Villaraigosa Taken Down A Peg

LA Times:

A state appeals court today soundly renounced a law designed to give Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa substantial authority over the Los Angeles Unified School District. The ruling is the second -- and perhaps final -- blow to what was once the centerpiece of Villaraigosa's education-reform plan.

Today's unanimous decision, by a three-judge panel of the 2nd District Court of Appeal, found the law, Assembly Bill 1381, unconstitutional -- and it was not a close call, in the view of the justices. In its one-paragraph conclusion, the justices gave particular importance to the revised Los Angeles City Charter that was approved during the term of then-Mayor Richard Riordan. That charter revision reaffirmed the election of school-board members with authority to govern the school district, in the view of the court.

There's almost no way that the State Supreme Court would choose to take a case when the appeals court voiced this strong a takedown. The next step for Antonio is to have his candidates win the two outstanding school board runoffs next month. After that, if he can't hammer out a deal there, he may have to go to the ballot if he wants to get this done. This is really a crushing defeat for the mayor, who staked a lot of political capital on this issue.

The decision below...

"The citizens of Los Angeles have the constitutional right to decide whether their school board is to be appointed or elected," the justices wrote. "If the citizens of Los Angeles choose to amend their charter to allow the mayor to appoint the members of the board, such amendment would indisputably be proper. What is not permissible is for the Legislature to ignore that constitutional right and to bypass the will of the citizens of Los Angeles and effectively transfer many of powers of the board to the mayor, based on its belief, hope, or assumption that he could do a better job."

Partial Victory for Antonio

Amidst an absurdly low turnout, LA Mayor and nominal 2010 gubernatorial front-runner Antonio Villaraigosa was not quite successful enough to tip the school board in his favor - at least not yet.

There were 4 open seats on the school board. Villaraigosa was fairly well assured to win 2. He needed 3 for a majority on the board. Here are the results:

In nearly complete returns, the mayor's favored candidates finished ahead in three races and trailed in the fourth. But two of those leads were not sizable enough to avoid a May runoff, meaning that, once again, Villaraigosa's school intervention plans could be put on hold [...]

The two big-money contests pitted an incumbent against a challenger favored by the mayor. In those races, Villaraigosa faced one loss and one runoff. The union-backed Marguerite Poindexter LaMotte won handily in her South Los Angeles race and Villaraigosa-favored Tamar Galatzan and incumbent Jon M. Lauritzen headed to a May showdown in the San Fernando Valley.

The mayor officially sat out the battle in District 1, which pitted incumbent LaMotte against charter school operator Johnathan Williams.

He "sat it out," most likely, because he didn't want to get sullied by Williams' defeat. But he pretty much did everything but endorse him. Williams outspent his oppoenent by 2-to-1 and still lost.

That the Galatzan-Lauritzen race is headed to a run-off is no surprise: the two had big money behind them, the challenger from the mayor and the incumbent from the teachers' union. Amazingly, the mayor was unable to put away the race in District 7, where Villaraigosa-endorsed Richard Vladovic will now go to a May runoff against retired principal and low-funded candidate Neal B. Kleiner. That's really surprising to me.

We'll now see a UTLA firewall strategy for May. Villaraigosa needs both seats to gain a school board majority. And he seems to know that it's a tall order, because he's being conciliatory again:

Villaraigosa had planned to oust at the ballot box any board members who resisted his schools agenda, but amid Tuesday night's uncertain outcome, he adopted a conciliatory tone. Earlier, he had called board President Marlene Canter, with whom he had refused to meet for months.

"I want to work with the school board," he said in an interview. "I'm reaching out…. I'm looking for a partnership that's focused on change and innovation. That's what it's been about from the beginning."

Riiiight. Why do I have trouble believing that one? Must be the two million dollars funneled to candidates battling incumbent school board members.