Antonio Villaraigosa seeks to survive primary in California governor’s race

Antonio Villaraigosa, the Democratic former mayor of Los Angeles, is in a battle for second place in the June 5 primary vote for California’s governor, the chief executive of the nation’s most populous state and the world’s fifth-largest economy.

Villaraigosa, 65, appears to be vying against two Republicans - businessman John Cox and Assemblyman Travis Allen - to qualify for the November runoff against Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, the frontrunner who launched his campaign more than three years ago.

A poll of likely voters released this week by the Public Policy Institute of California showed Villaraigosa at 15 percent, sandwiched between Cox at 19 percent and Allen at 11 percent.

Newsom, at 25 percent, topped a field of 27 candidates, including state Treasurer John Chiang and former state schools chief Delaine Eastin, both Democrats, vying to replace Gov. Jerry Brown.

Newsom’s support has been consistent across five PPIC surveys, while Cox’s backing has “sharply increased” since the January survey gave him 7 percent, said Mark Baldassare, PPIC president and CEO.

Newsom had a slim 23 to 21 percent lead over Villaraigosa in the January poll.

In The Press Democrat Poll, which surveyed 500 registered Sonoma County voters in the first week of May, 41 percent said they would vote for Newsom, a Marin County resident and former San Francisco mayor; 10 percent favored Cox and Villaraigosa had 8 percent, trailed by three other Democrats vying for the top elected job in California.

Still, Villaraigosa, who defines himself as “a progressive Democrat (who) believes you gotta balance the budget,” is campaigning against Newsom, the former mayor of San Francisco, asserting that his liberal credentials are equal or better than his rival as former leaders of the state’s two best-known cities.

“The records aren’t anywhere near the same,” Villaraigosa said in an hourlong teleconference with The Press Democrat’s editorial board last week. “Nobody knows all of that, but they will in the runoff.”

Newsom met with the editorial board last month.

Villaraigosa’s prospects have been boosted by $17 million in donations to an independent expenditure campaign backing him, including $7 million from Netflix CEO Reed Hastings among a number of other wealthy charter school supporters.

Newsom has an endorsement from the California Teachers Association, which has also donated $1 million to a campaign fund backing him.

Villaraigosa, who served six years as a state Assemblyman with two years as speaker, was LA mayor from 2005 to 2013, while Newsom, 50, was mayor of San Francisco from 2004 to 2011, when he took office as lieutenant governor.

Parrying Newsom’s national acclaim for allowing same-sex marriages in San Francisco in 2004, Villaraigosa said he was an early advocate for gay rights, which he recognized as “the last civil rights movement.”

In 1999, the Assembly approved his bill making it illegal to discriminate in housing and employment on the basis of sexual orientation.

Several of his family members are gay, including his cousin, John Perez, also a former speaker of the Assembly.

Villaraigosa noted that as a city mayor he had no control over marriages, while Newsom did as head of both a city and county.

On affording sanctuary to undocumented immigrants, embodied in a 1989 San Francisco law, Villaraigosa said “LA’s been doing it since 1979,” referring to Special Order 40, a mandate by the Los Angeles Police Department and City Council preventing LAPD officers from questioning people for the sole purpose of determining their immigration status.

That order, Villaraigosa said, is the “underpinning” of the California Values Act adopted by the Legislature last year preventing local authorities from responding to notification or transfer requests from federal immigration agencies.

Villaraigosa, the grandson of a Mexican immigrant who was LA’s first Latino mayor in 133 years, said he supports “a pathway to citizenship” for the estimated ?11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States.

“We’re going to mark a different path (on immigration) from the feds, that’s for sure,” he said, calling the Trump administration’s current policy of separating immigrant families at the border “just not commonsensical.”

Villaraigosa challenged the accuracy of a Newsom campaign television commercial aired last month that claimed Newsom was the “first to take on the National Rifle Association and win.”

“I took it on 20 years before him,” Villaraigosa said, asserting that he was “actually the author of the (California) assault weapons ban.”

Assessing the Newsom ad’s accuracy, Politifact.com reported that Villaraigosa, as Assembly speaker in 1999, “helped pass a statewide assault weapons ban, though he did not author it.”

To address California’s chronic housing shortage, Villaraigosa said he supports the target of building 3.5 million dwelling units by 2025. “That’s a giant task ahead, but I think it’s gotta be the goal,” he said.

In Los Angeles, he said he put ?$100 million in a housing trust fund and built ?20,000 housing units.

As governor, Villaraigosa said he would work to restore local redevelopment agencies, once used by local governments to funnel tax revenue into certain projects until they were discontinued by the state in 2012. Under what he called “redevelopment 2.0,” the program would be focused on housing.

Cities should amend zoning, expedite permitting and consider applying higher density to areas like transit corridors to get more housing built.

Cities should “drive their own decisions” to promote housing development, but “if they don’t do it I’m prepared to push from Sacramento,” he said.

State and local governments also need to team up to address homelessness, Villaraigosa said, adding that he would be willing to spend more than the $359 million in assistance to cities that Brown included in a revised state budget proposal earlier this month.

“When people ask me what’s the difference here (between himself and Newsom): It’s track record and a willingness to make the tough calls in a really tough time,” he said.

In a not-so-subtle dig at the telegenic Newsom, who is widely regarded as having higher political ambitions, Villaraigosa said: “I’m not running for president. I want to be governor of California.”

You can reach Staff Writer Guy Kovner at 707-521-5457 or guy.kovner@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @guykovner.