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Mayor V's Biggest Regret? How He Handled His Divorce
Last night at a talk that was supposed to be about public education, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa decided to open up...a little bit.The mayor was asked what his greatest regret as mayor was, according to KPCC, and the answer wasn't too surprising: "The way I handled my breakup, obviously."
He added: “I think that’s what I regret the most. Everything else, you do the best you can."
He didn't go into a whole lot of detail about what he regretted. Was it that he cheated? Or that he cheated with a Telemundo reporter who covered City Hall and announced the break-up of their marriage? Or that he seemed to disappear from the city while the scandal raged? Or that it just got in the way of all those nice things he promised the voters of L.A.? Or all of the above?
Villaraigosa and his wife of 20 years filed for divorce in 2007 not long after he had an affair with Telemundo reporter Mirthala Salas.
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KPCC followed up with Villaraigosa after the fact and he said he thought it was possible to have a strong family life and political life:
"I think there are a lot of people who have done that a lot better than me. My staff would like me not to answer those questions, but I do it anyway because I think it's important to be real, and I do think that was the one thing that I looked at and I just didn’t do it right."
Villaraigosa was speaking at a series of conversations about public education at Loyola Marymount University.
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