As the race for governor ramps up, the nine remaining Democratic and Republican candidates are looking for ways to stand out.
Earlier this week Democrat Antonio Villaraigosa pledged to only serve one term if elected. Saying, “I would rather be transformative and successfully lead our state in the next four years, than be mediocre for the next eight.”
He joined Insight to talk about his one-term pledge and his campaign, as we continue our series of interviews with all nine gubernatorial candidates.
Villaraigosa was State Assembly Speaker from 1998 to 2000 and was mayor of Los Angeles for 8 years before terming out in 2013.
He has also run for governor before in 2018. He failed to move on from the primary, losing to Gavin Newsom and John Cox.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Interview highlights
You have had a long career in politics at pretty much all levels of government including mayor of Los Angeles and Speaker of the Assembly. How did working in politics shape your understanding of California's issues?
I first got involved in politics through community organizing. I was 15 years old and got involved in the Black Student Union, the United Mexican American students. I led the walkouts at a time when, on the east side of Los Angeles, we had inferior schools, second-hand books and desks. Teachers that had been pushed out of other areas and transferred to our schools. I got involved in the farmworker boycott. I was involved in immigrant rights groups even though I didn't speak a lick of Spanish. I had been a community activist, a labor leader for 25 years before I got elected. I was in the civil rights movement, president of the ACLU.
I got elected to the State Assembly as a majority whip and balanced two budgets with a surplus with the Republican governor and a Democratic one.
In my years as mayor, we went from the most dangerous big city in America, the most violent big city, to one of the safest. A 48 % drop in violent crime by growing our police department, by expanding after-school programs, by dramatically expanding summer youth jobs.
One out of three schools were failing when I became mayor. By the time I left, it was one out of 10.
So what I've said to people, right now more than ever, we need a proven problem solver. I think we need somebody to calm the waters. Somebody that can help us address the fact that the state's not affordable. That we have the fourth largest economy in the world with the highest poverty rate.
California is currently facing a saga of budget shortfalls. This is following years of record surpluses during the height of the pandemic. We also have sizable federal funding cuts from the Trump administration as well. How should the state work within its means, while also serving vulnerable populations?
As I said, we've done a lot of good things in the last six years.
But we also have been in deficits continually even during great economic times. Jerry Brown left us with a $300 million surplus. We were living within our means.
We're looking at, according to the legislative analyst, somewhere between $18 and $35 billion deficits in the next few years. So I've said we have a spending problem very clearly and what we're going to have to do is to tighten our belt, make the tough calls, the way I did when I was speaker.
When I was speaker, we balanced two budgets with a surplus with the middle-class tax cut. I did it with the Republican governor, working across the aisle and the next year I did it with a democratic governor. When I was mayor, they said that LA was going bankrupt during the recession. The worst recession since the 1930s. I said, ‘not under my watch.’ I left LA on a sound financial footing.
That's why I've said I'm pledging to only run one term. I don't want to be one of those people looking so far ahead. You know how it works here. You get elected governor. You refuse or fail to take on the tough problems because you don't want to take on powerful interests and you want to leave popular so that you could run for the next job. I want to focus every day on those tough decisions and not worry about running for the next job.
We need a leader that'll calm the waters, a leader with a record of delivering real results, a leader who understands that the next administration is going to have to make the tough calls to put us on a sound financial footing. Now, we can't just cut our way out of these problems because the problems are gargantuan. So, why aren't we growing our businesses? Why aren't we pushing out so many businesses in the state?
The fact is we've got businesses hemorrhaging and going to Texas and Florida. We've got high net worth individuals doing the same thing. I want to keep those people here. I want to create the good jobs here.
There remains a large field of candidates. Nine in total, seven are Democrats and there have been growing concerns that the Democratic vote could be diluted in the primary. Possibly leading to the two Republican candidates advancing to the general.
Your own state party chair Rusty Hicks had called for lower polling candidates to essentially drop out of the race. That would include you. How do you respond to that?
Noise. It's just noise. They were talking about a candidate who is leading in this race. And is now dropped out of the race. Thirty-five percent of the electorate is undecided.
A big portion of them are Latino. A lot of them are people that are looking for common sense, competence, and a course correction. People haven't really been covering this race, frankly. Donald Trump sucks the air out of the new cycle. And I think now people are starting to focus.
What happens too much here in Sacramento, is we go with the first shiny object. We’ve had three different scandals. Eric Swalwell is the latest. The first one was Katie Porter. And the way she treated her staff. It went viral. ‘get the F out of my picture.’ The way she stood up and almost walked out of an interview when a reporter asked her a simple question.
And then it was Xavier Becerra, whose chief of staff was indicted for compensating his salary with Becerra's campaign funds. At the end of the day, I think we need proven leadership.
I think we need someone to calm the waters and someone who understands we got to make the state stronger, take on the challenges and then pass the baton to the next generation of leaders.
Finally, if elected governor, how would you respond to the Trump administration? Would it be in line with Gov. Newsom who has a strong adversarial approach? Or would you take a different tone?
Well, first of all, Donald Trump is a threat to our democracy. He's targeted California. The Palisades and Altadena still haven't gotten all their FEMA money because Donald Trump is holding it up. These tariffs hurt us disproportionately. Tariffs are taxes. Why does it hurt us disproportionately? Because our three biggest trading partners are Mexico, China, and Canada. We export more goods than anyone else.
The ice raids are an abomination. They're violently arresting people in military style deportations covered from head to toe, unidentified, grabbing children from the arms of their parents in schools, parks, hospitals, and places of business.
And what I've said is, that's unacceptable. I have an ICE plan that says in our state we will supervise the health and safety of people in detention centers, children in detention centers. Warrantless arrest will not be allowed in our state. But at the same time, I'm not going to spend all my time memeing him and making fun of him. He is what he is. We will challenge him.
Who better to do that than someone who came out of the civil rights movement, former president of the ACLU, a labor leader. I've been fighting “the right” my whole life. But we've got to accept that a lot of the problems we have, homelessness, housing, affordability, happened under our watch. And I intend to take on that challenge, even if it means taking on my friends.
