Polls Show​ Governor's Race Slipping Away From Villaraigosa

LOS ANGELES, CA — With a flurry of last-minute spending former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is fighting reports of his political demise.

A series of new polls show Villaraigosa trailing fellow Democrat Gavin Newsom and Republican businessman John Cox heading into Tuesday's primary election in the race for governor. Only the top two vote-getters will make it on to the November ballot.

A UC Berkeley's Institute of Governmental Studies poll puts Newsom solidly out from with 33 oercent of the vote, Cox, with 20 percent, Villaraigosa's trailing with 13 percent. T

"We think it's likely to be Cox against Newsom in the general election," Mark DiCamillo, director of the poll told The Sacramento Bee.

Villaraigosa and his pro-charter school allies are working feverishly to make sure that does not happen. Wealthy charter-school backers launched a $2.3 million ad blitz this week attacking Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, the Democratic front-runner, as an absentee and entitled elected official, the Los Angeles Times reported.

While blitzing the Southland with campaign stops Thursday morning, Villaraigosa warned reported not to count him out. The bulk of his supporters, working-class Latinos and Angelenos, are underrepresented in voter surveys, he said.

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"What I understand very clearly from the last 25 years or so of elections is that the south votes later, they don't vote absentee, and they vote in great numbers on election day," Villaraigosa told reporters before visiting the Original Farmers Market in Los Angeles. "I'm not paying attention to those (polls) right now. We're focused on getting out the vote. If our vote comes out, we're going to do very well."

Villaraigosa's strongest base of support is among likely Latino voters, according to a recent USC/Los Angeles Times poll, but the margin over Newsom isn't that notable. Newsom and Villaraigosa appear to be neck-and-neck in Los Angeles County, although the poll's margin of sampling error for the region is plus or minus 8 percentage points.

Cox, who has contributed $4.9 million to his campaign and has been endorsed by President Donald Trump, appeared confident that he and Newsom would end up tangling in the general election.

"If you look in the dictionary for the words `Bay Area elitist,' you see Gavin Newsom's picture," Cox told more than 100 people Wednesday night, according to The Times.

City News Service and Patch Staffer Paige Austin contributed to this report.

Photos: California Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom on November 19, 2012 in Beverly Hills, California. (Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images)
California Democratic gubernatroial candidate and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa on June 6, 2017 in San Francisco, California. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
John Cox, on August 3, 2004 in Chicago, Illinois. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)