You don’t interview Antonio Villaraigosa so much as you turn on an audio recorder, sit back and watch a show unfold. The anecdotes rushing out of his mind like the Los Angeles River after a storm. The answers interrupted by the genuine greeting he throws to the inevitable lookie-loos who glance at the former mayor of Los Angeles and speaker of the Assembly.
His ringing, carefree laugh mixed with soaring rhetoric about democracy, working families and hope. To see Villaraigosa in action is to watch a true political master at work, someone who loves the journey as much as the destination. And Californians will get a front-row seat for the next two years.
Thirty years after winning his first election , the Eastside native is back in the political saddle again, this time out of the gate early in the 2026 race for California governor. Villaraigosa is trying to distinguish himself from the other major Democrats who have announced so far — Lt. Gov.
Eleni Kounalakis , California Secretary of Education Tony Thurmond , former state controller Betty Yee and state senator Toni Atkins — by running from the “radical center,” which he has long described as a magical place where everyone comes together to fix the Golden State better than the Right or Left can do on their own. “In a world where there’s so much deadlock,” Villaraigosa said halfway through our one-hour lunch at La Parrilla in Boyle Heights last week, “it’s radical to put strategies together to break the deadl.