Rep. Becerra to Enter Mayor’s Race

Xavier Becerra, a four-term congressman and a leading Latino member of the House of Representatives, announced Tuesday that he is running for mayor of Los Angeles.

Becerra said he will file papers this week formally launching his fund-raising committee for the campaign.

“I think I can do the best job of anyone out there,” he said in an interview.

Becerra is the fifth major candidate to join the race, and his entry further complicates the candidacies of each of the others--most pointedly, that of Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa, who, like Becerra, would become the first Latino mayor of modern Los Angeles if elected in 2001, but who now faces a serious contest within his own voter base.

Other candidates in the fast-growing mayoral field are City Councilman Joel Wachs, commercial real estate broker Steve Soboroff and City Atty. James K. Hahn. Still undecided about running are at least two potentially significant contenders: Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky and state Controller Kathleen Connell.

Articulate, dapper, and armed with a Stanford law degree and a long political resume, Becerra brings instant credibility and credentials to the race. He is well-regarded in Washington and, after a difficult initial campaign in 1992, he has faced only token opposition in his congressional district.

Becerra, however, is little known outside that district, an ethnically and economically diverse swath that encompasses Silver Lake, Echo Park, Koreatown and Boyle Heights, among other communities. And in contrast to Villaraigosa, who has sought to establish himself as a candidate who can bridge differences, Becerra generally has a reputation as an uncompromising defender of specifically Latino interests with little use for coalition politics.

In the interview with The Times, Becerra said he decided to seek the mayor’s office after reflecting during the recent holidays and concluding that this was his time.

“This is a city that could go one of two ways,” he said. “It could become the city of the 21st century or many cities in the 21st century.”

Like many of the other announced candidates, Becerra identified education, public safety and transportation as important issues, but added that the overarching challenge of Los Angeles’ next mayor will be to build on the economic progress achieved under Mayor Richard Riordan and to construct a more unified sense of community that will bind the city together.

“Folks don’t believe the city works for them,” he said.

Becerra’s announcement was greeted with a mixture of enthusiasm and resignation by his rivals’ camps. Villaraigosa aides have long expected it, and said they hope their candidate’s earlier start and quick work at raising money--already, the speaker has amassed more than $300,000 in contributions--will give him the early edge.

“Everybody has the right to run, of course,” said Darry Sragow, an unpaid advisor to the Villaraigosa campaign. “The ultimate consequences are unclear. . . . The speaker to the core of his being is a consensus-builder. He has been and will be campaigning in every nook and cranny of this city.”

Sragow’s reference to coalition-building is a not-so-subtle nod to the general criticism of Becerra as an officeholder and as a candidate. According to critics, Becerra’s focus on protecting Latino interests has caused him to slight other groups.

In the various battles for Metropolitan Transportation Authority money, for instance, he and a few allies resisted plans that would have cut largely Latino neighborhoods from certain kinds of transportation improvements, but then also missed out on potential compromises that might have kept the federal money coming to the system.

Still, Becerra’s steadfast defense of his district and his constituents has made him a well-liked figure in voter-rich Latino neighborhoods such as Boyle Heights. That may not be enough to get him elected mayor, some observers say, but it’s enough to hurt Villaraigosa badly, perhaps even fatally.

Asked for his assessment of Becerra’s impact on the campaign, political consultant Rick Taylor responded: “This in essence ends the chances of a Latino being elected mayor of Los Angeles in this election.”

Some others agreed. So devastating do some analysts consider Becerra’s candidacy to Villaraigosa’s that they have dubbed the effect “mutually assured destruction.”

Becerra, who spelled out his plans in a hastily arranged telephone interview after months of ruminating over a run for the city’s top office, dismissed that scenario. “This is too important to worry about splitting votes,” he said.

Within the Hahn camp, however, Becerra’s entry into the campaign was greeted with quiet glee. The thinking there was that its impact would be almost entirely limited to Villaraigosa and thus would benefit the city attorney, whom most observers consider the front-runner.

Arguing a different point, Ace Smith, a Soboroff campaign consultant, said Becerra’s actual impact would be to hurt Hahn. Becerra, he argued, would vie with Hahn for the Democratic vote, leaving Soboroff, a Republican, with more room to pick up support among centrists.

Soboroff has his own challenge in that regard, however. Wachs is a long-standing fixture at City Hall who has championed taxpayer issues--including his vehement opposition to Soboroff’s initial plan for providing public money to help pay for the construction of Staples Center downtown.