As California has achieved a climate change leadership position, former Los Angeles mayor and gubernatorial candidate Antonio Villaraigoza is away from his own track record as an environmental champion in defending the state’s struggling oil industry.
While Villaraigosa’s work to expand plant trees and reduce carbon emissions made him a favorite of the environmental movement, the former state legislator has accepted over $1 million in campaign contributions and other financial support from oil companies and other donors over 30 years of public life, according to time and state funding disclosures.
Since taking part in the race last year to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom, Villaraigosa has accepted more than $176,000 from donors with ties to the oil industry, including a company that operates oil fields in San Joaquin Valley and Los Angeles County.
The clash between Villa Raigosa’s environmentalist qualifications and the bonds of the oil industry emerged in the governor’s race after Valero announced in late April that Bay Area refineries would close soon after Phillips 66 said the Wilmington refinery would close in 2025.
Villaraigosa now warns California drivers that they can see gas prices skyrocketing, blowing them up as a “absurd” policy he said could lead to the closure of refineries.
“I’m not fighting for the refinery,” Villaraigosa said in an interview. “I’m fighting for people paying gas in this state.”
The refinery is a painful place for newspapers and California Democrats, embracing environmental goals in concerns about rising costs of living and two increased costs of living, organized workers and environmentalists.
Villaraigoza said Democrats are making perfect an enemy of good in their approach to combating climate change.
He said he hoped that more refineries would not be closed until the state hit more electrification milestones, including more transmission lines, green energy storage systems and charging stations for electric vehicles. He said the only way the state can reach “net-zero” emissions is a “every existence” approach, including solar, wind, geothermal, hydroelectric, nuclear power, oil and gas.
“The concept that we don’t do that is poppicok,” Villaraigoza said.
Villaraigosa’s voice support for the oil industry has disrupted several environmental groups that viewed him as a longtime ally.
“I’m honestly shocked at how bad it is,” said RL Miller, president of the Climate Hawks vote and chairman of the California Democratic Environmental Cooperative, which Villaraigosa has accepted since joining the race in July.
Miller said Villaraigosa had signed a pledge not to accept campaign contributions from oil companies and fossil fuel entities “appointed executives” when he failed to become governor in 2018. She said he made a pledge shortly after accepting the largest allowable contributions from several oil donors in 2017.
Miller said the donations of more than $100,000 accepted by Villalaigoza during this governor’s cycle were a clear violation of the pledge.
These include contributions from California Resources Corporation, the state’s largest oil and gas producer, and its subsidiaries, as well as the founder of Rocky Mountain Resources, the leader of oil company Berry Corp. and Excalibur Well Services.
“This holds the oil industry,” she said.
Environmental activists consider this pledge to be binding for future campaigns. Villaraigosa said he had not signed the campaign.
Villaraigosa said the economy was dramatically different from 2018, with working-class Americans being hammered.
“We are losing working people, especially those who have no college education,” he said. “Why do we lose them? Cost of living, gas costs, utility costs, groceries costs.”
Thad Kousser, a professor of political science at UC San Diego, said such a statement coincided with Villaraigosa’s message in recent years.
“Villaraigosa is in the moderate lane of the governor’s race. He destined for him in 2018. Voters destined for him when they wanted to offset President Trump and Villaraigosa,” Kooser said. “But even some Democrats today might want to offset what Sacramento is seeing as taking, especially when it comes to cost of living and gas prices.”
He added that donations of fossil fuels may not be the basis for Villaraigosa’s clear embrace of oil and gas priorities.
“When politicians take the industry out of their campaign contributions and support it, it raises the possibility of corruption and creates money funds that affect the vote,” Kousser said. “But it’s also the politician’s own approach to issues that attracted contributions, and it could have been that the votes raised money, but never corrupted by it. That’s where Villaraigosa has held a rather consistent position on the issue and consistently garnering support from the industry for those positions.”
Other Democrats in the 2026 Governor’s race, including former U.S. Rep. Katie Porter, former state controller Betty Yi and overseer of public leadership Tony Thurmond, have signed a pledge not to accept contributions from the oil industry’s interests, Miller said.
They don’t have former California Senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins, former health and human resources director Xavier Beterra and businessman Stephen Crubeck. (Cloobeck has never run for office before and has not been asked to sign it.)
