Big Win, but Little Time to Deliver

Antonio Villaraigosa will take office in six weeks on the strength of a resounding win that could embolden the new mayor as he pushes an ambitious agenda.

But the mayor-elect’s promises of a united metropolis with more subways, safer streets and stellar public schools may test his ability to rally diverse groups to his cause.

To succeed, Villaraigosa will have to quickly show he can offer concrete plans to fulfill his idealistic promises, even as he governs amid expectations heightened by a historic victory.

“The honeymoon will be longer with a big margin of victory,” said veteran local political strategist Kerman Maddox. “But whether he wins by 5 points or 20, within six months, people want to see results.”

Celebrating his victory at midnight Tuesday, Villaraigosa told supporters he would “bring this great city together,” but did not discuss specific plans. “Tomorrow,” he said, “the hard work begins.”

Villaraigosa plans to start the day by meeting with Police Chief William J. Bratton.

If past is prologue, Villaraigosa may demonstrate that the candidate who was belittled by his opponent as “an empty suit” can turn energy and an engaging smile into concrete results.

As Assembly speaker, Villaraigosa earned a reputation as a skilled negotiator. And in building a mayoral campaign that brought together a broad spectrum of civic leaders, Villaraigosa showed that he can build a coalition in Los Angeles, a vital skill in the diverse city.

But the new mayor is not riding a wave of universal enthusiasm.

Many of his supporters were driven more by dissatisfaction with Hahn than by allegiance to Villaraigosa. And Villaraigosa has earned few fans in Los Angeles for his work on the City Council, where he did little to take on the most vexing issues facing the city.

On the campaign trail, he often avoided direct answers to tough questions about his campaign fundraising and his legislative record, a habit his opponent exploited to tag him as untrustworthy.

And in the face of momentous civic problems, Villaraigosa has made big -- some say unrealistic -- promises.

On one issue, he has already stumbled.

Villaraigosa, who promised to clean up City Hall, takes office amid a criminal inquiry into whether donations to his mayoral campaign from employees of a Florida airport concessionaire were laundered.

Villaraigosa’s broad coalition could also complicate his job, forcing him to navigate between numerous competing interests. “You’ve got to make a lot of choices, and that’s a real challenge of coalition politics, but it can also open doors,” said Cal State Fullerton political scientist Raphael Sonenshein, an authority on Los Angeles city politics.

The new mayor does not enter this fray untested.

In a career that began in the labor movement and carried him into the state Assembly in 1994, Villaraigosa distinguished himself as a natural politician who often deployed charm and gut instincts to craft compromises.

As Assembly speaker, he assigned lieutenants to work out details while he negotiated with Republicans in 1998 to shepherd a $9.2-billion school bond measure through the Assembly, which voters passed overwhelmingly.

“He showed balance, a statewide interest. He showed what traditionally is called leadership,” said George Dunn, former Republican Gov. Pete Wilson’s chief of staff who worked with Villaraigosa in Sacramento.

Villaraigosa impressed fewer people in two years on the City Council. He pushed only one major initiative in his first year, an as yet unrealized plan to lower the cost of prescription drugs.

The councilman, however, was widely credited for helping settle the 35-day transit strike in 2003, which froze the county’s transit system and left 400,000 passengers a day scrambling for other rides.

That is the Villaraigosa supporters hope will move into the mayoral suite in City Hall on July 1.

The new mayor’s allies said he will have the added advantage of an overwhelming victory.

Just as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger successfully passed budget reform after his sweeping 2003 victory, Villaraigosa may be able to use his victory to move his agenda through the City Council. “The wider the margin of victory, the broader the mandate for Antonio,” said City Council President Alex Padilla, a Villaraigosa supporter.

The 15-member council would probably have to back any Villaraigosa move to hire more police officers or expand city services.

But so far, Villaraigosa has provided few clues about how he will achieve the expansive initiatives he has laid out.

Villaraigosa has pledged to expand the Los Angeles Police Department by 1,300 officers by persuading voters countywide to raise the sales tax. But he has not detailed what he will do to ensure it won’t also fail like the half-cent tax hike that voters rejected in November.

