Senator Hillary Clinton discusses her campaign theme song.
As the top candidates Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Edwards come west this week, Clinton gets a boost for her frontrunning Democratic presidential campaign today from LA’s mayor. NWN learned yesterday morning that the touted “major announcement” this afternoon at UCLA is the endorsement of Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.
It’s not a big surprise, in that Villaraigosa’s close ally, Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, is national co-chairman for Clinton and his former campaign manager, Ace Smith, is Clinton’s California director. Both were previously revealed here.
Before Clinton comes to California today, she campaigns in Nevada, meeting with the culinary workers in Las Vegas before holding a noon town hall meeting in North Las Vegas. Her town hall in Reno a few weeks ago drew a whopping 3500 people. Clinton leads in the polls in Nevada, the second-in-the-nation contest in the Democratic presidential race, where she was just endorsed by former Governor Bob Miller, the last Democrat to hold the office and a strong supporter of her husband, former President Bill Clinton.
On Thursday, Hillary Clinton gives a speech in Silicon Valley, to the Silicon Valley Leadership Group. She’ll do some California fundraising on both days.
John Edwards will also be here for fundraising. He actually has a $15 per person fundraiser on Thursday in San Jose, a way for the grassroots to get some personal access to him.
Barack Obama will be in California over the weekend for fundraising, and probably something else to be announced. Obama’s strong fundraising, which surpassed that of Clinton during the first quarter, is continuing apace.
The Villaraigosa endorsement of Hillary Clinton came after some big-time wooing on the part of the former first couple, which is ever mindful of the strong challenge being mounted by Obama. Hillary Clinton met at length with the mayor in LA. The two appeared together earlier in the year to promote an LA clean-up drive. And Bill Clinton had dinner with him in New York earlier this month when the LA mayor attended the Clinton Foundation’s climate change summit for major cities around the world.
While Villaraigosa is a major Latino political star in America, his record as an endorser is mixed. He’s also had a rougher time of it lately as mayor, with a number of things going wrong. As speaker of the California Assembly, he backed super-rich businessman Al Checchi for governor in 1998. He lost the race for the Democratic nomination in a landslide to Gray Davis.
In 2004, Villaraigosa was a national co-chairman of John Kerry’s presidential campaign, gaining valuable experience and connections. Last year, he endorsed movie director Rob Reiner’s tax-the-rich for universal preschool initiative. It lost in the California primary election, which was dominated by Democrats.
Close to home, Villaraigosa’s candidates this year for the sprawling LA Unified school board triumphed. But it took millions of dollars of spending and voters did not exactly flock to the polls in answer to the mayor’s call. The turnout in the first round of voting was an astonishingly meager 9%; in the run-off just 6%.
Endorsements have historically had limited utility in California Democratic presidential primaries, in which insurgents have at least as good a track record as do candidates of the party establishment, which Clinton is clearly becoming here. Clinton is putting together a strong conventional campaign here, staffing up early as I’ve reported and is likely to run a strong campaign geared to constituency groups with a major vote by mail operation.
While Iowa and Nevada wait to hold their presidential caucuses in mid-January, many Californians will already be voting by mail. The Clinton campaign wants to bank those votes early, and a figure like Villaraigosa, with strong appeal to Latinos and to LA area voters, may be very helpful in that regard.
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I don’t think I’ve seen Vilaraigosa speak. I’ve seen him on TV in snippets. Is he good?
I think that’s…Celine Dion?… Hillary is grooving to.
Antonio Villaraigosa is an okay public speaker.
This won’t help Mrs. Clinton much. She’s already associated with a strong man. She has to stand on her own.
I believe that is Celine Dion …
Villaraigosa is a good speaker, not a great speaker.
Vaillaraigosa’s star lost much luster over the last 6 months. He might still help with Latinos.
So how much do endorsements really matter in this day and age? Where are Antonio’s divisions to GOTV?
I think his endorsement helps Hillary. It gives her more credibility with Latinos.
If Hillary were less well known, endorsements would be more important.
I’m not sure how much help Antonio’s endorsement will be if he plans another overseas trip in the weeks before the primary.
Kidding aside, I agree with the posters who say this will help Hillary with Latinos. However, I’m curious what effect this would have on African American Angelenos supporting Hillary.
Are you saying that there is a problem there?
Is it the black-Latino rivalry?
Is the Pope German?
Villaraigosa is barely an adequate speaker. He relies on smiling a lot. Seriously. A lot of style and not very much substance. A huge disappointment because I thought he was a lot smarter and a lot more focused than he is. What has he done since he became Mayor of LA? Not much.
The Germans bombed Pearl Harbor. (In “Animal House.”)
“The Germans bombed Pearl Harbor.”
Forget it, he’s rolling…
I believe that was future Senator John Blutarsky.
I have seen Villaraigosa give pretty good speeches and very bad speeches.
I dont want to be an apologist for Villaraigosa, mainly because I dont think he needs one. But I do believe the early coronation of him as such a star, was a little premature. But the recent criticism of him is also way premature.
Big ideas take some time-like fixing/overhauling the school- creating affordable housing-building mass transit lines. Antonio has taken concrete steps to try to deal with all of them, while being handicapped by the relatively meager budget that the City of Los Angeles has.
He has already passed a plan to clean up the air around the ports, is well on his way to geting LADWP to be 20% renewables by 2010, and now will get a chance to see what he can do with the schools.
He has also figured out a way to add more police and to start the process of add’l lite rail and a subway to the beach.
The man has been in office for less than 2 years! These problems have been building for a long time.
But, I agree w most posters here, that an endorsement in a Presidential race doesnt mean that much. Big funders will go there own way, and its basically a 1 day story. I do wonder how much sway Antonio has with latino voters, or whether Richardson will gain any traction there.
I can make up my own mind who I vote for for President. I don’t need politicians telling me that.
Good points on Villaraigosa, Mitchell.
I don’t give a good goddamn who endorses the candidates.
You sound more like Sergeant Zim.
Can the Flush Report get anymore ridiculous? lol
No?!
Enough cheap humor.
Flash Report tis a joke. Everyone knows it.
it seems to me this helps Antonio as much maybe more thn Hillary .he gets to meet and charm and dazzle all those people in that big national clinton money machine…and when OBAMA wins…well, he can just do what Hayden says he does best “leave her in the dust”!!!! Go Antonio!
This will be irrelevant.
I;ve already forgotten about this.
Forgotten about what?
Incidentally, NWN passed 31,000 comments sometime last week.