Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's decision Monday to skip the 2010 race for California governor left a two-person contest for the Democratic nomination in which former Gov. Jerry Brown starts with a strong advantage in scooping up much of the mayor's support, political analysts said.
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, the other contender, appeared likely to tap into Villaraigosa's strong appeal among young voters. But Brown, who has not formally declared, is better known in vote-rich Southern California and is likely to benefit from support among Latinos, African Americans and older voters.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Wednesday, June 24, 2009 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 4 National Desk 1 inches; 33 words Type of Material: Correction
Antonio Villaraigosa: An article in Section A on Tuesday about Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's decision not to run for California governor said his second term ends in 2012. It ends in 2013.
In Los Angeles, which packs a powerful wallop in statewide elections, Brown just slightly trailed Villaraigosa among Democratic voters sizing up potential gubernatorial candidates in a Los Angeles Times Poll released Sunday.
Appearing on CNN's "The Situation Room" with Wolf Blitzer on Monday afternoon, Villaraigosa announced that he would forgo a bid for governor after months of flirting with a possible run. The mayor, who begins his second, four-year term July 1, said that the decision was "agonizing" but that he felt duty-bound to stay at City Hall to tackle L.A.'s dire fiscal crisis and to see through the policy agenda he launched in 2005.
Blitzer cited the Times Poll, in which the mayor received a favorable job approval rating from 55% of those surveyed, statistically equivalent to the vote he won in the city's March election against a field of little-known and underfunded candidates. A plurality of poll respondents also said they did not want Villaraigosa to seek the governorship.
Villaraigosa shrugged off questions about the poll, as well as the recent cover of Los Angeles magazine, which branded him a "failure."
"That's what happens when you're mayor, you're the focus of the good times and the bad," Villaraigosa said, smiling. "In a time when the unemployment rate is at 12.5%, a 55% approval isn't so bad. But I recognize that I've got a lot of work to do . . . and I've got to do a better job, even, than the job that we've done over the last four years."
Villaraigosa said he had considered a gubernatorial run because Sacramento politics have become "an abomination" and that, as a former state Assembly speaker who won two mayoral races in a city known for its factious political divides, he believed that he had the ability to put the state back on track.
