ANTONIO’S MOMENT

Former Los Angeles Mayor and California Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa has a proven record of challenging special interests, delivering results, and leading as a progressive reformer. With strong name identification in the state’s largest and most expensive media market, Antonio is uniquely positioned to take advantage of this crowded, fluid field and build a coalition that wins by drawing on his personal story, his experience, and his accomplishments. 

Man in navy suit and white shirt standing outdoors with greenery and flowers in the background

Antonio grew up in East LA, without a father–in poverty–surrounded by gang violence. With the support of a devoted mother and a great teacher, Mr. Katz, who believed in him, Antonio overcame those odds to become Speaker of the Assembly, Mayor of Los Angeles, and a statewide reformer. His leadership has been recognized internationally and the effects of his policy successes are benefitted from still to this day. 

As Speaker, he worked across party lines to balance the state budget. Antonio held the line on taxes and still managed to secure record investment in education and public safety, all while delivering an historic $13 billion surplus. 

A man in a suit shaking hands with a young girl in a white polo shirt, surrounded by smiling children and adults at an outdoor event.

As Mayor of Los Angeles, Antonio re-established the city as a home for progress and innovation, while consistently keeping focus on the fundamentals such as public safety and education. Mayor Villaraigosa hired nearly 1,000 new police officers and expanded proven crime-prevention and gang-intervention strategies, resulting in a 48% drop in violent crime. As a leader in education reform, Antonio took over and turned around the city’s lowest-performing schools, expanded high-quality public charter schools, and helped boost graduation rates by 60%. Leading the way for the rest of the nation, the Mayor was an early champion for LGBTQ rights, culminating in his performing one of the nation’s first same-sex marriages.

With a fractured field and ample room for a unique coalition to be built, Antonio Villaraigosa is the only candidate who can demonstrate the bona fides of progressive reform and fiscal stewardship, all the while inspiring the next generation of California leaders. 

OUR APPROACH

Straight From the Heart of California has a thoughtful, data driven plan to elect Antonio Villaraigosa Governor of California. We foresee a field that continues to be fractured, and plan to build upon Antonio’s strong Los Angeles base by communicating statewide in a targeted fashion.  We are confident that Antonio’s unique story–one of personal perseverance, progressive reform, and a strong record on public safety–gives him the ability to capture more votes than any other Democrat.

Three men walking outdoors, two police officers in uniform and one man in a suit, engaged in conversation, with houses and parked cars in the background.

With a team of campaign professionals at the forefront of the rapidly evolving world of paid communication and voter engagement, we will rely on coupling tried and true techniques with new, digital-first approaches. California is unlike any other state, in that it is too big and too expensive to rely solely on thirty-second ads on network television. Additionally, the electorate is too diverse in its media consumption habits to rely on mediums that are becoming irrelevant. Accordingly, our plan focuses on pairing voters with parts of Antonio’s one-of-a-kind background that resonate with them. Targeted, high-impact creative that demonstrates the Antonio Villaraigosa story and vision will win this race.

A man in a suit and pink tie speaking at a podium, with construction workers in safety vests and helmets behind him during a press conference at a construction site.

Like any professional campaign, our messages and targets will be developed through intense research, refreshing our hypotheses and refining our thinking early and often. Just as paid media techniques are changing rapidly, so too are research methodologies. Our research team utilizes  proven quantitative and qualitative techniques to ground our foundation, and is prepared to rely on advanced approaches to ensure precision. We will use new technologies to test and refine our creative content, and invest in sentiment analysis and statistical modeling in order to find and create new and unique micro targets statewide. 

No Democrat will win this race with a one size fits all slogan or a basic media campaign that is a relic of the past. A Democrat will emerge who can honestly and effectively define a unique coalition and effectively persuade that electorate. In Antonio Villaraigosa, we have the candidate who embodies that background and vision, and we have a campaign plan to break through.