Capitol Success Is Speaker’s Rope to L.A. Politics

SACRAMENTO —  Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa already has decided one thing about his future: He’s going back home to L.A.--maybe to run for City Council, maybe for mayor.

But he won’t be packing up for two years, when he’s booted out of the Assembly by term limits. And he knows another thing for sure: If he screws up as speaker--the first speaker from L.A. in 24 years, only the second Latino ever--he can forget about being elected mayor.

“The one thing I don’t want to do is fall on my own shoelaces,” he told me, sitting in his wood-paneled, 19th-century Assembly office. “If I do a good job, my options will be plentiful. If I don’t. . . . “

The verdict isn’t in yet on Villaraigosa, not even for his rookie year as speaker. The Legislature finally has passed a budget--nearly two months past its June 15 deadline--but there are other shoelaces that could trip him up. With only two weeks remaining in the legislative session, important issues remain unresolved, including school and water bonds. Villaraigosa pushed a $9-billion school bond bill through the Assembly, but it’s stymied in the Senate and may require further dickering.

The 45-year-old former labor leader works hard and he’s dedicated. He’s outgoing and he’s likable. He’s self-assured. He’s a learner. But he’s also inexperienced. Villaraigosa has been in elective office less than four years. He’s just beginning to find the Capitol’s nooks and crannies.

He still doesn’t know what to make of Senate President Pro Tem John Burton (D-San Francisco), who was first elected to the Legislature when Villaraigosa was in grade school. Burton is blunt and impatient; Villaraigosa more polite and polished. They have an uneasy relationship, but, in truth, that is the norm between Senate and Assembly leaders.

Gov. Wilson and Villaraigosa also aren’t sure of each other. Although the two cut a deal on school bonds, it is Burton whom the governor primarily turned to during budget bargaining.

“Antonio always reminds me,” says one Assembly friend, “of somebody who’s running as fast as he can to stay ahead.”

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The budget jockeying showed what it means for L.A. and Latinos to have an ambitious L.A. Latino as speaker.

For starters, Villaraigosa insisted on $59 million to provide food stamps for 200,000 low-income legal immigrants ages 18-64, 120,000 of whom live in L.A. County. (The young and elderly got food stamps last year.)

“This was big, big, big,” Villaraigosa said. “California has half the legal immigrants in the country. L.A. County has 60% of California’s. Last year, Wilson swore he’d never do this.”

Wilson told me he approved the program, in part, because it distinguishes between legal and illegal immigrants.

Villaraigosa won another $14 million to provide monthly grants for legal immigrants who are disabled or elderly. He also obtained $45 million for university outreach programs--based on socioeconomic criteria--to partially make up for the banning of racial preferences under Proposition 209.

Beyond these programs for immigrants and minorities, Villaraigosa grabbed some old-fashioned pork for L.A.: $5 million for the Disney concert hall, $2 million for the Simon Wiesenthal Center, $3 million for urban parkways, $10 million for the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, $700,000 for the California Afro-American Museum and $10 million for a parking garage at the Science Center.

Villaraigosa flexed his speaker muscles again Tuesday in winning passage of a controversial bill that provides $40 million for three comprehensive health centers. The bill has a catch: L.A. County must replace the damaged 946-bed County-USC Medical Center with a hospital that could hold 750 beds. The county believes 600 beds are plenty, but the Latino community disagrees. The bill was headed for defeat until Villaraigosa twisted arms.

“Some of our own [Democratic] members went south,” noted the author, Sen. Hilda Solis (D-El Monte). So Villaraigosa turned to key Republicans.

“I told them this was important to me; The hospital’s in my district,” he recalled. “They got the message.”

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In 2001, Mayor Richard Riordan will be forced out by term limits. So will two council members in Villaraigosa’s district--Mike Hernandez and Jackie Goldberg. Villaraigosa will try to aim high. By then, half of L.A.’s population will be Latino.

He won’t run for the state Senate or Congress, he said. “I’m definitely going back to L.A.”

Could the barrio street kid who was a high school dropout and wound up a UCLA grad become L.A.’s first Latino mayor since 1872? This story will have many twists, but Villaraigosa seems headed down the right road.