The last time I was this excited about a politician was 1992, working for the College Democrats. I registered voters at my college to help get Clinton elected. We were so enamored of that man. But that was a long time ago.
Antonia Villaraigosa is the first Latino mayor for a city that is almost half Hispanic. But besides that, he is just an all around cool guy. Not only is he handsome, young, personable, well-spoken and a genuinely nice person (yes, I have met him), he is doing some incredible things for this city.
I swear only a year before we elected him, I said to myself "This city has so much potential, it's a shame that we spend our days sitting in traffic, choking on smog and looking at ugly strip malls." Then Villaraigosa came along. He's made a promise to make LA a greener and more beautiful city with the Million Trees LA campaign and The LA River Revitalization Program (this takes a little while to download, it's the actual plans): Making our river a real river (with water), building beautiful bridges, creating bike paths and parks, and incentivizing retail businesses to open on the riverfront.
In addition, he's building support for dismantling gangs, committing to improve our failing education system, fighting to get the money we need to relieve traffic and wants to make the city wireless.
It's no wonder he's a very popular guy these days and according to The New York Times, he may be a critical part of the 2008 presidential race. They're doing a four-part interview with him and you can watch the first part here.
No comments:
Post a Comment