Hard Choices May End Mayor’s Honeymoon

In his first month as mayor of Los Angeles, Antonio Villaraigosa has confronted some of the city’s most polarizing issues with pronouncements that seem designed to please everyone.

At his first meeting as chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority -- where the choice between spending more on buses or trains is fraught with class tensions -- Villaraigosa stated his support for both.

When an armed man and his 19-month-old daughter were slain by a police SWAT team in Watts, Villaraigosa offered his condolences to both the family and the traumatized police, including an officer wounded in the crossfire.

And in his first major education speech, Villaraigosa reiterated his belief that the mayor should have control over the ailing Los Angeles Unified School District, an idea popular with many parents looking for dramatic improvements. But he also said he would delay a mayoral takeover indefinitely, reassuring the powerful teachers union.

Taken together, those actions hint at a leadership style that has won Villaraigosa both plaudits and criticism in his 11 years of public service. Supporters say his ability to finesse complicated issues is what makes him a skilled negotiator -- able to keep warring parties at the table until they compromise. Detractors knock him as a slick pol with a habit of talking out of both sides of his mouth.

That, in essence, was the message of his opponent in the mayoral election, former Mayor James K. Hahn, whose campaign ads warned that “Los Angeles Can’t Trust Antonio Villaraigosa.”

And today, longtime Villaraigosa critics, such as Victoria Torres, are not surprised that the mayor hasn’t made many tough decisions yet.

“He looks like he’s still campaigning,” said Torres, a resident of the Eastside district that Villaraigosa represented on the City Council. “When’s he going to get down to business?”

Sooner or later, of course, Villaraigosa will have to make difficult choices. And he will inevitably make enemies. As a result, some observers say, it makes sense for the mayor to extend his honeymoon with the city’s factions as long as possible.

“He should enjoy the good vibes while he can, because they’re not going to last forever,” said John J. Pitney Jr., a government professor at Claremont McKenna College.

Political scientist Raphael Sonenshein commended the mayor for his handling of the issues that he has confronted in his first month.

He said the sagging political fortunes of another charismatic reformer, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, demonstrate what can happen when a politician burns too many bridges all at once.

“You can see what went wrong for Schwarzenegger when he picked one corner for all of his fights and tried to define everybody not in that corner as his enemy,” said Sonenshein, who teaches at Cal State Fullerton. “Villaraigosa has that energy where people want him to succeed. That’s a real plus -- and that’s one of the most remarkable things that Schwarzenegger squandered.”

Villaraigosa honed the art of negotiation as speaker of the California Assembly, a job he held from 1998 to 2000. He has said that some of his greatest accomplishments involved bringing together lawmakers with divergent philosophies and persuading them to compromise on important legislation.

Villaraigosa demonstrated those skills in June when he negotiated an end to a bitter hotel labor battle that was harming local convention business. Although it was still two weeks before his inauguration, he coordinated a meeting with a union leader and the president of the Los Angeles Hotel Employer’s Council.

Since being sworn in, the mayor said he would delay the school takeover idea in order to build a similar kind of consensus.

Villaraigosa insists that he is not backing away from the school proposal. Instead, he says he is buying time to win over opponents, including some school board members and United Teachers Los Angeles, which, along with the state teachers union, spent more than $920,000 to back the mayor’s election effort.

“There’s not the support for it yet,” Villaraigosa said Friday during a meeting of a group appointed to advise him on education reform. “So what you do is, you build that support. You build that support by fostering trust. You build that support by working in collaboration. And you build that support by making a case for it over time. And that’s what I hope to do.”

But A.J. Duffy, president of the Los Angeles teachers union, said his teachers would never be comfortable with a mayoral takeover of the district. He said he trusted Villaraigosa but worried about future mayors who he feared would lack Villaraigosa’s “sound judgment.”

State Sen. Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles), a Villaraigosa ally, introduced a bill July 15 that would hand the mayor the reins of the school system by allowing him to appoint the majority of members on an expanded school board.

For Villaraigosa, Romero said, it was “gut-check time.” Delaying a takeover, she added, would only harm students. “I continue to hold out hope that Antonio will bring people to the table, but that’s easy,” she said. “The hard part is to say, ‘OK, I’m going to lead straight from the heart ... to go ahead and say I’m fulfilling my pledge.’ ”

At the MTA, the main obstacle to Villaraigosa’s ambitious rail expansion plan, which notably includes a promise to extend the Red Line subway to the beach, is the Bus Riders Union. The group -- largely composed of working-class, “transit-dependent” residents -- has long opposed rail projects. The union sued the MTA to force the agency to improve bus service, and the agency eventually agreed to add buses.

On Thursday, after a raucous protest, dozens of union members packed the MTA headquarters for Villaraigosa’s first meeting as chairman of the county transportation agency. Some hissed when he mentioned his hope of building new multibillion-dollar rail systems. But Villaraigosa also noted his strong support for buses. And he said talk of a fare increase was premature.

By the end of the meeting, Bus Riders Union organizer Manuel Criollo was impressed. “He’s walked the fine line so far to say he’d try to do both,” Criollo said. “And we’re willing to work with that.”

Transit consultant Tom Rubin, however, said it would be difficult for Villaraigosa to focus on rail and avoid future clashes with the union, because there is only so much transit money to go around.

“But Antonio has proven that he is really, really good at putting unlikely coalitions together,” Rubin added. “So it’s going to be most fun to watch.”

To observers such as City Council President Alex Padilla, Villaraigosa was at his best when he responded to the death of 19-month-old Suzie Marie Pena in a police shootout July 10.

The grieving mother of the slain child blamed the police for the shooting. Los Angeles Police Chief William J. Bratton blamed her boyfriend for instigating the shootout, calling him a “coldblooded killer.” TV news stations broadcast images of angry residents waving anti-police signs.

Villaraigosa threaded his way carefully among the competing constituencies with his response. He had words of consolation for both the Pena family and the police, and he urged residents to trust in the system for reviewing police-related shootings.

Asked numerous times if Bratton had crossed the line with his comments, the new mayor refused to condemn the popular chief. Instead he responded with pleas to cool the rhetoric. “What I can tell you is this,” he told reporters, “my job is to calm the waters.”

A few days later, Villaraigosa attended the child’s funeral with the Rev. Al Sharpton, a civil rights leader who has sometimes incited outrage over police actions. Sharpton said the little girl died in a “despicable way,” but he also said he wasn’t ready to call this shooting a clear case of police misconduct.

“I take a different posture this time,” Sharpton said. “I say, we must fight for justice, and I think, if we have confidence, the mayor will stand and make sure that will happen.”