Don't call it a comeback

Antonio Villaraigosa, the former Los Angeles mayor, has been here for years. And he believes he will be your next governor.

Villaraigosa with the people

Back when I was a kid, growing up in Mahopac, N.Y., the Mets had a pitcher named Dwight Gooden.

At his absolute best, Gooden was a phenomenon. His fastball hit the high 90s, he had an unhittable curve and his mound savvy was unmatched. In 1985, he won the Cy Young Award after going 24-4 with a 1.53 ERA. The dude was awesome enough to have a mural of his visage plastered alongside a Manhattan building.

Time, however, is undefeated—and as the years passed and Gooden struggled with aging (and, admittedly, addiction), his stuff turned a wee-bit flat. That 98-mph fastball began coming in at 91, 92. His curveball straightened out. I remember, in 1998, interviewing Gooden when he was in spring training with the Cleveland Indians, asking whether he could still recapture the lost magic of yesteryear.

“I dunno,” he said. “But I’m sure gonna try.”

This is what I thought of the other day, when I spent 35 minutes (or so) via zoom with Antonio Villaraigosa, the former Los Angeles mayor now running for California’s governorship. Unambiguously, here is a candidate with a long and distinguished record of public service, and those who dismiss his statewide efforts do so at their own peril.

However, the man also happens to be 73, and while he remains a fairly eloquent and convincing speaker, there are more pauses than yesteryear; more semi-awkward gaps in time that lead an interviewer (in this case, moi) to wonder whether he’s a dude merely measuring his thoughts, or a dude closer to 2024 Joe Biden than 2005 Antonio Villaraigosa.

I don’t have the answer to this one. But I did find him charming, interesting and a person fairly convinced he can turn back the clock and (despite less-than-amazing polling numbers) slay another dragon or two.

Here’s our talk …

ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA: “I’m sorry. I’m what? Let’s see. Two minutes late. I apologize.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “That is not bad. That’s pretty good.”

ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA: “I had to approve a social post.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “I’m Jeff. How are you?”

ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA: “Hi, Jeff. Oh, you’re a Boston Red Sox fan.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “I’m a New Yorker. I’m just wearing the hat. My mom bought it for me. What can I tell you? Are you a big baseball guy?”

ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA: “I don’t know if I’m big baseball guy, but I’m definitely a Dodger fan. I have been since I was a kid.”

JEFF PERARLMAN: “Just so you know, this is random. I’m a longtime sports writer. I spent my whole career as a sports writer, and I live in Orange County and I started a website covering Orange County politics, and it’s grown and grown and grown and grown because with the decline of the Register and the Times really not covering Orange County, I just saw this big gulp of nothingness, so I decided to sort of do it. And hence, why you have the displeasure of speaking with me …”

ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA: “There’s no displeasure.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “So I’ve been writing extensively for the past year and a half about Orange County politics, and I’ve been diving into these races. And I’m actually being sincere when I say this. I honestly don’t understand why people want to hold public office, because it’s a grind. You get stuff tossed to you left and right. You’re always asking for money. You have to ask for more money. You’re looking at polls. And it seems more unpleasant now than it’s ever been before with social media threats, with this public awareness of who you are at all times. I don’t really understand ... I swear to God, I don’t fully understand why someone would want to do this job, even a high-level job like governor in the hellscape we occupy that is 2026. So I ask you, why not lie on a beach and drink a pina colada?”

ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA: “First of all, I understand why you feel that way. I think our politics are getting more coarse. I think there’s a lack of civility in our discourse that causes me concern, and we’re probably more polarized than we have been at any time since the Civil War. But to answer your question, look, I grew up in a time of hope and optimism in America when people took to the streets to fight for voting rights and civil liberties. I believe that public service is an honor. And while this state has given me more than I could have ever imagined, a state of enormous possibilities, a state with its own dream, it’s also a state with big challenges, and that’s why I’m decided to come back. I think we need a proven problem solver, someone who doesn’t just talk a great game, but someone who’s focused on results.

JEFF PEARLMAN: “Do you think the lack of civility is a permanent problem? Do you think we’re just … Even with cell phones, even with social media, you think there is a way out of this quagmire of cruelty?”

ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA: “On my wall, I say EVERYONE’S A LEADER. LEAD BY EXAMPLE. One, two—GET SHIT DONE. Three, INTEGRITY MATTERS. DON’T LIE. Four, EVERYONE DESERVES RESPECT. Five, PREPARATION. HARD, SMART WORK EQUALS SUCCESS. I believe that you lead by example. I believe that it’s important for us to advocate for what we believe in, but to do it in a way that respects other viewpoints and I’ve got a record doing that. When I was speaker of the California State Assembly, I balanced two budgets with a surplus, with a Republican governor and a Democratic governor when we only had 42 and 48 votes, not the super majority we have today. When I was mayor, I left LA on a sound financial footing. I was pro-worker, but I was also pro-business and I was everybody’s mayor. And I think right now, more than ever, we need uniters. We need uniters.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “It feels like from this vantage point, and I am a New Yorker …”

ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA: “I won’t hold that against you, by the way.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “I appreciate that. And I’m wearing the Red Sox hat. But … the poison of Donald Trump and this idea of just demonize your enemy, demonize your enemy. They’re the enemy. They’re not just someone you disagree with, they’re the enemy … that a lot of people in politics have really bought into that. And other people have said, “No, we can be friendly with each other. We can work across the aisle.” And then you have people just saying, “Nope, nope, nope, you’re the enemy, you’re the enemy, you’re the enemy.” Is there an actual way ... I’m being serious. People who are trained to hate you, is there an actual way to work with people like that?”

ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA: “Well, first of all, let me just say that I believe and believe strongly that we need to work across the aisle to take on the challenges we face. But I also believe and believe strongly, and maybe because I grew up in a tough neighborhood, when somebody hits you in the mouth, threatens your civil rights and civil liberties, targets your state … we need to fight back. I’m not a Pollyanna, but I I do believe that, as Mrs. Obama said, when they fight low, we go high. But [we have to] fight for what we believe in.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “I have some issues that different people who follow me wanted me to ask you specifically about, so I’m going to ask. What is our solution—if there is a solution—to the high-speed rail and the kind of fiasco of it all?”

ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA: “Well, first of all, it has been a fiasco. I think that we can all acknowledge that. Secondly, the idea of high-speed rail is a 21st century idea that California has to get behind. What I’ve said is when I became mayor, I said, ‘We’d build a subway to the sea,’ if you remember. I said, ‘We’ll make LA a city focused on public transit and reimagine how we live.’ At the time, the federal government had taken money away from ... You couldn’t build a subway with federal funds because they had opined that you couldn’t build a subway in areas with methane pockets. I brought experts from around the world and convinced the author of that amendment that we could, and I think we need to bring in engineers and experts from around the world to look at what we need to do to put high-speed well back on track.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “You feel like it’s still worth pursuing? You do not think it’s worth just ditching and saying, ‘Man’ …”

ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA: “It’s still worth pursuing. And again, I have a record. People call me the transportation mayor, and I’ve got a record of building and bringing in the best and the brightest. So I think we need to bring in the best and the brightest to put high-speed rail back on track. And in all likelihood, do that with the private sector. Bring in the private sector the way high-speed rail was built around the world.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “It’s interesting. I live here in Orange County, and Orange County is ... homelessness is a major, major issue, as obviously it was in LA when you were mayor, and you earned very strong reviews for the way you handled homelessness and worked on building housing. In Orange County, it feels like where I’m based, everyone is turned off by homelessness, but nobody wants housing for homelessness built near them.”

ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA: “Very good …”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “I really mean it. It’s Orange County. It actually sickens me how many people are horrified by homelessness, not because they feel bad for the person who is without home, but because they don’t want them near their Starbucks …”

ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA: “So let me just say this. What I’ve said is when I’m governor, we will not criminalize the homeless. We will be compassionate, but we won’t allow for chaos. Selling drugs in front of cops is chaos. I believe that if you’re offered housing and services, you don’t have a right to be homeless. Now, different than other candidates, I don’t believe you should be incarcerated, but I believe we can move you out if you refuse housing and the services that are provided. I also believe some love to talk about how Ronald Reagan got rid of the mental hospitals. I think you’ve heard that. And what I say is that’s true, but for the last 20 years, 28 years, we’ve been in office and I believe the next governor’s going to have to take advantage of the care courts and build locked facilities where people who are a threat to themselves and others and refuse to take their meds, are provided the services, the therapy that they need to get healthy again.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “Is it hard to convince people that their money should go for homeless services? People [say], ‘Oh, it’s already so expensive living in California. Oh, this, oh that.’ Well, we’re going to take some of your tax money and we’re going to help the homeless. It feels like a lot of people just don’t have the constitution for that regard …”

ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA: “Well, let me share with you. According to the legislative analyst office, the LAO, we spent $24 billion from the state that did an audit and during that time, homelessness went up. So what I’ve said is that audit showed there were only two programs that work. One that helps people with rent, prevents them from going homeless in the first place, and another program that I believe was called Home Safe. And so what I’ve said is we can’t throw money at things that don’t work, but we do have to make investment. Here’s another example. The average homeless unit costs $850,000 a unit. There are working families that can’t afford that. And so what I’ve said is, um, that’s not sustainable. We need tiny homes with services, cost about $100,000 to $130,000 a unit, but I think in Santa Monica, the average price or the price was $1.2 million. And that’s just not sustainable.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “When I hear to politicians or people running for office talk about this, they almost make it sound like, ‘look, it’s easy if we have this and that and that.’ It seems like an insanely difficult problem. Just what do we do about this and how do we handle it?”

ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA: “Jeff, you hit it right on the head, the nail on the head. It is not easy. You mentioned it. I had homelessness. I also built more homeless housing in eight years in the middle of a recession than the two administrations the 12 years before me. Actually, I built three times more homeless housing than the two administrations before me. It won’t be easy. It will require state and local funds, but no problem. My experience is that there are no problems that don’t have a solution.

“Virtually every problem has a solution, maybe is a better way [to say it]. It’s my experience that virtually every problem has a solution. And I don’t know if you know or your viewers do. When I became mayor, LA was the most violent big city in America. When I left, along with New York, it was the safest … the 48 percent drop in violent crime. One out of three schools were failing, and the San Fernando Valley was talking about seceding from LA Unified. When I left, we had a 60 percent increase in the graduation rate. In the middle of a recession, I put 270 ... Well, nearly 300,000 people in living wage jobs. As I understand it, about 25 percent of all the cranes in the United States were in LA. LA went from 20,000 people downtown to 60,000 people. The No. 1 American city in reducing greenhouse gas is number five in the world.

“I was focused on my job. We had metrics and dashboards on virtually every campaign promise I made, and we didn’t solve homelessness. We didn’t eliminate crime. We didn’t get to 100 percent graduation rate, but we did more in eight years on those issues than anybody before me or since. So what I can tell you, that’s why I believe that we need a proven problem solver, someone that doesn’t just talk a great game, but has a record of results.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “Do you think living in California means just accepting that part of living in this state—this great state—is you will pay more for gas and it just is what it is and we have higher prices?”

ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA: “No. I believe that the next governor’s going to have to take on the issue of affordability. That means address the high cost of gas, the highest in the country, the high cost of utilities, the second highest in the country that have gone up 60 percent, the second highest home prices, which average about $900,000 a unit. I think we could do better than that. And I’ve got a plan, a plan that focuses on reducing our gas prices by employing on all of the above energy policy that understands we produce the cleanest fuel in the United States of America and indeed the world. We need to wean ourselves from foreign oil. We just saw with this conflict that’s war in Iran, what’s going to happen to gas prices and particularly gas prices in California. We need to produce our own oil and gas. And we made it impossible for refineries to exist. And when people say ‘You’re defending refineries,’ I said, ‘No, I’m defending people that drive a Ram pickup, Jeff.

“And so on utilities, let’s build a grid. Our utility rates are so high because we haven’t built a grid. We built 167,000 charging stations in 10 years. We need two million more in the next 10. And if we build them when I’m governor, and we will, we don’t have the grid, so we have to build a grid. And then finally, with home prices, make it impossible to build. We need market rate, workforce, affordable, and homeless housing. We need to cut red tape. We need to address a broken California Environmental Quality Act that allows you to sue from Arizona for a project in Fullerton. So we need to do a lot, and I have a plan to do that.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “Wait, since you said ‘shit’ earlier in this interview, I’m going to use a curse of my own. Do you feel like climate change-wise, we’re just fucked as a species?”

ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA: “No.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “You really don’t?”

ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA: “I think we can do a lot to reduce our carbon footprint, but I think we can’t do it on the backs of working families because they will push back and they already are.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “When you saw that we went to war with Iran, were you surprised, bemused, depressed, none of the above, all of the above?”

ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA: “I wasn’t surprised. I’m outraged because we invaded with Iran with no plan, no support from the Congress, and without an end game, and I believe it ultimately will hurt our economy. We’re already seeing it raising gas prices and inflation and the cost of living.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “Wait, I have a question I desperately want to ask you. You are the perfect person to ask this. It just entered my head. This is my question I want to understand, and you’re the guy. Okay. You have all these people in Congress, all these people in the Senate, governors too. They’ve all been in elected politics for years. Presumably, they’ve had leadership positions for years. Why are all these people so terrified of Trump? You would think people who have been in leadership positions for years wouldn’t cower in the face of someone else. I don’t understand why everyone is so terrified of him. I don’t get it …”

ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA: “I don’t know if they’re terrified of Trump as much as terrified of the erosion of our civil liberties and civil rights, erosion of the institutions that have made America a beacon of life and hope to the world. I do believe that Donald Trump is a threat to our democracy, but understand that you can’t just focus on Donald Trump. There are problems we created in this state, and we’ve got to focus on those problems.

“And as I said, the biggest challenge is the challenge of affordability. But look, people want us ... I tell people I’m running on a platform of common sense, competence, and of course, correction. I think people are looking for us to focus on the basics again. They want safe neighborhoods, good schools, healthcare that works for their families. They want us to focus on an economy that’s not working for enough people and push back against Trump, particularly on these ICE raids and where he targets California, but [we can’t be] obsessed on him and take our eye off the ball.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “I think we’re all obsessed with him, unfortunately. Let me ask you a final question. Obviously, the other day, Rusty Hicks wrote a letter to every candidate saying, everyone needs to assess where they are in the race, et cetera, et cetera. There is a worry among people who are politically involved in the party that all you guys are going to cancel each other out and we’re going to wind up with two Republicans. I don’t know. How big of a concern is that and how big of a consideration should that be for people running?”

ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA: “The fact of the matter is, the Republicans are all decided. There are about 25 percent Republicans in this state and with independents that vote Republican, about maybe close to 35, 32. The two Republican candidates have 16 and 16. There are no undecideds among Republicans. They’re with one of the two Republicans. There are 35 percent undecided. They’re almost exclusively Democrat. Many of them live, frankly, in Southern California. So what I say to people, at the end of the day, it’s too early to count anyone out. In 1998, in April, Gray Davis was at 11. Jane Harman was at 18, and Al Checchi was at 19. Gray won that race. Only eight points between them. It’s only seven points between me and the top candidate. It’s wide open. It’s early.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “Let me ask you a final, final question.”

ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA: “Yes, sir.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “I moved here 11 years ago from New York. I live in Orange County. How come you guys in LA consider Orange County to be like 7,000 miles away. We’re only an hour down the 405. All I ever hear about is Orange County. It’s too far. Orange County, I can’t go down there. It’s too far. The traffic, blah, blah, blah. What the heck?”

ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA: “I think we live in a bubble here in LA, frankly. I’ve been going to Orange County and that’s why I wanted to interview with you. I’ve been going a lot. I was just there with the Orange County Latino Business Association. I’ve been there probably once every two weeks, but I’m going up and down the state and I’m going to continue to visit because it’s in the same media market. And while there are differences for sure, also a lot of similarities.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “It’s much more purple. Much more purple than it used to be.”

ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA: “Much more purple than it used to be for sure. The orange curtain no longer is.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “Actually, if you were running 30 years ago, this election, you probably wouldn’t even think about Orange County, correct? Different landscape altogether.”

ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA: “Yeah, there’s a different landscape altogether from 30 years ago, for sure.”

JEFF PEARLMAN: “That’s interesting. Well, listen, thank you so much for doing this.”

ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA: “No, Jeff, thank you. Appreciate it.”