He’s out: LA mayor sidesteps 2010 governor’s race

LOS ANGELES — Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa announced Monday he will not enter next year’s race for California governor, ending months of speculation about his ambitions and reordering the emerging contest to run the deeply troubled state.

The 56-year-old mayor, once widely seen as a rising Democratic star, said months ago he would consider jumping into the 2010 campaign to replace Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican prevented by law from seeking a third consecutive term.

But Villaraigosa said he concluded that he couldn’t step away from his job with a budget crisis at City Hall and his hometown struggling with double-digit unemployment and a housing meltdown.

“I’ve got a lot of work to do,” Villaraigosa said during an interview on CNN, the stage he chose to disclose his decision. “I feel compelled to complete what I started.”

The governor’s race is getting under way with California in economic turmoil. Schwarzenegger has proposed deep cuts in health care, education and other programs to close a $24.3 billion deficit that has emerged since a budget was passed in February.

With Villaraigosa on the sidelines, the Democratic primary is beginning to coalesce around two potential candidates: Attorney General Jerry Brown and San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom.

Republicans maneuvering to get in the race include former Rep. Tom Campbell, Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner and former eBay chief executive Meg Whitman.

Villaraigosa’s decision could bolster the chances of Brown, a former governor who has run numerous statewide campaigns and whose family name is part of California political history. His father also served as governor.

Newsom’s base is in the San Francisco Bay area, and he is largely unknown to Southern California voters who would have been the backbone of Villaraigosa’s candidacy. Early polling suggested Villaraigosa would get strong support from Hispanics in a primary race.

Newsom senior adviser Garry South said Villaraigosa’s voters are now “up for grabs.”

“Are younger, Latino voters going to be impressed with a bill Jerry Brown signed in 1979?” South asked.

Veteran Democratic consultant Bill Carrick said Brown “has run many times on the ballot in Southern California and done very well, particularly in Democratic primaries. He’s the best known, the most familiar.”

One of Villaraigosa’s close advisers, consultant Kerman Maddox, said the mayor had been well-positioned for a three-way primary. But he believed Villaraigosa was concerned about his competitiveness in a general election in a state with a record of electing politically moderate governors.

Is California ready for “a Latino, liberal mayor from the big city of LA?” Maddox asked.

When he took office in 2005 as the first Hispanic mayor of Los Angeles in more than a century, Villaraigosa was in the vanguard of a new wave of Latino political power. But first term was marked by a series of setbacks including the failure of his signature school-reform plan and the breakup of his marriage during his affair with a TV newscaster.

Typically, aspiring candidates for governor would begin raising money aggressively and making appearances around California, but the mayor showed few signs that he was preparing for a statewide candidacy.

In March, he won a second term that begins July 1 in what amounted to a lukewarm endorsement from voters. He’s been dating another TV newscaster, and many of his campaign promises have yet to be realized, from an expanded subway to easing the city’s notorious traffic.

A recent poll in the Los Angeles Times found two of three voters believe the city is on the wrong track.

“The political capital of the mayor is not what it once was,” said Jaime Regalado of the Pat Brown Institute of Public Affairs at California State University, Los Angeles. “He realizes he would have a tough road.”