Villaraigosa Embracing Shuttle Politics

SACRAMENTO — As the legislative session entered the home stretch earlier this month, Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa awakened about 5 a.m. for a hurried flight home to Los Angeles to speak to the Latin Business Assn.

Then Villaraigosa immediately headed back to the capital, where he arrived in the Assembly in time to cast the decisive vote on a controversial measure recognizing domestic partners for limited benefits.

The itinerary reflects the two faces of Villaraigosa: an ambitious politician seeking to expand his hometown visibility and a legislative leader who must simultaneously maintain his grip on power in the Capitol.

How effectively Villaraigosa performs as speaker--including his shuttle politics--will help determine how far he can advance in politics as he inches toward a run for mayor of the nation’s second-largest city, where his 45th District stretches from Hollywood to Highland Park.

As the speaker surveys his future, the question remains whether Villaraigosa can build on the leadership skills he sharpened in Sacramento to become a viable mayoral candidate, someone who can appeal to voters citywide and to influential donors. The betting is that he can.

Term limits helped him pull off a meteoric rise to power, but they also compel Villaraigosa, 46, to leave the Assembly next year, after just half a dozen years in office.

Villaraigosa is the new prototype of legislative leader, propelled with lightning speed from the back benches of the Assembly to the presiding officer’s chair. Villaraigosa was only in his second term when he became speaker; the last Assembly leader from Los Angeles, Democrat Robert Moretti, had been in office seven years before leading the lower house from 1971 to 1974.

But Villaraigosa, also a Democrat, cannot be judged by the same yardstick as Moretti or Willie Brown, who served in the Assembly 16 years before rising to the speakership, which he held for a record 14 1/2 years.

A hallmark of the old legislative system--before voter approval of term limits in 1990--was to reward loyalty and patience. Now, legislators are much more eager to pile up a quick list of legislative accomplishments, often requiring the speaker to serve as a mediator as much as a leader.

“His job is probably 75% or 80% being a mom or a dad resolving disputes among all the kids in the caucus,” said Assemblyman Fred Keeley (D-Boulder Creek). “It’s just inevitable. All these clashes all the time and he spends an enormous amount of time brokering solutions to those kinds of things.”

His leadership has been marked by as many ups and downs as Villaraigosa’s flight schedule, which in recent months has included stops in Mexico, Israel and Washington as well as Los Angeles.

Even his critics grudgingly credit his survival skills.

“The betting line in January was that he wouldn’t make it through the year,” said a longtime Republican strategist. “But he’s shown skill and savvy holding on,” partly by keeping a group of restless, self-styled pro-business Democrats in his camp.

But Villaraigosa also can cite a list of solid accomplishments, including pushing through a $2.1-billion park bond measure full of projects in urban areas, especially Los Angeles; advancing a package of far-reaching gun control measures; and helping Gov. Gray Davis win approval of the state budget on time.

It’s a set of achievements designed to win friends for him among Los Angeles voters.

Indeed, earlier this year, Villaraigosa spelled out his Los Angeles-oriented strategy, saying: “I’m going to focus on this job [as speaker] because I know that I have no shot being the next mayor of the city of Los Angeles unless I do a good job here; 2001 [the date of the mayoral election] is a long ways away.”

Looking back on the 1999 session, Villaraigosa indicated that he had met his goal, and said he hopes his “legacy as speaker will be as a consensus-builder, as someone who endeavored to make the Assembly a more unified, dignified and productive place of business.”

Hogwash, say his Republican critics, who contend that he has presided over a disorderly house.

They say that Villaraigosa was a partisan who did not respect the rights of the opposition and that he allowed a gaggle of bills full of last-minute amendments for special interests to fly out of the Assembly.

“He’s an amateur and it shows just in the overall conduct of the house, the maladministration of the house,” said Assemblyman Tom McClintock (R-Granada Hills). He complained that Villaraigosa allowed changes in rules that made it easier to revise bills. So, he asserted, at the end of the session a measure on elder care easily could be turned into a transit proposal.

Villaraigosa’s ability to count votes was faulty on several occasions.

On one bill by Assemblywoman Sheila Kuehl (D-Santa Monica), Villaraigosa was handed another setback. The measure, AB 222, was intended to prohibit discrimination in public schools on the basis of sexual orientation. It prompted the Assembly’s most riveting debate of the year, during which Villaraigosa predicted victory. But the bill fell one vote short.

Villaraigosa said he would not give up. And on the last day he helped Kuehl push through a streamlined version of the proposal, AB 37, and picked up the one additional vote needed for passage.

But the speaker wasn’t able to reverse one of his most stinging setbacks.

In a special election last April, sole Green Party legislator Audie Bock upset the favored Democrat, former Oakland Mayor Elihu Harris, who was backed by Villaraigosa. It meant that for the first time in 50 years Oakland was not represented in Sacramento by an African American.

Villaraigosa makes no apologies about the defeat, saying, “I lost it. I lost the race. . . . I was committed to a more representative state Legislature.” It was a major embarrassment. Yet Democrats remained loyal.

Indeed, his job is really to please a majority of his 47 Democratic members. If he keeps them in his corner, he keeps his job, even in the face of an election loss like the one in Oakland.

The main way he does that is by raising money to help keep Democrats in office. And Villaraigosa wins high marks for that.

One of the state’s most visible Latino politicians, Villaraigosa showed a new sophistication in attracting blue-chip donors. During the summer, he hosted the 1999 Speaker’s Golf Classic at the exclusive Pebble Beach and Spanish Bay golf courses. Since the first of the year, he has collected more than $1.8 million for Assembly Democrats.

Villaraigosa also has shown that he knows when to seek help.

On the final day of the session, the speaker said, he asked Davis to talk to Republicans who balked at supporting a $1.9-million water bond issue. With jawboning by the governor and his staff, it was approved.

Publicly, Davis, a self-styled centrist, and Villaraigosa, a passionate liberal and former union organizer, have had a smooth, businesslike relationship.

At a party a few days before the session ended, Davis poked fun at Villaraigosa and his prospective mayoral campaign. The governor joked that he and the speaker have been much closer since Villaraigosa realized that Davis is registered to vote in Los Angeles.