Don’t underestimate Antonio Villaraigosa in the race for California governor

by Jim Newton

By Jim Newton, CalMatters

This commentary was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

One bad bet in California politics in recent decades has been to assume that Antonio Villaraigosa, who’s now in the hunt for the governorship, was finished. Underestimating him is a fool’s game.

Some people thought he’d never make the transition from Sacramento, where he was the speaker of the Assembly, back to Los Angeles, where he’s from. Some thought he was through after losing the mayor’s race in 2001 to then-City Attorney James Hahn. Many people figured he was done after his marriage blew up during his mayoralty. 

All of those people were wrong.

Villaraigosa was elected to the Los Angeles City Council soon after losing the 2001 mayoral race. He then won his rematch against Hahn in 2005 and was easily reelected in 2009. Even critics credited him with important achievements as mayor, particularly lowered crime and vast new investments in public transit.

Here he comes again. No longer the brash young organizer, Villaraigosa is now 72, but he’s got another campaign in him, and he’s making his second stab at the governorship. 

No Los Angeles mayor has ever made the jump, but Villaraigosa is nothing if not persistent.

I’ve known him a long time. We first met in 2000, when he was a relatively unknown figure in Los Angeles politics. It has not always been an easy ride, and we’ve had our differences. Villaraigosa is talkative and bubbling with ideas, but he enjoys the sound of his own voice and rarely slows down to listen to anyone else. He’s magnetic — guests at any event are drawn to him — but he tends to hold forth. He wears people out.

And yet, that same energy that I first saw in a restaurant booth at our initial meeting is still there. He loves the attention, but he also knows that he has the chance to do something with it. He’s resilient and principled.

In this round, Villaraigosa has a couple things going for him, as well as a couple big, looming obstacles. The latter include two potential missing pieces in the race: former Vice President Kamala Harris and Los Angeles developer Rick Caruso.

Caruso is the lesser threat to Villaraigosa’s ambitions. Rich, white and self-absorbed, Caruso could elbow his way into the runoff as a moderate outside the Democratic Party mainstream — he’s only been a Democrat for a few years, after all. But that’s not a simple task, and it’s easier to see how he could finish second than first.

Caruso can self-finance, but it’s not clear where else his support would come from. Major Republican donors want him to pass on this race so that they can coalesce around a MAGA candidate (a sure-fire track to losing in 2026. See: Steve Garvey). And the state’s liberal elites showed their disdain for Caruso in his 2022 mayoral campaign against Karen Bass, who beat him by 10 points despite spending $100 million on his own campaign. His path to the governorship, if he has one, is narrow.

Harris is another story. There’s no love lost between her and Villaraigosa. In 2016, when U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer announced that she would not seek another term, it opened the gate for a chance to succeed her. Harris moved more quickly than Villaraigosa to mobilize a campaign and boxed him out, frustrating his bid for statewide office. 

They’ve mended some fences since — he enthusiastically supported her against Donald Trump, an easy call — but should she enter the governor’s race, she would cast a long shadow over every other candidate, including Villaraigosa. He wouldn’t mind running against her, but she’d be the clear favorite.

He professes little interest in the plans of either Caruso or Harris. “I’m in it no matter who gets in,” Villaraigosa told me last week, adding that the governorship is “not a stepping stone,” a light dig at Harris. “I’m in this race, and I’m ready to lead on day one.”

That last comment is telling — in two ways. Villaraigosa is a competitor, and he’s good at it. And yet, for all his formidable political skills and his impressive resume, Villaraigosa can come across as rehearsed. He likes to talk about “not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good,” about being a “problem-solver,” and, yes, about being “ready to lead on day one.” 

None of that is false or offensive, but it’s political patter.

"I'm not protecting refineries or oil. I'm protecting the middle-class and working families who can't afford $8 a gallon for gas."

Antonio Villaraigosa, former Los Angeles mayor and candidate for governor

When he lays off his talking points, he’s better. Villaraigosa rightfully recalls that he helped California extend universal health care to children, that he’s been a champion of clean air for decades, that he presided over sharp declines in L.A. crime, that he demanded lawful behavior from the city’s police without calling to defund the department. 

He’s “unabashedly progressive,” but he’s more of a leader than an ideologue. Being mayor helped him learn and practice that. More than any candidate in the race, he can point to real executive experience in government.

He's a little shakier on his political support, notably the backing that he’s received from oil and gas interests. That support is unexpected given Villaraigosa’s dedication to easing climate change and to environmental protection generally, and it has not escaped notice that fossil fuel interests are helping him raise money in the early, difficult stages of his race. 

Why, it’s fair to ask, would oil and gas groups support a candidate who touts his record on climate change?

He knows the question is coming, and he’s ready with an answer, albeit a somewhat pat one. When it comes to energy, he said, he’s for “all of the above.” He supports development of wind and solar and geothermal, as well as small nuclear. And he wants to protect the state’s oil refineries, too, but he wants to be clear about why. 

“I’m not protecting refineries or oil,” he insisted, “I’m protecting the middle-class and working families who can’t afford $8 a gallon for gas.”

So Villaraigosa re-enters the fray, bringing all his energy, his vanity, his thoughtful positions and his rehearsed replies, his ambition and his undeniable commitment to service. He can be exhausting — believe me, I know — but just when you think you’re tired of him, he hits his stride.

In our conversation last week, that reminder came when we briefly hit upon the events taking place around us. As we spoke, masked federal agents were rounding up Angelenos, yanking them from workplaces and families and shipping them to points unknown. Protesters were rising up, and Trump was spoiling for a fight. 

A more cautious politician might wait for those events to calm down before weighing in. Not Villaraigosa. When the subject turned to the immigration raids, suddenly his patter was gone and his voice hardened.

“What we saw yesterday,” he said, “you’d have to be a calloused human being not to be affected.” It was nothing less, he added, than “hard-working people being rounded up like animals.”

In this instance, Villaraigosa was not calculating. He was openly, unambiguously appalled and unafraid to say so. 

“I know this state,” he said. “I know these people.”

He does. And that’s why it’s a mistake ever to underestimate Antonio Villaraigosa.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.