Runoff Will Be Tougher

No matter who emerges as Antonio Villaraigosa’s rival in the runoff, the city councilman will have to prove he has overcome the obstacles that toppled his first mayoral bid in 2001: a liberal image and a reluctance to fire back at his opponent. Yet he starts the final push in a substantially stronger position than he held four years ago.

After running a relatively low-key campaign in the first round, Villaraigosa -- with a steady lead in ballot returns and The Times’ exit poll -- now faces the prospect of a May 17 rematch with his first adversary, Mayor James K. Hahn, or a bid against a former friend, Sherman Oaks attorney Bob Hertzberg. Both have already shown themselves to be tough campaigners who are willing to brawl.

Villaraigosa took a different tack in the round ending Tuesday, casting himself as the “unity” candidate and trying to stay above the fray while his opponents quarreled. His languid approach was in sharp contrast to the ebullient tenor of 2001, when Villaraigosa would have become the city’s first Latino mayor in modern times.

“Antonio believes the reason he lost last time is because he allowed himself to get tagged as too liberal, too beholden to labor, too Latino,” said Republican strategist Allan Hoffenblum, who is not involved in the race. “My gut feeling is that he didn’t want to get pointed too far to the left and so he just sat on his lead, waiting to come up for a game plan for the Super Bowl.”

But in the runoff, Villaraigosa is confronted with the challenge he faced in 2001: piecing together a multiethnic coalition in the tradition of the late Mayor Tom Bradley, the city’s first black mayor, who won office in 1973 with the backing of African Americans, liberal voters and Jews, along with a narrow majority of Latinos.

Pulling together such disparate groups is a difficult task. If he seeks to energize Latinos about the prospect of a historic first, Villaraigosa could alarm other voters who are wary of the group’s growing political clout, analysts said. But shying away from the ethnic pride associated with his bid could deflate excitement among that important constituency.

“It’s a hard balance for any group that hasn’t yet sat in the mayor’s office,” said Raphael Sonenshein, a political science professor at Cal State Fullerton who consulted on The Times’ exit poll. “It usually involves a sense of change in a city, and for every person who thinks that change is a great thing, there’s another person who regrets that the old days are gone.”

At first blush, Villaraigosa’s strategy appears to have positioned him well. The Times’ exit poll showed he has broadened his reach among several key constituencies since 2001, boosting his margin among whites, African Americans and San Fernando Valley voters. Moreover, he had by far the most positive image of all the candidates, with three-quarters of the electorate viewing him in a favorable light, according to The Times’ survey, which polled 2,789 voters as they left 50 polling places across the city.

But the councilman must now deepen his support in a two-man race against an opponent who will have an edge among a large swath of voters. To do so, he has to hone a sharper message in the second half of the race, political analysts said.

“I don’t think the public could name what Villaraigosa stands for,” said UCLA political science professor Frank Gilliam.

Four years ago, Villaraigosa’s efforts to depict himself as a centrist coalition-builder were stymied when Hahn aggressively portrayed him as a risky liberal who was soft on crime.

Hesitant to engage in a firefight, Villaraigosa did not respond in kind when Hahn ran a hard-hitting television commercial hammering Villaraigosa’s intervention on behalf of a convicted cocaine dealer.

Last week, a Hahn ad critical of Villaraigosa was on the air for mere hours before a harsh response came from the councilman’s camp -- a sign of lessons learned. “We are more than ready,” campaign manager Ace Smith said.

But the councilman faces very different tactical challenges in the coming weeks, depending on his opponent.

With Hahn in the race, he would face a foe who enjoys broad, if not deep, support across a wide spectrum of Los Angeles. Hertzberg has a narrower, almost exclusively white base, but brings with him an expansive manner that challenges Villaraigosa’s charismatic persona.

Both of Villaraigosa’s potential rivals, however, have weaknesses that did not burden Hahn in 2001.

Then, Hahn was a mild-mannered four-term city attorney with a burnished political name, courtesy of his late father, county Supervisor Kenneth Hahn.

