Goldberg to Enter Race to Replace Villaraigosa

Jackie Goldberg, the two-term Los Angeles councilwoman known as a determined friend of labor and Hollywood redevelopment and as a frequent foe of Mayor Richard Riordan, will make a bid next year for the state Assembly seat now held by Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa, who will endorse her.

Goldberg and Villaraigosa, whose Hollywood and northeastern Los Angeles districts significantly overlap, plan to appear at a news conference today to announce the move, their offices said.

Both are Democrats who are required to give up their seats because of term limits imposed by voters.

Villaraigosa, whose term expires at the end of next year, has been exploring a possible campaign of his own to succeed Riordan as mayor in 2001.

But there is also political speculation that he will bide his time on a mayoral bid and instead run in 2001 to succeed Goldberg on the City Council. His office said he would make no announcement on his plans at the news conference today.

Goldberg, the author of the city’s “living wage” ordinance, said in a brief telephone interview Thursday that she had decided to run for the Legislature because she sees it as a venue in which she can continue to work on such issues as “education, the living wage, health care, job training and economic development.”

A teacher by training, Goldberg entered public life as a two-term member of the Los Angeles Unified School District’s board. When she left the school board in 1991, she returned to teaching and worked as an aide to Supervisor Gloria Molina. She became the City Council’s first openly gay member in 1993.

She has tended to irk business interests and Riordan, some of whose efforts to gain more control over the city’s bureaucracy she has regarded as ill-conceived.

If she wins next March’s Democratic primary and the November election to succeed Villaraigosa, she would have to resign her City Council seat with about six months left in her term.