(Want to get California Today by email? Here’s the sign-up.)

If you are a big-city mayor thinking of running for higher office, you’ve no doubt noticed the crash-and-burn campaign for governor waged by Antonio Villaraigosa, the former two-term mayor of Los Angeles. Mr. Villaraigosa came in third; Gavin Newsom, the Democrat lieutenant governor, came in first, followed by John Cox, a Republican.

Which brings us to Eric M. Garcetti, the Democratic mayor of Los Angeles, who is considering a run for president. Mr. Garcetti has some thoughts on why his predecessor at City Hall lost, which he shared with our Jess Bidgood, who caught up with him at the International Mayors Climate Summit in Boston last week.

Mr. Garcetti said much of the blame should be placed with charter school supporters — including Eli Broad and Michael Bloomberg — who set up an independent committee and spent millions of dollars on behalf of Mr. Villaraigosa. “His allies overplayed the importance of an old educational debate and spent $23 million on ‘are you pro-charter, pro-reform,’ versus pro-teacher, pro-union, which was a stupid and silly waste of money,” he said. “If, you know, I had that much money to spend, I would have been spending it differently.”

He also said that Mr. Villaraigosa sent a muddled, who-am-I message to voters, many of whom did not know him outside of Los Angeles.