He’s the Energizer Mayor

Most of his constituents were fast asleep on a peaceful Sunday morning when Antonio Villaraigosa zoomed full-throttle into another frenzied day.

The 41st mayor of Los Angeles sprinted to the finish line of a 5K race in Exposition Park -- pumping his fist in the air as he left his police bodyguard in the dust.

Then -- after mugging for photos, signing autographs and a quick shower at home -- he dashed to the West Angeles Cathedral in the Crenshaw district, where the African American congregation greeted him like royalty.

“Giving honor to God and you, my brothers and sisters,” he declared from the podium in an impromptu address.

By 2 p.m., he’d made it to the Westside. There he donned a black yarmulke and turned reflective for a somber Holocaust memorial, reminding folks that he’d been coming for 13 straight years.

Before the day’s marathon was over, Villaraigosa spoke at an Armenian genocide ceremony, grabbed dinner with President Bush near Palm Springs and crashed a late-night birthday party in Burbank for his buddy, actor George Lopez.

And this was a light day.

As a candidate in 2005, Villaraigosa promised to bring new punch to the mayor’s office. Ten months into the job, skeptics may ridicule his plans to take over the public schools or condemn his trash-fee hike to pay for more police. But even they concede the obvious: Villaraigosa has delivered on his promise to energize City Hall.

With barely an interruption, the 53-year-old mayor has spent the past year barnstorming his native Los Angeles in a one-man charm offensive that feels alternately like a nonstop political campaign and a mad adventure to unite a city of strangers. It’s an unyielding pursuit of the city’s loyalty, one citizen at a time.

Villaraigosa’s workaholic habits put him in good company. New York’s Michael R. Bloomberg and Chicago’s Richard M. Daley, for instance, are regarded as energetic champions of their big cities. But even these chief executives usually check out by late evening. For Villaraigosa, dinner is just another stop in the middle of a long day.

Villaraigosa’s schedule is so punishing that he wears out aides (one calls the pace “insane”) and worries friends, who fret that his breakneck pace will burn him out. His family also pays a price. Villaraigosa and his wife, Corina, a public school administrator, have two teenage children. But quality time these days often means a phone call from the car. “We’re ships passing in the night,” the mayor said of the time he spends with his wife.

If all that is wearing on Villaraigosa, he doesn’t let on. Fueled by cup after cup of Coffee Bean green tea, he plows ahead, knocking off neighborhoods, piling up miles on his city-issue black GMC Yukon.

“I love this job,” he told a gaggle of admirers who besieged him in Studio City on a recent stop to celebrate the new headquarters of the Sun community newspaper.

“Look at these cameras,” he said, referring not to the usual clutch of television crews that pursue him but to guests at the party. “You’d think they were paparazzi.”

Then he pointed to one of the amateur photographers and said: “You know, sir, your camera’s not on.”

Villaraigosa isn’t seasoned in the intricacies of city government like his predecessor, James K. Hahn. He doesn’t have the business or legal acumen of former Mayor Richard Riordan. His strengths, as he well knows, are his vigor and personality.

He loves attention. He smiles perpetually and hugs men and women alike. He shakes every hand he can find. If cheek-kissing were an Olympic event, he’d win the gold medal hands down.

Above all, he knows his audience, and mixes his vocabulary and rhythm to suit it. One night, Villaraigosa is yukking it up with wealthy Westside canyon dwellers, telling them how he had to “schlep” through rush-hour traffic that he intends to fix.

Another time, he’s chest-thumping homeboys from Boyle Heights, his childhood haunt, boasting about “la lucha” (the struggle) to create new jobs.

Some of Villaraigosa’s appeal is the result of attention to detail. Before heading to an event, his staff briefs him with the names of those he’s likely to meet, along with specifics about spouses and children. Villaraigosa files that away, then personalizes his greetings. Striding to a news conference, the mayor will often throw an arm around a reporter and ask how the family is doing.

Everywhere he goes, mothers thrust babies into his arms. Crowds give him standing ovations. Heads turn when he walks through a room, dressed impeccably in one of his dark business suits and peach or aqua blue ties. In a town that covets celebrity, he commands enough star power to make an A-list actor jealous.

“There is an optimism here in the city of Los Angeles like I’ve never seen before. And it’s because of the vision and leadership of this wonderful man whom God has given to us as the mayor of our city,” Bishop Charles E. Blake told his West Angeles congregation during the recent Sunday visit, as Villaraigosa beamed in the front row. “We love him so much.”

Even members of the Los Angeles City Council, an ambitious lot themselves who often feel overshadowed by Villaraigosa, know a good thing when they see it.

