Mayor-Elect Meets, Greets on Talk Shows, L.A. Streets

Two days after his historic landslide victory over Mayor James K. Hahn, Antonio Villaraigosa still looked as though he were campaigning for the city’s top job.

After early-morning appearances on television talk shows, the mayor-elect hit the streets Thursday in Hollywood and Pico-Robertson, greeting Angelenos with photographers and reporters trailing.

“Whether you voted for me or not, I’m your mayor,” he told one person after another between posing for photos and responding to honking horns. On Hollywood Boulevard, he told pedestrians: “I’m on a thank-you tour.”

In a CNN interview, Villaraigosa said he disagreed with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s support for having citizens groups patrol the border to stop illegal immigrants.

“It doesn’t make any sense for people to take the law into their own hands,” Villaraigosa said. “That’s not the function of private citizens; that’s the function of law enforcement.”

He also told reporters in Los Angeles that he would have “the most diverse administration,” but also said he did not intend to name a completely new slate of city commissioners.

“You need some institutional memory,” he said, adding that he would turn first to the major commissions, including the police, airport, and water and power boards.

Villaraigosa, who will take office July 1, still has about six weeks to serve as a member of the City Council, but already people he met Thursday were openly referring to him as “Mr. Mayor” as he received congratulations, blessings and somewhat firm reminders that much is expected of him.

“I understand you’re a mensch,” said a woman eating brunch at a table by herself at Factor’s Famous Deli in the Pico-Robertson district. “I know you’ll be very, very good.... Do a wonderful job.”

Villaraigosa went behind the deli’s meat and salad counter and hugged several Latino workers, who clamored to get their photograph taken with him and told the mayor-elect he could choose anything from the menu for lunch. (He ordered half of a pastrami sandwich, cole slaw and cottage cheese.)

Nearly overnight, Villaraigosa’s decisive victory has hurled him onto a platform unfamiliar even for the former state Assembly speaker who ran unsuccessfully for mayor in 2001.

In the last 36 hours, Villaraigosa’s smiling face has appeared many times in the national and international media.

Articles on his victory appeared on the front pages of the New York Times and the Washington Post.

During the CNN interview, Villaraigosa insisted again that he was not preoccupied with the national attention.

“I’m going to focus on Los Angeles; make no mistake about that. I want to be mayor of this city,” Villaraigosa told news show host Judy Woodruff.

But he was pressed on the significance of his planned appearance in Washington next month at a conference organized by the group Campaign for America’s Future.

Columnist Arianna Huffington, Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean and former Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards also are scheduled to speak.

“I have said to whoever is running for president -- and as you know I was national co-chair for the John Kerry campaign and the co-chair of the platform committee for the Democratic convention -- I’ve said that we have got to have an urban agenda that focuses on people in our cities,” Villaraigosa said.

“And so I guess that’s why they want me to speak at their conference.”

The city’s current mayor, meanwhile, kept a low profile Thursday. Shannon Murphy, Hahn’s spokeswoman, said the mayor had no public schedule. She declined to say whether he was in City Hall at all.

After his morning interviews, Villaraigosa met Johnny Grant, Hollywood’s unofficial mayor and most famous booster, for a stroll down Hollywood Boulevard.

The two were surrounded by cameramen and reporters -- a sight that on the Walk of Fame naturally attracted neck-craning gawkers and foreign tourists with digital cameras.

“Antonio!” a man screamed from an elevated walkway at the Hollywood and Highland complex across the street.

“The new mayor! The new mayor!” shrieked schoolchildren from Brainburn Elementary School in Lake View Terrace who were stepping off a bus.

“Artiste?” asked a woman with a camera, speaking French.

“No, mayor, alcalde,” a reporter said. “Burocrata.”

“Ah,” she said, snapping away with her camera.

It wasn’t all adulation and smiles, though.

At Hollywood Boulevard and Highland Avenue, he came face-to-face with a man who wanted an answer on an issue Villaraigosa has pledged to address: racial tensions between blacks and Latinos.

“Before, it wasn’t like this,” said Rasheed Smith, a 28-year-old African American and Hollywood resident who told the mayor-elect he was once jumped by 10 “Hispanic people” and had a scar on his face to prove it.

“I feel like sometimes, I’m walking down the street, and I can’t even just look at a Hispanic person and say ‘Hi,’ because sometimes they’re a gangster....

“I’m not saying everybody is like that. I have friends that I play basketball with that are Hispanic and they show me love,” Smith said, “But that’s why I asked you that.”

“And I’m glad you asked me that,” Villaraigosa responded. “I don’t have a magic wand, but I’m as committed as you are to the idea that you and I should be able to walk down the street free of that kind of harassment.”

Smith and Villaraigosa clasped hands and joined shoulders before parting.

“I just want to say congratulations,” Smith said.