CALIFORNIA
FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, JUNE 9, 2017, OR THEREAFTER
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, JUNE 9, 2017, OR THEREAFTER
One in an occasional serious
of columns based on interviews with major candidates for governor of California
BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“VILLARAIGOSA: ‘I WANT TO RESTORE STATE’S LUSTER’”
BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“VILLARAIGOSA: ‘I WANT TO RESTORE STATE’S LUSTER’”
At 64, the passion still comes through
when Antonio Villaraigosa talks about California. “I haven’t stopped wanting to
change the world,” he declares while explaining why he’s running for governor.
“I want to restore the state’s luster.”
Speaker of the state Assembly for
almost three years and mayor of Los Angeles for eight, Villaraigosa spent 56
days over the last year touring parts of California that major politicians
rarely see, and he says he learned a lot.
Unlike Richard Riordan, his immediate
predecessor as L.A.’s mayor, Villaraigosa did not return from his “listening
tour” talking about “strange places” he visited. Rather, he’s now eager to help
uplift the many places where he says Californians are hurting.
“In many areas, the recession is still
on. People feel the economy is rigged and just doesn’t work for them,” he said
in an interview. “We need to improve the economy in the Central Valley and the
Inland Empire (Riverside and San Bernardino counties) and we need to improve
educational opportunities for young people there. By 2025, we will have 1
million less college graduates in this state than we need for the sophisticated
jobs to be filled.”
Villaraigosa, out of public office
since 2013, also wants to improve the state’s plumbing, capturing more storm
water in new reservoirs, recycling more discarded water and getting water
supplies to places that receive too little.
One of at least four major 2018
candidates for governor, Villaraigosa is careful never to utter a critical word
about current Gov. Jerry Brown. But his improved plumbing probably would not
include Brown’s pet project, a putative $40 billion set of water tunnels aiming
to bring Northern California river water under the delta of the Sacramento and
San Joaquin rivers to farms and cities further south.
“We (the state) never came through on
promises we made in 1999 to build at least two more dams and reservoirs,” he
said. One of those would be the proposed Temperance Flat Dam on the San Joaquin
in Fresno and Madera counties. Villaraigosa said that dam alone would
significantly cut the more than 1 million acre feet of storm and snowfall
runoff that flowed to sea from California this winter and spring.
Villaraigosa runs second among Democrats
in recent polls and fundraising reports. He was Assembly speaker when state
government committed – with no firm timetable – to building that dam.
He’s also aware that while he broke one
glass ceiling as the first Latino mayor of the state’s biggest city in the
modern era, he has two more barriers left to shatter. He knows no Latino has served
as governor since Romualdo Pacheco in 1875 and that no former Los Angeles mayor
ever has. One, Sam Yorty, tried twice during the 1960s and early ’70s.
And he knows he’ll have to overcome
the historic animosity for Los Angeles that persists in parts of Northern
California. To do that, he said, “You have to show people you are who you say
you are. I can say ‘Go, Giants,’ for example, but only when they’re not playing
the Dodgers. People have to see you care and you’ll get your share of the
vote.”
Villaraigosa starts with an advantage
among Latinos, who voted for him in 80 percent proportions when he ran for
mayor.
“I’m used to breaking barriers,” he
said. “No Latino before me had been elected mayor of Los Angeles. By the end of
my two terms, people didn’t talk about me as a Latino mayor, but just a mayor,
and that was a good thing.”
Villaraigosa, like rival Gavin Newsom,
the current lieutenant governor and ex-mayor of San Francisco, knows he’ll have
to overcome his record of womanizing. “I’ve taken responsibility for that,” he
said. “I’ve acknowledged that I made mistakes. And after apologizing and
healing with my family (but not getting back together with ex-wife Corina), I
went back to work. People will have to decide this race based on a broad
spectrum of factors and I know that will be one.”
Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough, The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It" is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net
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