Seeing that 2010 would probably not be his year, Mayor Villaraigosa ends the speculation: He will not be running for governor of California next year.
He made the announcement on Monday to CNN's Wolf Blitzter. The L.A. Times sums up his stated reasoning:
Dan Schnur of USC, in an L.A. Times op-ed, thinks Villaraigosa may be postponing, not killing, his gubernatorial ambitions: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....."...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.
"I served as a speaker, I was known as a bipartisan leader, I feel like I have my finger on the pulse of what's broken in Sacramento, but I just couldn't get beyond the fact that I love this job and I love this city that I was born and raised in,"
The Times's columnist Steve Lopez is a little tougher on the mayor, while realizing his decision was inevitable given L.A.'s dire political and economic straits:Villaraigosa probably realized that time is on his side. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who turned 76 years old Monday is an unlikely candidate for reelection in 2012. By then, the state and city will have begun the long trek back to economic health, and Villaraigosa will be on the tail end of his second term rather than at the very beginning.....A termed-out mayor with an empty nest and an economic recovery under his belt looks like a much more attractive candidate for statewide office.
You can't do a mediocre job, get lukewarm support in the polls, and announce one week before the start of your second term that you're graduating to bigger challenges. That'd be like getting a 2.0 GPA in high school and announcing you'd like to be a brain surgeon.....
He's not running because at the moment, he knows he wouldn't win, given all the self-inflicted damage he's done by way of empty public promises and dubious private choices.
Mayor Sam's Sister City blog kindly provides a full transcript of Villaraigosa's CNN announcement.
Past City of Angles blogging on Villaraigosa's ambitions and troubles here and here.
(Photo by David McNew/Getty Images)
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There might be something to the belief that Villaraigosa is currently biding his time. Never exactly firm on policy issues nor brilliant with personal relations, Villaraigosa nonetheless remains a politician of the highest order, with the foresight to see that his chances of switching out his current position in Los Angeles for a chair in Sacramento stand slim to none at present moment.
Yet, I am wary of Schnur's assumption that Los Angeles will be on the way to recovery in four years time with Villaraigosa at the helm. That theory, most unfortunately, seems a little overly optimistic...