Antonio Villaraigosa has reigned over Los Angeles for four years with the same guile and keen political instincts he used to dethrone the sitting mayor in 2005.
Those skills have won him national attention and allowed him to recover from what he refers to as "the mistake that looms over all others": the self-inflicted humiliation two years ago of an affair with a television news anchor that ended his 20-year marriage and damaged his standing with many voters.
He is now cruising toward what supporters see as an all-but-certain reelection March 3. The political figures who might have mounted a serious race against him backed away, leaving a group of opponents with little name recognition or support and virtually no money to address those shortcomings.
But he has not silenced doubts about his ability to follow through when the excitement subsides and the TV cameras are gone. For instance, Villaraigosa has boasted for years of his promise to plant 1 million trees across Los Angeles, calling it a cornerstone of his environment agenda. Yet only 200,000 trees have made it into the ground.
After four years, Villaraigosa says he has laid a foundation to alleviate traffic, create jobs and turn L.A. into the greenest big city in America, but his detractors -- and even some influential supporters -- still wonder if he can match his ability to campaign with a sustained effort to complete a major project.
That concern is heightened by Villaraigosa's flirtation with yet another campaign -- this time for governor in 2010. He offers no guarantee that if elected he would complete a second term as mayor.
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'We were bold'
Villaraigosa's political achievements are substantial. Crime is down and hundreds of new police officers patrol the streets. And last fall, he helped win passage of a half-percentage point sales tax that will generate billions of dollars for mass transit projects, including the Subway to the Sea that he promised in his 2005 campaign.
"If you were to say to anybody that we would have passed a half-penny sales tax in the middle of a recession with a two-thirds vote, with opposition from across the county, most people would have said you were crazy," Villaraigosa said in a recent interview. "We weren't crazy, we were bold."