The best way to generate publicity for pet projects, they know, is to invite the mayor to a news conference. The catch? He may steal the show. And that’s a lesson fellow politicians know well: Don’t get caught, they joke, between Villaraigosa and a camera.

“The mayor has been in my communities more in the last six months than the last two mayors combined,” Councilwoman Wendy Greuel, who represents a swath of the San Fernando Valley, told the Studio City newspaper audience recently, prompting boisterous applause.

Of course, Villaraigosa faces tough challenges that won’t be solved by kissing babies in Bel-Air or thumping chests in Boyle Heights.

He must balance a budget that is nearly $300 million in the hole. He needs to make good on his pledge to hire 1,000 new police officers. And most significant, he is bracing for a fight with teachers unions, his longtime allies, over his plans to take control of the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Some wonder how Villaraigosa can get any of this done when he’s spending so much time hopscotching around the city.

“It’s hours, baby. It’s hard work,” he replies, arguing that he hustles at his job almost around the clock and has smart deputies to sort through the minutiae. “My job,” he said, “is to be the big-picture guy.”

And he does that by being the big-energy guy.

Villaraigosa starts his days around 5 a.m., with 500 stomach crunches and a workout on an elliptical machine inside his Windsor Square home, the mayor’s official residence. He often stays up well past the 11 p.m. newscasts that carry stories about him.

On the road in the black Yukon, the mayor is in constant motion, scanning briefing materials prepared by his staff, or listening to salsa or classical music on his iPod, or talking on a cellphone as he rushes to his next appointment.

Planted in the passenger seat, he often gives his LAPD driver unsolicited directions but still arrives late to appointments because he mingles at each stop.

Of all the places he visits, Villaraigosa gets the biggest charge out of schools, where he also often receives his most voluble appreciation.

On one recent day, he bounded through the front doors of John Muir Middle School in South Los Angeles.

Villaraigosa was the featured attraction at the kickoff of “college month.” But before he took to the stage in the packed auditorium, he ducked into a conference room to hear about Boys to Men, an enrichment program that offers tutoring and after-school activities to about 100 Latino and African American students.

One by one, half a dozen boys shook Villaraigosa’s hand and then recited a poem together about character-building.

Villaraigosa was impressed.

“C’mon little brothers,” he said, throwing his arms around the students for a group picture and surprising the assembled administrators. “These are my boys here. I’m proud of them.”

The group’s leader, English teacher Sean Rector, shot the mayor an approving glance.

“You all right, man,” he said. “Let’s give the mayor some love.”

And with that, the boys hugged Villaraigosa, gently pounding him on the back the way they would greet buddies on the street.

Afterward, 13-year-old Jonathan Acosta said “it was a dream to meet him. Mr. Villaraigosa is like one of my heroes.”

Villaraigosa strives to turn his own meandering youth into an example for children.

He’s the high school dropout who made good, the poor kid from the Eastside who climbed the city’s marble corridors of power. If he can be mayor, he tells them, so can they. That’s classic Villaraigosa: personal and persistently optimistic.

And he shows few signs of easing up as he approaches his one-year anniversary on the job.

At 9:35 p.m. on a recent Wednesday, after a 14-hour day, he prepared for yet one more television interview -- this one for a weekly KCAL-TV Channel 9 segment called “Ask the Mayor.”

Villaraigosa stood in the deserted parking lot of CBS Television City Studio in the Fairfax district. A press aide, wearing a long overcoat, shivered in the cold. But the mayor was coiffed and buoyant -- the peach tie was knotted perfectly; his chin showed no trace of a five o’clock shadow.

Villaraigosa danced in place as he waited. “I’m having fun,” he told the newscasters over his earpiece.

When the interview started, he was asked if the Academy Award-winning movie “Crash” -- with its downbeat portrayal of race relations in Los Angeles -- upset him.

No, he said. The movie offers a message of hope, that even jaded characters can redeem themselves in the end.

“I believe in the people of this city,” he said. “I believe they want to reach out beyond race and ethnic lines.”

The interview ended, Villaraigosa pulled out the earpiece and hopped into the Yukon. There was one more meeting, and more hands to shake, before he caught a few hours of sleep and prepared to do it all again tomorrow.

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Keeping up with Villaraigosa

A day in the life of Mayor Villaraigosa:

*--* 7:30 Leaves home 8:00 Runs a 5K 11:00 Attends church 2:00 Speaks at Holocaust memorial 4:30 Speaks at Armenian genocide memorial 6:00 Dinner with President Bush 10:00 Attends party

*--*

Source: Times reporting

Los Angeles Times