Developer Rick Caruso told a sell-out crowd of enthusiastic Republicans Friday night that he would decide "soon" whether to run against Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa next spring. Caruso was honored by the Los Angeles County Lincoln Clubs as their 2008 Spirit of Lincoln award winner at a dinner held at the historic Casa Del Mar hotel in Santa Monica.

The Lincoln Clubs are a Republican major donor organization founded by members of Ronald Reagan's "Kitchen Cabinet" in the 1960's. Today it has 300 members in eleven chapters throughout Los Angeles County, and is the most influential Republican organization countywide.

Caruso got a lot of encouragement to run at the event. County Supervisor Mike Antonovich publicly asked him to, and Lincoln Clubs Chairman Robert A. Virtue noted in giving him the Spirit of Lincoln award that the organization was honoring him "as much for what you will do in the future as what you have done in the past".

Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner also lauded Caruso's accomplishments and encouraged him to take an active future role in public life. Others among the 250 attendees were Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley, Assemblyman and soon to be Senator Bob Huff, Board of Equalization Member Michelle Steel with her husband Shawn and daughter Cheyenne, many local elected officials and lots of business leaders and fans of the honoree.

Caruso sure sounded like a candidate. His keynote address included a vision for Los Angeles as a collection of neighborhoods with "each having its own sense of place". He recalled the famous Gertrude Stein quote "there's no there there", and said that's what many people say about Los Angeles today.

Caruso discussed his famous developments and how they combine live, work and shop into an experience that millions enjoy. Millions more people visit his development The Grove in west Los Angeles in a calendar year than do Disneyland, he noted with pride. Caruso described his philosophy of development as "learning to become the fabric of a community even if we have to create the fabric ourselves". 

He also took a shot at Villaraigosa's failed priority of reforming the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). To loud and sustained applause he called to "break up the behemoth called LAUSD" and "free our children from this educational gulag".

The district has continued to deteriorate despite (or because of) the Mayors "leadership" over the last three and a half years. Breaking the district up into more manageable regions provides advantages of local control and eliminates much of the bloated bureaucracy currently wasting millions of dollars that should be used to educate our children.

Caruso exuded confidence and optimism about the future of Los Angeles in the 21st century, and even invoked our hero Ronald Reagan into his "vision for a livable Los Angeles". He noted that Reagan emphasized five words while campaigning, and said those were good concepts upon which to build a livable city.

The five words are family, work, neighborhood, freedom and peace. Good words indeed on which to build a city or a country. 

Here's one we've all heard a lot this year - change. Time for one in Los Angeles. Four years of failed leadership from Antonio Villaraigosa is enough. Let's elect someone with a record of creating big dreams and then making them come true. That's change we can believe in.