He has spelled out no plan to come up with the billions of dollars that would be necessary to extend the Red Line subway along Wilshire Boulevard and through the San Fernando Valley or to implement dozens of other traffic improvements that he has promised.

He has not said how he would come up with $100 million a year to fully fund the city’s Housing Trust Fund, a more than twofold increase.

Nor has he identified funding for his ambitious environmental program, which includes creating parks, speeding the development of new renewable energy sources and recycling most of the city’s trash.

Potentially most troublesome for the future mayor, Villaraigosa has promised to take “ultimate control and oversight” over the Los Angeles Unified School District, although he has given few indications how he plans to do that.

Steve Barr, whose Small Schools Alliance forced the mayoral candidates to address radical school reform, said that he will hold Villaraigosa to his vow.

Some reformers are also looking for the mayor to appoint school board members and to take an active role in managing the gargantuan bureaucracy.

A.J. Duffy, the incoming president of United Teachers Los Angeles, which strongly opposes mayoral control over the district, said last week he was unsure what Villaraigosa meant by his “ultimate control” pledge.

“I’ve heard three, possibly four, versions of a statement that was made where he indicated that he would be in favor of the mayor having more authority or control,” Duffy said, noting that his union, which once employed Villaraigosa, would fight “tooth and nail” against any city takeover.

Barr and Duffy said they would be watching the new mayor closely.

So too will business leaders, who remain nervous about Villaraigosa’s stance on several issues, including his opposition to the $11-billion modernization plan for Los Angeles International Airport.

“There is a sense of anxiety and concern about what his politics really are,” said Central City Assn. President Carol Schatz, who supported Hahn. “He’s gotten a lot of business support. The question is: Has he heard what people have told him?”

Peter Dreier, a political scientist and co-director of the Progressive Los Angeles Network, said he expects Villaraigosa to govern as a moderate. “If there are radicals out there who expect him to govern as a radical, then they are going to be very disappointed,” Dreier said.

Villaraigosa promised repeatedly on the campaign trail to help business, saying he wanted Los Angeles to be the “the Venice of the 21st century.”

The mayor-elect has heartened some by turning for help in his transition to Robin Kramer, a well-respected former City Hall insider who was Mayor Richard Riordan’s chief of staff. Villaraigosa is also working with former Assembly Speaker Bob Hertzberg, the Sherman Oaks lawyer whose own mayoral bid fell short in March.

Villaraigosa said this month that he intends to hire “big thinkers, academics, people involved in government, people in the business world and people in labor.”

Without saying what he intends to do, the mayor-elect has also signaled that he will act quickly to enact changes, a move that could build important faith in the new administration.

“It’s about giving the electorate confidence that you know what you are doing,” Hertzberg said. “Work on traffic early. Start making inroads into areas of policy that you can affect people’s lives and see the impact.”

The diversity of Villaraigosa’s backers, political observers say, could help him press his agenda.

Despite fears about a divide between blacks and Latinos, Villaraigosa drew support from most of the city’s African American leaders. Despite his union background, he pulled in Republicans such as Riordan. And despite long-standing political differences in the Latino community, most of the region’s Latino politicians endorsed him.

Villaraigosa will also be able to draw on his long-standing relationships with several political powers.

He has strong ties to United Teachers Los Angeles, which he would need to win over to increase mayoral control over the schools. And Villaraigosa counts among his supporters U.S. Rep. Henry A. Waxman, the Westside Democrat whose support would be crucial if Villaraigosa is to fulfill his pledge to push the Red Line west.

Villaraigosa may be tested almost immediately. Even before Villaraigosa takes office, liberal City Council members may push a vote on a controversial proposal to require developers to set aside units in new developments for low-income residents.

Business leaders say an inflexible requirement would discourage housing development in Los Angeles.

Villaraigosa has not indicated what he will do.

Times staff writers Dan Morain and Daniel Hernandez contributed to this report.