At 4 p.m. on June 8, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa issued a terse statement announcing that he and his wife, Corina, were separating after 20 years of marriage.
Two hours later, Telemundo television anchor Mirthala Salinas delivered the story to her Spanish-language viewers on the Friday evening news.
"The rumors were true," she declared of the split after an introduction that described the story as a "political scandal" that had left "many people with their mouth open."
What Salinas, 35, did not say in the newscast was that she was the other woman. She and Villaraigosa, 54, had been in a relationship even though she had previously been the political reporter assigned to cover local politics and the mayor.
You can watch the press conference at the link.
The affair has been going on for quite a while:
On March 20, 2006, Salinas was in New York to cover Villaraigosa, who was visiting Mayor Michael Bloomberg to discuss education reform.
Three months later, she went to Sacramento to cover Villaraigosa as he stumped for legislation to give him some control over Los Angeles' public schools. Salinas covered a news conference and appears alongside the mayor in pictures taken by a Times photographer. One of the photographs was published in the newspaper and caught the attention of Villaraigosa's staff, who knew of their building relationship and privately worried that word of the affair might leak out.
Then in September 2006, Villaraigosa played a direct role in the medical care of Salinas' mother, Yolanda Avila Fernandez, who was being treated for cancer at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, according to sources familiar with her case. The mayor consulted with doctors on a regular basis and appeared in Fernandez's hospital room with her family on the eighth floor of the complex's north tower, serving as an emotional anchor and an unofficial spokesman for Salinas and her siblings.
Fernandez was eventually transferred to USC/Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center east of downtown, where a doctor described the mayor as "a model citizen."
Fernandez died Jan. 4. Two days later, Villaraigosa flew to Phoenix to attend weekend memorial services for her at the Greer-Wilson Funeral Home.
_____
I guess Al Gore--the elder--is going to put off any notion of running for president for the time being, assuming he ever bothers to do it.
_____
