Word: mayorally
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...Mayor Paul Bunn paces the parking lot in front of Bradford's city hall, barking out orders on his cell phone while smoking a cigarette. The puffing and the posturing are habits honed by a year of leading troops through hellfire in Baghdad. "People do what I say, when I say, how I say, and no questions asked," says Bunn in his staff-sergeant mode, stubbing out the cigarette. The city staff-all two of them-ruin the effect, however, by peering out a city-hall window and smiling indulgently at the boss. It is his first day back...
...fire alarm has gone off in councilman Antonio Villaraigosa's office in city hall, and the emergency strobe light is flashing, but he isn't budging. Two days after winning the Los Angeles mayoral election, Villaraigosa has business to do. It is 6 p.m., and he has been up since 3 a.m. In the past two hours alone, his assistant tells him, he has received 47 phone messages. A secretary calls security to find out if the building needs to be evacuated. But Villaraigosa, 52, once described by a fellow Democrat as having as much energy as "a hummingbird...
When the call is over and the fire alarm silenced, this former child of the poor, gang-ridden Latino neighborhood of East L.A. stretches out his arms and says, "Me, mayor of this great city? I can't believe I am standing here." Villaraigosa is poised to become the first Latino mayor of Los Angeles since 1872. Made of equal parts passion and personal charm, he acted during the campaign as if he wanted to shake hands with every one of the city's 4 million citizens. He could not be more different from the man he trounced...
...politician, Villaraigosa--who in this race assembled a coalition of black, white and Asian voters as well as Latinos--has long sought to reach beyond his own community. But as mayor of L.A., which is 47% Latino, he is destined to become an icon of the nationally emerging Latino political class. There are two Latino U.S. Senators and 22 Latino mayors in cities with more than 100,000 residents...
...limelight won't be of any help to Villaraigosa as he goes about running the nation's second biggest city, however. He inherits an education system that graduates only 45% of its students from high school, festering gang violence and the worst traffic in the nation. Critics say the mayor-elect is short on substance--"an empty suit," in the words of Joel Kotkin of the nonpartisan New America Foundation, a public-policy think tank. A liberal at heart, Villaraigosa was a union organizer and then president of the Southern California branch of the A.C.L.U. before getting elected...