Other governor candidates have also accepted the contributions of fossil fuels, but with fewer numbers than Villaraigosa, state and federal submissions are shown.
While running for Attorney General, Becerra accepted contributions from former Western oil, Chevron and California Resources Corp. While running for the state legislature and the state Senate, Atkins received donations from Chevron, an Occidental and oil company trading group. And while running for lieutenant governor, Kunarakis was a contribution from executives of oil and mining companies.
Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, the campaign representative for the two main Republican candidates in the race, and conservative commentator Steve Hilton, said they welcomed the petroleum industry’s donations.
Villaraigosa is a fierce advocate of environmental records dating back to his first few years as an elected official in the California Congress.
As Mayor of Los Angeles from 2005 to 2013, Villaraigosa set new targets to reduce emissions at the Port of Los Angeles, terminated the use of coal-fired power plants, and shifted urban energy production to solar, wind and geothermal sources.
A female child who was dependent on the Metrobus branded herself as “Travel Mayor.” Villaraigosa was the vocal champion of the 2008 sales tax hike, which provided the first funding for an extension to Westside of Wilshire Boulevard Subway.
However, he said Democrats in 2025 must be realistic that the goal of closing refineries and reducing greenhouse gas emissions could disproportionately affect low-income residents who are already struggling to achieve their goals.
Villaraigosa’s comments highlight wider disparities among Democrats about how to combat climate change without making California even more expensive or chasing away more, more paid jobs that don’t require a college education.
Former state legislator Lorena Gonzalez, who became the leader of the California Labor Federation in 2022, said that while climate change is a real threat, refineries are closing.
“It’s a threat to the work and livelihoods of these workers, and a threat to the price of gas,” Gonzalez said.
California is currently not set up to end its dependence on fossil fuels, she said. If the state reduces its refinement capabilities, she must rely on exports from countries with less environmental and labor protection, she said.
“Anyone who runs for the governor has to admit that,” Gonzalez said.
Villaraigosa said his main concern was about gasoline and household costs while the loss of union employment at Valero’s Bay Area refineries worried him.
His comments come as California prepares to remove it again against the Trump administration over its environmental policies.
The U.S. Senate voted Thursday to revoke the federal exemption that would allow California to set its own vehicle emissions standards, including rules that ultimately banned the sale of new gas-fueled vehicles in 2035.
President Trump has also declared a national energy emergency, called for increased fossil fuel production, eliminated environmental reviews, and rapidly tracking projects in potentially sensitive ecosystems and habitats. The Trump administration is also targeting California environmental standards.
A native of the East Side, Villaraigoza began his career as a worker organizer and rose to chair the state legislature before becoming mayor of Los Angeles. Villaraigosa, now 72, has not been elected tenure for more than a decade. He finished a distant third at Governor Primary in 2018.
For many years, the donor, a fossil fuel industry, has donated more than $1 million to Villa Raigoza’s political campaign and his nonprofit causes, including after-school programs, city sports and entertainment committees, by providing programming in urban parks on summer nights, by reducing violence, according to city and state disclosures.
More than half of Villaraigosa’s contributions and support for the pet cause, which exceeds $582,000, came during his years at Los Angeles City Hall as councillor and mayor.
In 2008, billionaire oil and gas tycoon T. Boone Pickens donated $150,000 to a city proposal backed by Villaraigosa, which collected new taxes on phone and internet use.
Pickens made a donation as his company was fighting for business in the Port of Los Angeles. This was overseen by the mayor’s appointee and was seeking to reduce emissions by replacing diesel-powered trucks with vehicles fueled to liquid natural gas.
The remaining contributions and other financial support flowed to Villaraigosa’s campaign account and associated committees while serving in Congress and on two Governor’s runs. These figures do not include contributions to an independent spending committee, as candidates cannot legally be involved in these efforts.
Villaraigosa said such voters don’t subscribe to the “drill, babe, drill” spirit of Republicans, but they denounced such issues and the Democrat’s focus on Trump, not on kitchen table issues.
“Everything we do is on the backs of people who work hardest and modestly, so even when Trump was saying it was a threat to democracy, a lot of them, yeah, but what about my gas prices, grocery prices, and egg costs?” he said.
Sacramento staff writer Sandrac Donald contributed to this report.