Now, the mayor would have both the advantage and drawback that comes with incumbency: a record. As he made his case to keep his job, Hahn could tout a declining crime rate and his hiring of a popular police chief. But he would also have to contend with widespread public dissatisfaction with his leadership and an ongoing criminal investigation into city contracting.

He guides a city where more than half of voters, in the exit poll, said Los Angeles was headed in the wrong direction. The two accomplishments that he repeatedly touts as his biggest -- hiring Police Chief William J. Bratton to replace Bernard C. Parks and successfully squelching a secession effort -- also rankled his two main constituencies, African Americans and San Fernando Valley residents.

“To what extent Hahn gets back the two bases of support from 2001 is the real question for him,” said Jaime Regalado, executive director of the Edmund G. “Pat” Brown Institute of Public Affairs at Cal State L.A.

Hahn did overcome a second-place finish behind Villaraigosa in the first round in 2001 by mounting a relentless assault that ended in his victory. Even in his weakened state, he maintained a measure of support across the city Tuesday, drawing significant portions of liberals, Republicans, Latinos and Westside voters, according to The Times’ exit poll.

Hahn already has showcased his fundraising prowess, outpacing Villaraigosa in the first round of the race. He also neutralized the support his opponent previously enjoyed from organized labor and the Democratic Party, which poured millions of dollars and hundreds of volunteers into the effort to elect Villaraigosa in 2001. This time, the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO, endorsed the mayor, and local Democrats were too divided to back one candidate.

But Villaraigosa, a former labor organizer who remains popular with the rank-and-file, won the backing of more than four in 10 union members on Tuesday, outstripping the fifth who voted for Hahn.

The councilman could pick up even stronger union support if he faces off against Hertzberg, who has angered unions by accusing labor of being a special interest that wields undue influence at City Hall.

Analysts said a race between Villaraigosa and Hertzberg would be both unpredictable and gripping. The two men engaged in limited sniping during the last two months, keeping their sights trained on Hahn instead. But both candidates -- political allies and even roommates when both served in Sacramento -- would be likely to aggressively press their case against each other in the final round of the election.

It remains unclear whether they will address their long friendship and subsequent falling-out, an estrangement that dates to 2000, when they were at odds over Hertzberg’s succession as Assembly speaker.

But that story is just one of the narratives that would shape the dynamics of their race.

While both are longtime Democrats, political analysts said a campaign between them could take on a partisan flavor, as Hertzberg would appeal to his base of Republicans and moderate voters in the San Fernando Valley and Villaraigosa would seek to expand his support among Democrats and Westside liberals.

“They’re going to be portrayed on different sides of the ideological divide,” Regalado said.

Hertzberg could get a boost from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who withheld an endorsement in the first round of the election, but allowed himself to be photographed with the former Assembly speaker as he voiced support for Hertzberg’s school breakup plan. The governor promised Hahn that he would not get involved in the campaign, but would be free to do so with the mayor out of the race.

Hertzberg would hope to use that backing to build a coalition similar to the one that propelled Richard Riordan into his second term as mayor, pulling support from Valley voters, Jews and Latinos, analysts said. But as a Democrat, he may have trouble drawing Republicans to the polls without alienating his own party.

After a campaign aimed mainly at suburbanites and conservatives, Hertzberg won just a small fraction of Latino voters on Tuesday, and an equally small portion of black voters.

“He will have a problem having little or no support in the black and Latino communities,” said former state Sen. Tom Hayden, who unsuccessfully challenged Riordan in 1997. “He is going to have to show that he’s got a heart that beats for people of color.”

No matter who faces Villaraigosa in the runoff, black voters -- who made up about 17% of the electorate Tuesday -- will find themselves being strongly wooed by both candidates.

On Tuesday, African Americans voted overwhelming for Parks, the former police chief whom Hahn declined to support for a second term. With Parks now out of the race, it remains unclear who will be able to best tap into that pool of voters.