Villaraigosa Wins Key Democratic Backing

With a string of important endorsements this week, Antonio Villaraigosa has emerged as the favorite of much of the Democratic Party establishment in his bid to become mayor of Los Angeles.

The former Assembly speaker won the backing early in the week of the county’s largest labor organization, its biggest gay Democratic club and the Los Angeles County Democratic Party. Add those to earlier endorsements by the local chapters of the Sierra Club, League of Conservation Voters and the National Organization for Women, and Villaraigosa’s campaign is gaining important momentum.

But an embarrassing disclosure tempered his gains. It was revealed Monday that the one-time legislator wrote a letter five years ago, urging President Clinton to review the 15-year sentence of a convicted drug trafficker. The convict, Carlos Vignali, is the son of a prominent businessman who has donated thousands of dollars to state and local officeholders, including Villaraigosa.

Villaraigosa had to acknowledge that he had lobbied for Vignali without full information about the case. Despite the candidate’s contrition, his opponents are likely to remind voters closer to election day that Villaraigosa came to the aid of a narcotics financier.

Campaign activists and many outside observers of the mayor’s race said that on balance, however, Villaraigosa’s campaign is gaining steam. The string of significant endorsements will bring him volunteers, money and an emotional boost, they said.

“I think this tells you Antonio is out there impressing people,” said county Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, who has not backed a candidate in the race. “It reflects his work ethic and the fact that what he is saying is connecting with folks.

“He still has a long way to go and a big mountain to climb,” Yaroslavsky added. “But today he has more energy in his campaign than any of the others.”

Villaraigosa’s recent success comes mostly at the expense of Los Angeles City Atty. James K. Hahn, who has been slightly ahead of most other mayoral candidates in early polls. Hahn’s campaign has sought to establish him as the best-known and best-financed candidate, who must be knocked off his front-running perch.

But despite those apparent strengths, Hahn’s forces failed in their vigorous attempts to block support for Villaraigosa at Monday’s gathering of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor and, a day later, at a standing-room-only meeting of the county Democratic Central Committee.

“This is the Democratic Party that Jimmy Hahn and his father have been part of for decades. And, no matter how his team spins it, Antonio is now the official Democratic candidate in a city that is heavily Democratic and liberal,” said political consultant Rick Taylor. “This was not a very good week for Jimmy Hahn.”

The support of the county Federation of Labor AFL-CIO was by far the most important development of the week. The labor group has been greatly energized in recent years, adding members and winning contracts for such low-wage workers as janitors, nurses and hotel maids.

The federation’s leader pledged to run a $1-million campaign to get Villaraigosa elected. And the effort promises to pack an extra emotional wallop, because many union activists are Latinos who are determined to elect the first Latino mayor in the city’s modern history.

Still reveling in that victory, Villaraigosa on Tuesday arrived at a packed downtown auditorium where the county Democratic Party Central Committee had assembled. An interview panel earlier had recommended that the former assemblyman get the party endorsement. Villaraigosa’s forces then proceeded to outflank Hahn’s team in parliamentary maneuvering, to sew up the committee’s backing.

The committee membership confirmed support for Villaraigosa with an overwhelming vote of 153 to 31, a result greeted by thunderous applause in the sweltering auditorium.

Eric Bauman, chairman of the county Democratic Party, said the endorsement should bring volunteers to Villaraigosa to walk precincts and to staff telephone banks. The organization will also send a mailer to about 250,000 homes, alerting high-propensity Democratic voters of the party’s choice in the officially nonpartisan race.

Hahn’s campaign downplayed the significance of the county party endorsement. Villaraigosa proved himself “crafty” in winning the endorsement, but will not necessarily win many votes, because the group represents a larger number of Democrats who live outside the city of Los Angeles, said Hahn strategist and spokesman Kam Kuwata.

“I am not sure this vote reflects the residents of Los Angeles,” Kuwata said. “If [Villaraigosa] wants to be mayor of Santa Monica or West Hollywood, then I think he has a good number of people from the Central Committee who will support him.”

Hahn’s success in raising campaign contributions also suggests that he has the broadest support in the race, Kuwata said. With nearly $2.1 million in his campaign treasury, the four-term city attorney leads Villaraigosa by about $800,000. That advantage could amount to an extra week or two of television advertising--a possibly critical advantage late in the race.

But the question of resources is far from settled. The county party endorsement, for example, could pay a financial dividend for Villaraigosa if the state Democratic Party decides to follow the lead and pay for mailers or other campaign materials. The party spent $267,000 in an aggressive 1999 campaign to get out the vote for San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown.

Connell, Becerra Lag on Endorsements

Largely on the sidelines during the Hahn-Villaraigosa scraps have been two other Democratic candidates, state Controller Kathleen Connell and U.S. Rep. Xavier Becerra. Neither has been able to muster enough votes to mount serious challenges for any of the major endorsements.

Becerra’s strongest backers come from his base on the Eastside. Connell fought hard but failed to win the support of the NOW political action committee and the Sierra Club.

Despite having held a statewide office as a Democrat since 1994, Connell has gathered almost no endorsements from other elected officials or from interest groups. She has tried to counter that by saying she has been too tough and independent to win substantial support from other politicians.

Villaraigosa, in contrast, sees his coalition-building skills as one of his prime qualifications for the mayor’s office and evidence that he is a serious contender. But they hardly ensure a spot in the June 5 runoff, where the two top finishers from the April election will square off. (By Thursday’s deadline, 15 candidates had filed enough signatures to qualify for the April contest.)

Villaraigosa must still prove that his allure with political activists and insiders can be translated into votes. And if he is to succeed citywide, he must appeal more broadly across the political spectrum. Some adherents of liberal Democratic political orthodoxy--like one-time mayoral candidate and City Councilman Michael Woo--found their message of limited appeal when pitted against a more moderate voice, like that of Mayor Richard Riordan.

And misjudgments like the one he made in the case of drug trafficker Vignali will not help Villaraigosa widen his appeal.

Villaraigosa said he sent a letter on behalf of Vignali almost five years ago because he is a friend of the young man’s father, Horacio Vignali. The elder Vignali is a generous backer of many Latino politicians. He gave nearly $2,795 to Villaraigosa’s campaigns for the Assembly.

In interviews with The Times this week, Villaraigosa denied that he had written to the White House on the younger Vignali’s behalf. When his letter to the White House pardon secretary was released, that claim proved untrue.

In the 1996 letter Villaraigosa said he had reviewed the case and was “convinced that [the younger Vignali] has been falsely linked to a drug ring in Minneapolis, Minn., and that his conviction is a product of ‘guilt by association,’ among other factors.”

Villaraigosa this week acknowledged that he had not discussed the younger Vignali’s case with federal prosecutors, who depicted the man as a major financier of a ring that shipped cocaine from Los Angeles to Minneapolis. “I shouldn’t have done that,” Villaraigosa said of the letter. “I went with my heart as a father and not with my head.”

That mistake could come back to haunt Villaraigosa later--perhaps as fodder for campaign mailers by his opponents.

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Times staff writer Matea Gold contributed to this story.