Los Angeles mayoral candidate Antonio Villaraigosa first lost the endorsement of the county's main labor council. Then on Tuesday, he failed to win the support of the county Democratic Party.
Now, heading into the last month and a half before the March 8 election, Villaraigosa is grappling with how to craft a winning campaign without two powerful institutions that gave him crucial organizational and financial firepower during his unsuccessful 2001 run against Mayor James K. Hahn.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Saturday January 29, 2005 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 47 words Type of Material: Correction
Mayoral election -- A Jan. 20 article in Section A and other articles about Antonio Villaraigosa since the 2001 mayoral election have reported the margin by which he lost the runoff to Mayor James K. Hahn as 8 percentage points. The correct margin was 7 percentage points.
At the same time, he also finds himself running against the high expectations he set in the last race.
Some political insiders say his campaign seems to lack the electricity that made him a darling of the national media in 2001, when he captivated many voters with the dream that he might become the city's first Latino mayor since 1872.
"It's not new any longer. Obviously, some of that luster, some of that sparkle, is not going to be there," said Jaime Regalado, executive director of the Pat Brown Institute of Public Affairs at Cal State Los Angeles. "Four years later, it's a tougher sale."
Villaraigosa says he is undaunted.
He interprets the county Democratic Party's decision to stay neutral as a blow to Hahn, who also vigorously sought the endorsement.
And he brushes aside unfavorable comparisons to the sparkle of his earlier campaign as "insider babble," predicting that he will advance to a May runoff.
"I didn't get into this because I was nostalgic about four years ago. I lost that election," he said. "This is not the same race."
Indeed, it is not the same race.
Villaraigosa is better-known and is challenging a mayor whose administration is under investigation.
But he also has one loss behind him. And Hahn has had four years to push an agenda favorable to powerful constituencies in the city, such as labor unions.
Hahn's campaign strategist Bill Carrick said the loss of support from the party and the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor has left Villaraigosa's campaign critically wounded.
"His candidacy has got real problems," Carrick said. "He is not putting together the coalition he had last time. It is not happening."
In the 2001 election, Villaraigosa received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the state Democratic Party, while labor officials and union locals across the country spent more than a million on his behalf. This time, county labor officials said they might spend up to $1 million on mailers to promote Hahn's bid for a second term.
