On a drenched, very un-Los Angeles afternoon less than a fortnight before Election Day, a covey of endangered politicians huddled under a welcome tent in scenic Leimert Park in the Crenshaw District to ignite a crackling bonfire of thank-you’s to Washington for a huge loan to speed up the crucial Crenshaw Light Rail line to LAX.
Armed with a whopping $546 million low-interest loan negotiated through a group lobbying effort, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, this afternoon’s moderator, promised to crease the ground with a shovel for Crenshaw by next year. Once under way, the hope is that will provide an impetus for the 11 other similar light rail projects crisscrossing Los Angeles County.
Besides removing 520,000 pounds of emissions each year from the clotted air hovering above Los Angeles, the Mayor said that once the symphony of light rail construction projects starts, the largest undertaking in civic history will yield 166,000 jobs in the coming decade. His face brightened in faux shock. “In this town known for congestion,” said Mr. Villaraigosa, “it isn’t easy to visualize a Los Angeles devoid of traffic and congestion to which we all have become accustomed.”
Although there were enough politicians in the house to stock two dozen football teams, leading off with U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Ca), it was County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas and Mr. Villaraigosa who were accorded the deepest bows for engineering a near fiscal miracle in recessionary times.
In the hour-long, shoulder-tight program under the tent that afforded relief from the downpour, where there were more encomiums than raindrops, the Mayor also shined a light on one of the most muscular movers on the Westside, Denny Zane. A founding father of rent control in Santa Monica in the early 1970s, Mr. Zane these days is executive director of Santa Monica-based Move LA, a coalition for a comprehensive transportation system spanning the County.
Connecting the Dollar Signs
As Chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, Ms. Boxer was the second most critical person in Washington to dislodge the hundreds of millions of dollars from the discretionary fund of U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood, one of a handful of Republicans in the Obama administration. Plainly, there were hundreds of steps between Ms. Boxer’s jump-start request and Mr. LaHood’s approval.
With Mr. LaHood busy on the East Coast trying to persuade Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey to green-light a controversial underwater tunnel to Manhattan, Under Secretary of Transportation Roy Kienitz presented the popular check to the Mayor.
Through deft politicking, Mr. Ridley-Thomas and Mr. Villaraigosa each went to his strength. They carried a project that originally had been calibrated to a 30-year completion timetable and compressed it into a scant 10 years, the major storyline of this project.
Mr. Ridley-Thomas seized the initiative for the Los Angeles portion. Birthing the badly needed Crenshaw Light Rail Line by aiding financing and drastically reducing the calendar projections have been a premium passion for Mr. Ridley-Thomas since he assumed office 23 months ago. This is such a jubilant day, said the Supervisor, that “even now from that parking lot known as the 405 Freeway I hear voices shouting Hallelujah.”
In introducing the County Supervisor, Mr. Villaraigosa said Mr. Ridley-Thomas still was in the state Senate 2½ years ago when he played a commanding role in convincing more than the required threshold of two-thirds of County voters to approve Measure R, a half-cent sales tax increase for transportation projects over a 30-year period. The Mayor headed the campaign, and that was the blockbuster play of the decade — until today.
A Different Kind of Specialist
Mr. Villaraigosa — who once dreamed of being governor and a U.S. Senator before his popularity nosedived — handled the Washington end. Silky soft and smooth after decades of navigating the labor movement, the legislature in Sacramento and the last five years in City Hall downtown, he knows the map of Washington as well as his hometown.
His critics say that Mr. Villaraigosa travels to Washington almost as frequently as members of Congress. For a change today, though, he had the last smile. Clutching what has become known as the 30/10 Initiative, he flew to the Capitol last January to approach Ms. Boxer, deeming her to be the most powerful Californian with the maximum amount of juice.
Resplendent in a purple pants suit, the diminutive Ms. Boxer, heavily made up, is locked into a close race for her fourth six-year term. While the stage was jammed with A-List politicians variously regarded as headliners, Ms. Boxer, with one eye on Nov. 2, looked down a row of celebrities. She singled out one of the few unelecteds on the podium, Maria Elena Durazo, executive secretary of the County Federation of Labor, whose influence spans tens, possibly hundreds, of thousands of labor union votes.
