Today Eric Garcetti surprised many – including some of us – by declaring he was not going to run for President in 2020. First, we should underscore that Eric Garcetti has been running a presidential campaign the last two years; he just hasn’t called it that. He’s been touring in primary states incessantly, putting together focus groups, testing campaign jingles, doing press, generally not doing the job of a mayor and doing everything a presidential candidate does. In the end, he couldn’t even break 1% support among his own party. Pour one out for what may be the saddest presidential campaign of all time.
Second – and perhaps more importantly – he’s not running for president because organizers in LA have cultivated a robust opposition to him and the broader failed centrist policies he embodies. Organizers within and outside of the NOlympics LA Coalition have been foisting mountains of pressure on Garcetti for years, and we’ve certainly joined in challenging his failed policies and weak politics. The political tides are shifting across Los Angeles, and Garcetti may finally be catching up to this fact after having his head in the sand for his tenure as mayor. Ultimately, Garcetti didn’t end his campaign because of a moral awakening or as a sign of “getting back to basics” after straying from his duties. He’s not running because he knows we’d end his career.
We should celebrate his decision not to run for president as a direct result of grassroots organizing. But we don’t actually believe this will affect his politics or actions – nor stop him from angling for another position while his responsibilities are here. He’s already an absentee mayor who fundamentally cares more about his personal brand and ultra wealthy power brokers like Ed Buck, Elon Musk, and Thomas Bach than the well-being of Angelenos.
The point is that he’s failed Angelenos for the nearly two decades he’s served as a City Councilmember and Mayor, cynically appropriating progressive rhetoric to mask a city apparatus that facilitates obscene profit-making for the super-rich while waging a war on the poor. The most generous reading of his CV is that he’s a neoliberal manager of a supremely unjust status quo which, in and of itself, is totally unacceptable.
He’s failed on policing, failed on housing and homelessness, failed on protecting immigrants, failed on climate, and failed by deliberately putting working class people in harm’s way by courting the corruption-ridden gentrification machine of the Olympics. Garcetti might soon abscond for Feinstein’s seat or climb whatever ladders his masters drop down, but – rain or shine – we’ll still be here organizing for an equitable Los Angeles.