Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who will be leaving office at the end of this month after eight long years of not working for the city, said on Tuesday that he wants to take his talents to Sacramento. “I want to run for governor,” said the mayor, who leaves office without a car or any assets. “In fact, I fully expect that I will.”
As mayor of Los Angeles, Villaraigosa set a new standard for ineptitude, spending a grand total of 15 percent of his time in 2012 on city business, while spending 42 percent on out-of-town travel, another 18 percent on unspecified matters, 9 percent on “private time,” and 15 percent on “largely ceremonial or public-relations endeavors.” That number was actually up from 2008, when Villaraigosa spent 11 percent of his time on direct mayoral work. Villaraigosa’s utter failure to improve the Los Angeles Unified School District, his complete abdication of responsibility on the city debt, and his partying lifestyle mark him as a frontrunner for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination in 2018, when Gov. Jerry Brown finally terms out.
“I want to do a listening tour,” he said. “I think we all want to restore the California dream and I want to figure out how to do it.” He added, “I’ll do anything that the mayor, the governor, the city of Los Angeles ask me to do on their behalf.”
Except, apparently, go away.
Ben Shapiro is Editor-At-Large of Breitbart News and author of the New York Times bestseller “Bullies: How the Left’s Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences America” (Threshold Editions, January 8, 2013).