Follow LA Observed on Twitter here
Antonio Villaraigosa won't be the mayor for another month and a day, but his election continues to fascinate the media. Two profilish stories this weekend, in the Timeses of Los Angeles and New York, both mention his penchant for talking in their lede, and say he's using tea to treat sore vocal cords. Both also bring up the film Crash, which Villaraigosa and his wife Corina saw last Sunday at a 10:55 p.m. showing at the Arclight, after attending a Pepe Aguilar concert. Both stories also have new portraits shot in the third floor corridor at City Hall (the one here is by Brian Vander Brug in the LAT.)
Tina Daunt's LAT piece delves into the mayor-elect's personal style — Armani suits, 16½-32 dress shirts, whitened teeth, red wine and an occasional cigar — and his taste for fine restaurants: Water Grill, Patina, Morton's.
Villaraigosa is gregarious, but he's not exactly funny. If the mayoral voting were based on laughs, the droll Hahn would have won handily. Villaraigosa is not one to tell jokes, especially the self-deprecating sort, whereas Hahn quipped on election night that he suffered from "charisma deficit disorder.""Antonio knows how to relax, he knows how to have fun but he's very conscientious about how people perceive him," said former Assemblyman Richard Katz, a longtime friend who is serving on the mayor-elect's transition team. "Because of who he is and where he comes from, he feels people are constantly judging him."
[skip]The new mayor found [Crash], which underscores the racial divisions in Los Angeles, "very disturbing." "It shows things that I have been talking about for some time," Villaraigosa said. "It talks about racial polarization in Los Angeles, but it also shows people reaching beyond it…. Our strength is the diversity of the city. We have to figure out how we talk to one another."
In the New York Times on Monday, L.A. bureau chief John Broder depicts the incoming mayor as a potential healer of ethnic divisions, though finds "a certain rote, stump-speech cast to Mr. Villaraigosa's ode-to-the-melting-pot language." Broder uses Crash in a curious aside, suggesting that many Angelenos have seen and been disturbed by the film and find Villaraigosa "a welcome tonic." In the piece, the mayor-elect asks for patience.
Because of the breadth of his victory, Mr. Villaraigosa will have to deal with the heightened expectations of the electorate after four years under the phlegmatic Mr. Hahn. He is pleading for some time to put his vision into effect."Nobody has a magic wand," he said, sipping hot milk and tea from a huge mug to soothe his damaged vocal cords. "I'm well aware the expectations are high and while some would say beyond what any one individual could accomplish, the people expect you to work every day on their problems and see progress at the end of the time served."
Broder's piece is the only one where I've read that Gov. Schwarzenegger was the first public official to call and congratulate Villaraigosa on election night. It also labels Arnold and Antonio "exemplars of immigrant success," but I believe only one of them is an immigrant (hint: it's the one with the accent.)