prominence will hinge on how successful I am as mayor," he says.

To say the job is tough is an understatement. This city, the nation's second largest at 3.7 million, is plagued by school violence and transportation problems, racial and ethnic tensions, poverty and homelessness, and periodic attempts by various communities to secede.

Though he doesn't take office until July 1, Villaraigosa is already dealing with problems such as an imminent hotel labor crisis. He's winning praise for his visibility in a city craving public leadership after four years of Mayor James Hahn's reserved, bureaucratic style.

"This is a hands-on guy. He jumped right in," says Joe Cerrell, a veteran Democratic consultant close to Hahn.

Villaraigosa took a break Friday for a rare sit-down interview. He'd had three hours of sleep after a late-night-to-early-morning negotiating session with hotel workers and managers. He would later restart the talks and push them through a sleepless night.

But for this 45 minutes, Villaraigosa discussed his life and hopes in ways that underscored his blend of street and elite. The product of a broken home in a poor Hispanic neighborhood, he talked of shining shoes and bouncing back after hard knocks.

As he sipped green tea for his hoarse voice ("I do it like the English do, with a little milk and honey"), he also talked of the Mexican-American art on the walls of his City Council office and his vision of Los Angeles as "the Venice of the 21st century." The 15th century trade crossroads of the world, that is, not the nearby beach town.

Villaraigosa wanted this job so much that after a stinging loss in 2001, he ditched investment banking and, to the dismay of his friends, decided to start over again. That meant running for city council, a comedown after a stint as speaker of the California Assembly and temporary stardom as the surprise winner of a multicandidate mayoral primary in 2001.

Hahn halted Villaraigosa's ascent back then in a runoff, beating him 53%-46% after running an ad that linked Villaraigosa to a convicted drug dealer. But the reticent Hahn proved to be "a better mayor than politician," in his friend Cerrell's words. This year, with investigators looking into whether Hahn's donors received city contracts, Villaraigosa won the primary again and then went on to crush Hahn by 18 points in the runoff. He won majorities of Hispanics, whites and blacks, according to exit polls and post-election studies.

A former labor organizer and union negotiator, Villaraigosa encountered wariness from some in the business community. The Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce endorsed Hahn, but a week after the election, Chamber President Rusty Hammer posted a column headlined "Congratulations Antonio." George Kieffer, an executive board member of the chamber, says Villaraigosa already has been in touch with Hammer and shown a "healthy" inclination to take an active role in city affairs.

Forty percent of people in Los Angeles are foreign-born, according to the U.S. Census. Nearly half the population is Hispanic; about 11% is black and 11% Asian. The diversity of Villaraigosa's support has made him a poster person for racial healing. He's even been asked to do an interview for the upcoming DVD version of Crash , the film about brutal ethnic and racial tensions in Los Angeles.

Villaraigosa's broad ethnic and racial coalition could serve as a model for others, says Frank Gilliam, an urban politics expert at UCLA. The key, he says, is to lay a sound foundation. Villaraigosa's pledge to be "mayor of all of us" was credible, Gilliam says, because he'd been building bridges throughout his labor and political careers. "Antonio has really long and deep relationships" with black leaders, he says. "And he is clearly comfortable coming to the African-American community."

Democrats have seen their majority among Hispanic voters erode substantially in the past two presidential elections. Villaraigosa advises the party to "speak to America's heart" and redefine "family values" in a way that's meaningful to people's lives. Democrats can expand their appeal to Latino voters, he says. All it takes is work.

Never give up

Resilience has been Villaraigosa's hallmark throughout a life of adversity and wrong turns. He's been poor, a high school dropout, an unwed father. He was partially paralyzed by a tumor during high school, arrested for assault in his 20s, deserted as a child by an alcoholic father who underscored the abandonment when he later named another son Antonio.

But Villaraigosa never stayed down or out for long. He started earning money at age 7, shining shoes on a downtown corner. The tumor was removed and the paralysis disappeared. He managed to finish not only high school but also college and law school.

His trial on the assault charge — he was defending his mother against a harasser — ended with a hung jury.

And though his two oldest daughters were born out of wedlock to different mothers, unlike him they had a father in their lives.

At a time when it was virtually unheard of for men, before 1979's Kramer vs. Kramer , he says, "I had joint custody of the children."

The girls each chose to live with him when they turned 15. Now, Villaraigosa says, all four of his children — ages 29, 27, 16 and 14 — are so close that "you'd never know my family was blended."

Villaraigosa says he's been "blessed with a drive and determination that compels me to get up every time I've fallen down."

But he pauses when asked if his life will be an inspiration to other children in difficult circumstances.

"Yes, these young people need role models," he says. "But they also need concrete support — teachers with high expectations, high-quality instruction and support at home to make them successful."

A short honeymoon

Villaraigosa is in that heady period of promise that precedes any political administration. The realities of governing — such as having to say no — won't intrude until he's sworn in. In the meantime, he has already signaled his activist approach to the job.

Traffic and schools are Villaraigosa's most urgent problems. He is exercising his right as mayor to be board chairman of the Metropolitan Transit Authority, which oversees trains, buses, commuter lanes, traffic lights and highway ramps. He is hoping to persuade Los Angeles to emulate New York and Chicago, which have put their mayors in charge of city schools.

Villaraigosa's early advantage is his high profile around the city, even before he takes office. Steve Kinney, a Republican consultant here, says the bully pulpit is a Los Angeles mayor's main tool in a town with a strong and independent-minded city council. Villaraigosa has "tried to step out and do some good positioning, some grandstanding," he says.

Even as he attends elementary school celebrations and other events related to his city council duties, Villaraigosa is meeting with community leaders, speaking to business groups and talking about ways to make more movies in Los Angeles and attract more high-tech media companies.

When violence broke out recently at a school, Villaraigosa met with parents and children. And just last weekend, on the brink of the tourist and convention season, he personally mediated the end of a 14-month labor dispute between hotel operators and their employees.

The mayor-elect hosted a meeting of the two sides in his office Thursday night from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. Friday, he called them back at 10 p.m. and assigned them to separate conference rooms. Then he shuttled back and forth using the techniques he'd learned during his union years: guilt, charm, hardball. At 4:55 a.m., five minutes before managers planned to lock out workers at seven hotels, the parties reached agreement.

Villaraigosa held a press conference, kept an 8 a.m. haircut appointment, did a 10:30 a.m. event in his council district, and kept going through an 8 p.m. speech to the Los Angeles Press Club. Only then did he go to sleep. "This would be work," he says, "if I didn't love what I do."