Playing It Safe in a Blood Sport

Antonio Villaraigosa wanted to get one thing clear right off the bat when we met for dinner.

Yeah, he admitted, we drank some wine together one night a few years ago, and he doesn’t doubt that it took me a week to recover.

“But you drank a bottle before I even got there,” he alleged.

I’m not saying I did or I didn’t. But sooner or later everyone overindulges in one way or another, as I’m sure Villaraigosa would agree. I’m reformed, though, and he claims to be too. I might have had my doubts if he suggested we meet at Hooters, but he wanted to go to La Serenata in Boyle Heights.

Unfortunately his schedule got in the way, and then mine did, so his staff told me to meet Villaraigosa at Canter’s Deli on Fairfax after Monday night’s mayoral debate.

Geez, I thought. This guy is so desperate to grab Jewish votes he’s trying to upstage Bob Hertzberg, who took me to Art’s Deli in Sherman Oaks. But after the debate, Villaraigosa suggested we ditch Canter’s, so maybe he figures he’s got the Jewish vote locked up.

“Let’s go to Kate Mantilini,” he said.

Hey, I go where they ask me to go. When Mayor Jim Hahn chickened out on a man-to-man encounter and told me to meet him at a Croatian fish feed along with 200 of his San Pedro neighbors, I didn’t complain.

But Kate Mantilini?

I kept my mouth shut. But if I were running for mayor of Los Angeles, there’s one thing I would never do. I would never take a columnist to dinner in Beverly Hills.

“What Cabernet Sauvignon do you recommend?” Villaraigosa asked our waitress as he perused the restaurant’s wine list.

She recommended the Sterling, and Villaraigosa made a face, as if he knew something about wine. He settled on a Cline Zinfandel, and when the waitress left I noticed that two elderly women at a nearby table were staring at Villaraigosa.

“You know who this guy is?” I asked them.

“He looks familiar,” said one, eyeing Villaraigosa as if he were Antonio Banderas.

Antonio Villaraigosa, I said. He’s running for mayor of L.A.

They nodded politely, but hadn’t heard of him.

Now the waitress returned, and I asked the L.A. resident if she’d heard of Villaraigosa. No, she apologized.

“Do you know who the current mayor is?” I asked.

She smiled confidently.

“Arnold Schwarzenegger,” she said.

Hahn can’t catch a break, can he?

While Villaraigosa worked on his Zin and a plate of whitefish, it became clear that he didn’t want to be there with me.

Why?

Because he’s cruising, and he didn’t want me getting in the way, or “debasing” him as he called it.

Villaraigosa would have preferred disarming me with an invitation to a home-cooked meal with his family, had schedules permitted, and I told him that would have been a smart move. How could I have knocked Hahn around if he had taken me out for pizza with his kids?

“I told my wife, ‘If you show [Lopez] any fear, he’ll eat you alive.’ ”

I’m not saying I would or I wouldn’t.

“You’re a cynical SOB,” Villaraigosa said.

This is his idea of showing no fear?

Let me explain something to Villaraigosa and all the other candidates.

A cynical SOB lets the city go to hell in a handbasket and gives a free pass to pretenders, hacks and wannabes who claim to have the answers.

My job is to make public officials do theirs, and to put their feet to the fire when they don’t.

Got it?

And so I couldn’t help but remind Villaraigosa that when Monday night’s debate had ended, the first question asked of him by a reporter was: How come he looked so laid back?

Villaraigosa denied that he did.

“The key is that I’m running a marathon,” he told me at the restaurant. “You just gotta keep moving your legs.”

In other words, he thinks he’s a shoo-in to grab one of the top two spots March 8 and face Hahn in yet another runoff.

Slim Jim vs. Tony Rapp, Round 2.

So he’s playing it safe, passing himself off as the upbeat savior of the city without getting bogged down by details, and letting Bernard C. Parks, Bob Hertzberg and Richard Alarcon tee off on the sleepwalking mayor for a City Hall corruption probe.

“I think I’m in,” Villaraigosa admitted, but he denied cruising.

“It’s not about playing it safe. It’s about building a base of support that doesn’t peak on primary night.”

That’s a lot of confidence for a man who got dusted by Hahn in the 2001 runoff and has a long history of alienating his biggest supporters.

He and Hertzberg, former roommates, have been at odds for years in a feud over public ambition and private passions.

To understand the latter, all you need to know is that Villaraigosa’s wife threatened divorce more than 10 years ago over his alleged philandering, but Villaraigosa now calls himself a devoted husband and churchgoer.

Speaking of divorce, Villaraigosa has lost the official endorsement of organized labor, local Democratic party leaders, former Mayor Richard Riordan and billionaire star-maker Eli Broad.

And I’m not even done yet.

Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Los Angeles), another former roommate, hasn’t backed Villaraigosa for mayor. And state Sen. Gil Cedillo (D-Los Angeles), a longtime buddy, is riding another horse.

“He’s more than my best friend,” Cedillo said of Villaraigosa. “He’s my brother.”

Then why is Cedillo backing Hahn?

Because Hahn is “a solid, stable leader you can count on.”

Don’t look for any hidden meaning, says Fernando Guerra of the Center for the Study of Los Angeles.

Politics is a blood sport.

“The guy on top is often looked at as the one who had to step over other people,” says Guerra, who sees a Hahn-Villaraigosa showdown but hasn’t ruled out a surprise from Hertzberg, whose friends include both Riordan and Schwarzenegger.

Guerra thinks the notion that Villaraigosa is off his game this time around, perhaps doubting himself because of all the defections, is nonsense.

“He’s twice as strong this time,” said Guerra, even though he thinks Hertzberg has an outside chance of making the two-man runoff.

Last time around, Guerra said, nobody knew how to pronounce Antonio’s last name. And he thinks people are mistakenly comparing Villaraigosa’s sparkle in the 2001 runoff to his low-watt performance in the current mayoral race.

“They’re comparing spring training to the World Series,” Villaraigosa told me confidently, and it wasn’t because of the wine. He stopped after one glass, saving himself for another day on the trail.

His eyes grew even wider when he told me another advantage he sees for himself in a rematch.

“This time, Jim Hahn has a record.”

Yes, he does, and it makes for a nice, fat target. But Hahn also has a dark side, and when he’s backed into a corner, he throws a nasty punch.

That was the case in 2001, when Hahn practically accused Villaraigosa of aiding and abetting drug dealers.

Villaraigosa, you’ll recall, was too stunned to respond. His legs buckled, he wobbled, and he went down like an amateur without even punching back.

At Kate Mantilini, there’s a boxing mural over the kitchen. I looked up and told Villaraigosa that was him on the mat.

Tony Rapp, who still feels the sting, came back with this:

“That’s not me on the mat. That’s me getting up.”

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Steve Lopez writes Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. Reach him at steve.lopez@latimes.com.