Villaraigosa on transition team

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, a former co-chairman for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign, joins a list of some heavyweight economists and other politicians on President-elect Barack Obama’s economic transition team, the Obama campaign announced Thursday.

Villaraigosa campaigned for Obama after the Illinois senator locked up the Democratic nomination, and last weekend traveled to New Mexico to help rally the Latino vote for Obama on election day.

Villaraigosa, a former California Assembly speaker and city councilman, joins some of the nation’s top financial minds and wealthiest financiers, including Warren Buffett, chairman and chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway; Robert Reich, former secretary of the U.S. Department of Labor under President Clinton and now a professor at UC Berkeley; and Paul Volcker, former Federal Reserve chairman, among others.

The group’s first meeting is scheduled Friday in Chicago.

-- Phil Willon