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Gavin doesn’t need Antonio’s help
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Since Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa announced last month that he would not run for governor, it has not been clear whether he would endorse state Attorney General Jerry Brown or our own Mayor Gavin Newsom.
On July 15, in a move that seems to concede that Newsom needs help courting the Hispanic vote — particularly in the southern part of the state — the mayor’s campaign announced state Sen. Alex Padilla, D-San Fernando Valley, as its chairman. Padilla, while largely unknown in Northern California, is reportedly well-connected and loved by the Southern California business community.
In other words, it looks like Newsom is not holding his breath for a Villaraigosa endorsement, which will probably go to Brown sometime this fall. However, given that Villaraigosa is presently about as popular as an anchovy-flavored cupcake, that may not be such a loss. "Gavin would do better with an endorsement from Kobe Bryant than Antonio," a political insider told me in an e-mail. Ouch!
Indeed, neither glossy new photos of Brown with Villaraigosa nor dusty old photos of Brown with Cesar Chavez will result in a Latino landslide at the ballot box, according to California-based pollster Andre Pineda, who handled the Hispanic polling for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. "Villaraigosa does nothing for the Latino vote. It’s wide open among Latinos," Pineda said. "The campaign that does their research correctly appreciates the diversity of Latinos in the state, figures out which issues matter most to whom [hint: the economy will matter a lot more than same-sex marriage], communicates the right message to the right targets in the right language and then does the proper fieldwork will get the Latino vote."
"Whether either campaign will do those things is an open question, of course."
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