In a life marked by steep rises and precipitous falls, Antonio Villaraigosa has often sought redemption.
Four years ago, his quest to become the city's first Latino mayor since 1872 captured international media attention but ended in a crushing and bitter defeat by James K. Hahn.
Since then, Villaraigosa has won a City Council seat representing -- among other areas -- the Eastside neighborhoods where he grew up. He has endured surgeries and gone back to church. And now, though he pledged he wouldn't do it, Villaraigosa is running again for mayor, hoping for another of the fortunate reversals that have graced his life.
Some things haven't changed. He still gets up at 5 a.m. and hurls himself into the quiet early-morning mist for a series of workouts up and down the hills of his Mount Washington neighborhood, the start of a day that can include a dozen events. His progress across any room, anywhere, is still slowed by endless handshakes, brilliant smiles and slaps on the back.
But if last time Villaraigosa, 52, exploded onto the political stage, the sweep of his life seeming to embody all the possibilities of Los Angeles, this time is different.
The high school dropout who became speaker of the California Assembly is off to a less blazing start. Pundits murmur that, if he loses this time, the once-limitless luster of his political star will dim. There is also unrest closer to home: Last fall, some of his own constituents launched an effort to recall him from his council seat, saying they were outraged that he had reneged on his promise to serve four full years.
Villaraigosa admits the threat. "I think the prevailing opinion is I've got a lot at stake," he said in an interview at an Eastside restaurant. "I acknowledge that." He paused for a moment, appearing to choose his words with agonizing care, though he would repeat the phrases almost verbatim in the following weeks.
"I love this city. It's given me more than I could ever imagine," he said. "I'm not in this, you know, out of some sense of fear or some need to prove a point. I love this. I love service.... I am running for mayor because I know I have a unique -- in this race -- ability to bring people together, to engage them."
To Villaraigosa's supporters, many of whom adore him with a burning devotion, that is a key strength: using charm to craft agreement where none seemed possible.
His detractors have accused Villaraigosa of piggybacking on the achievements of others, and then showing up with a smile to take credit.
As he has moved into this campaign, Villaraigosa has emphasized style over specifics, gliding beyond deep policy discussions in favor of arguing that his leadership abilities give him the edge over other candidates.
A group of neighborhood activists gathered at a Sherman Oaks hospital one recent day, detailing their fears that an influx of apartment buildings would threaten their single-family-home neighborhoods.
Villaraigosa is known as a liberal, and some of the questions had an edge of suspicion.
The candidate sat straight in his chair. "It's not easy being a leader," he told them. "Sometimes you gotta talk straight: Anybody who tells you that Los Angeles is going to look like it did 40 years ago is lying."
Still, he added, if he were mayor, disputes would be talked out. "We need a mayor who will walk into a room full of 300 people and be willing to be screamed at," he said.
He won applause from the group. But would he win votes?
Credit to His Mother
For Villaraigosa, it all goes back to his deceased mother, Natalia Delgado.
"I'm here today," he told volunteers last month, "because I had a mother of indomitable spirit and faith, a woman who struggled, sometimes worked two jobs, to put her kids through college. A woman who went through unspeakable circumstances as a victim of domestic violence in a home of alcoholism."
The candidate was born Antonio Villar on the Eastside in 1953. He combined his surname with that of his wife, Corina Raigosa, when they married in 1987. They have two children, Antonio Jr., 15, and Natalia Fe, 11. Villaraigosa also has two adult daughters from previous relationships.
Villaraigosa's father was a Mexican immigrant who sometimes beat his mother, the candidate has said, and abandoned the family when Antonio was 5. His little sisters, Deborah and Mary Lou, were toddlers. Villaraigosa's estranged father refused to comment.
Villaraigosa's mother held their family together in a two-bedroom apartment in City Terrace. She worked for the state, starting as a secretary and eventually becoming an equal employment compliance officer. Delgado, who learned Latin and a love of reading from the nuns who taught her as a child, read aloud to her children from Keats, the Bronte sisters and Edgar Allan Poe, reciting "The Raven" from memory. Her children recall their home as a place bursting with books and dreams, even as her son lined his shoes with cardboard to make them last.
