Why Mayor Villaraigosa didn’t endorse Garcetti or Greuel

In a mayoral election driven in large measure by endorsements, one leading Los Angeles official remained conspicuously silent right to the end: the mayor himself. Tuesday, as he prepared to cast his ballot, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa kept his preference to himself.

Why, I asked him, had he elected not to let voters know his preference between the two candidates vying to succeed him?

“I thought it was important, while everyone else was focused on the mayor’s race, that I focus on the mayor’s job,” he said outside his polling place on Wilshire Boulevard.

Beyond that, he said he worried that he might have disproportionate influence with some voters and that he valued his friendships with both Councilman Eric Garcetti and Controller Wendy Greuel. Finally, he said he hopes to be a supportive influence on his successor, and he worried that if his candidate lost, that might blunt his ability to lend a hand later.

ENDORSEMENTS: Los Angeles City Elections 2013

Still, he’s clear on what the priorities for the next mayor should be. “Public safety and public schools,” he said without hesitation. Having said so, he then meandered a bit, reflecting on the growth of tourism in recent years, the prospects for a reinvigorated transportation network and the need to “re-create and reimagine Los Angeles.”

During the long race to pick his successor, many voters and others complained that the candidates shied away from the business of thinking along those lines, talking more about ways to tinker with the machinery of government rather than reimagining it fundamentally. Villaraigosa acknowledged that the close race may have discouraged risk-taking, but he argued that even if the candidates had been bolder, those messages would have been difficult to communicate.

Ballot in hand, he threaded his way to his polling place, stopping to pet a small dog (“She’s a Democrat,” her owner boasted, getting a laugh out of the mayor) but declining one more time to say who would be getting his vote. “Nobody cares who I’m voting for,” he insisted.

Villaraigosa, incidentally, leaves office to face a fairly uncertain future. He’s yet to accept a job, and he’ll have to vacate the mayor’s mansion soon, so he’s shopping for a place to live. He did say he expected to stay in Los Angeles, at least for the immediate future. “I’ll always be part of the L.A. landscape,” he said. “I love my town.”

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