Michael D. Antonovich

American politician

Michael Dennis Antonovich (born August 12, 1939) is an American politician who was Mayor of Los Angeles County and a member of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. He represented the Fifth District, which covers northern Los Angeles County, including the Antelope Valley, Santa Clarita, Pasadena, and parts of the San Fernando and San Gabriel valleys.

Antonovich was born in Los Angeles, California, and attended Thomas Alva Edison Junior High, where one of his classmates was Henry Waxman. Antonovich taught in the Los Angeles Unified School District and later at Pepperdine University. Antonovich ran unsuccessfully for the Republican nomination for Lieutenant Governor of California in 1978 against Mike Curb. After Curb defeated him in the primary, Antonovich declined to specifically endorse Curb in the general election, but instead endorsed the entire Republican ticket. Curb defeated incumbent Mervyn Dymally in the general election. He was Chairman of the Board of Supervisors (to which he was first elected in 1980) in 1983, 1987 and 1991 and as the so called "Mayor of Los Angeles County" in 1983, 1987, 1991, 2001 and 2006. He and Bruce Herschensohn were unsuccessful, and Ed Zschau went on to lose to the incumbent, Alan Cranston. From 2007 to 2013, Antonovich received $1,862,796.59 in campaign contributions, reported by Los Angeles Registrar Recorder/County Clerk records. Antonovich served nine four year terms on the Board of Supervisors and served until 2016, when a limit of three consecutive terms imposed by voters in 2002 forced him to leave office. That year, Antonovich ran for California State Senator for the 25th District, which includes the cities of Burbank, Glendale, Pasadena, La Canada Flintridge, South Pasadena, Monrovia, Bradbury, Duarte, Glendora, San Dimas, La Verne, Claremont, Upland, Sierra Madre, the unincorporated communities of Altadena, East Pasadena, and La Crescenta Montrose, and the Los Angeles neighborhoods of Atwater Village and Sunland Tujunga. He lost to Democrat Anthony Portantino, 57 percent to 43 percent. Michael D. Antonovich Trail near San Dimas, California, and Michael D. Antonovich Regional Park at Joughin Ranch in the Santa Susana Mountains are named after him.

Antonovich played an important role in shaping the route that California's proposed bullet train project would take. Engineers had determined in a 1999 report that the preferred route for a bullet train between Los Angeles and San Francisco would be the most direct through the Tejon Pass. However, Antonovich argued that the train should be diverted through the Mojave Desert communities of Lancaster and Palmdale in his district, which was estimated to increase the cost of the project by 16%. Critics described the change as political horse trading that raised the cost and complexity of the project and sacrificed travel time. In a 2022 report, the New York Times linked the maneuver to a connection between Antonovich and real estate developer Jerry Epstein. then later restored it.

Antonovich is of Croatian descent. On February 15, 1998, he married Christine Hu Huiling, a Mandarin speaking actress from Dalian, China, before 900 guests; Red Buttons and Pat Boone were lay lectors. Hu has two children with Antonovich: a son, Michael Jr., born in 1999, and a daughter, Mary Christine, born in 2000. In 2017, Antonovich learned through an Ancestry. com DNA test that he had fathered a son, Dwight Manley, who was born in 1965 and placed for adoption.