The biggest beneficiary of Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti’s decision not to run for president may be Sen. Kamala Harris, who is the only high-profile presidential candidate from California, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.
“Since California’s primary will be held on March 3, 2020 — far earlier in than in many past election cycles — it could have an outsized impact on whom the party’s nominee will be.”
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti will announce that he will not run for president in 2020, Politico reports.
“Garcetti had been considering a presidential campaign for months and traveled the country raising money for Democrats.”
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti (D) “is nearing a final decision about a possible 2020 presidential campaign, signaling Thursday that he has thought deeply about how the Democratic Party should approach President Trump in the coming years,” CBS News reports.
Said Garcetti: “Before, you know, I was thinking about it, but not as hard as I am now.”
He added that the 2020 election “is going to be about three things: It’s going to be about national unity, it’s going to be about winning the future, and it’s going to be about getting shit done.”
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Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti (D), who is mulling a presidential bid in 2020, played up his ties to former President Barack Obama in a GQ profile:
He’s turned down other opportunities to leave Los Angeles. Eight years ago, President Obama invited him to the Oval Office and offered him a job. Garcetti had supported Obama’s Senate run and was an early backer of his presidential campaign. (When he read The Audacity of Hope, he said, “I felt like it was my own brain talking.”) Now Obama was the leader of the free world and was looking to make Garcetti, then president of the L.A. City Council, a very powerful man in his own right. “He was trying to convince me to come work for him, to be his urban czar,” Garcetti told me as we merged onto the 110 freeway. “He said I could oversee HUD and HHS and Education and transportation. It would have been an amazing opportunity.”
The problem was, Garcetti had another plan—he wanted to be mayor of Los Angeles. That’s when Obama offered up what Garcetti said was perhaps the best advice of his life.
“If that’s where your heart is,” he recalled the president saying, “do it.”
“Eric Garcetti is employing a unique and potentially potent home state advantage as he prepares for an expected presidential campaign — delivering Hollywood’s expansive donor network to Democratic Party officials from early primary states,” Politico reports.
“The Los Angeles mayor hosted the South Carolina Democratic Party on Tuesday for a fundraiser in the city’s Hancock Park, raising about as much in a few hours as the state party collected in the entire month of March.”
“Presidential candidates have long sought ways to ingratiate themselves with early presidential primary state officials, but Garcetti is taking an unorthodox route. He’s drawing small-state parties across state lines and offering them an opportunity to tap into one of the nation’s most lucrative donor bases, while providing himself a rare platform to connect with operatives in the key early-voting states that make or break presidential campaigns.”
“Mayor Eric Garcetti, fresh off a trip to Iowa to test the waters for a presidential run, delivered a State of the City address Monday that billed Los Angeles as a thriving, progressive metropolis that has hiked the minimum wage, snagged the Olympics, invested in its subway system and is tackling big issues such as climate change and gun violence,” the Los Angeles Times reports.
Said Garcetti: “‘I want to say to anyone who wants to understand who Americans are: Don’t look to D.C. — come to L.A.”
“Eric Garcetti (D) insists he’s plenty busy just being mayor of Los Angeles right now,” the Charleston Post and Courier reports.
“But as he traversed early presidential primary state South Carolina this week, the 47-year-old California native was already testing a national-oriented stump speech.”
George Will profiles Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti (D) as a possible presidential candidate, who he says “is a generation younger than some progressives’ pinups (Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden). And living far from Washington, he is positioned to deplore the Beltway, within which his party has been concentrating power for a century.”
“California’s presidential primary, which usually has been a June irrelevancy, will occur in March 2020. This might benefit Kamala Harris, the state’s freshman U.S. senator, too. Anyway, Garcetti deserves a hearing. America could do worse, it usually does and in 33 months it probably will.”
Politico: “Two rising stars in California are about to collide: Sen. Kamala Harris of San Francisco and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti. As potential Democratic presidential candidates in 2020, the pair might soon be asking the activists and donors who have known them their entire political careers to finally choose sides. It’s a thorny dilemma for California Democrats, but one that could be commonplace over the next two years. At least eight states have multiple Democrats considering national bids, an unprecedented development that threatens to fracture the party in some of the bluest states in the nation.”
“It’s no secret Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti is interested in running for president,” the Los Angeles Times reports.
“When reporters ask about his intentions, he has used all sorts of ways to deflect, typically by saying he’s focused on his day job — for the moment. But speaking in Spanish to a Univision reporter this week, Garcetti edged ever closer to the telltale admission he’s actually considering it.”
Said Garcetti: “I am thinking about this. The majority of time goes to my work as mayor of Los Angeles, but every [citizen] should think about what our role is in these difficult times, in these dangerous times.”
New York Times: “And in the course of an hourlong interview in his office, Mr. Garcetti, 46, a Democrat, made clear that, as unlikely as it might sound, he is considering a run for president, after announcing he would not run for governor… Mr. Garcetti’s attempt to test these waters — and the fact that he is being watched with some seriousness despite never running a national or even statewide campaign before — may say less about this city’s mayor and more about the national political landscape.”
“The success of Mr. Trump, a business executive who had never run for office before, appears to have lowered the bar on the qualifications needed to run for the White House. And the Democratic Party is grappling with a sparse bench of candidates — many of its brightest prospects are in their 70s, like Joe Biden, the former vice president, or are relatively young and little known, like Mr. Garcetti.”
Mike Allen: “Here’s something unusual and refreshing: There are two highly ambitious Democrats who don’t even bother hiding their strong desire to run in 2020 — and to reshape the party: Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu, president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors.”
“When I asked top Dem donors and operatives about candidates like these, the consistent answer was that for the first time in our lifetimes, D.C. experience may be a vulnerability rather than an asset when running for president.”
Said one Democratic operative: “Mayors are fantastic. They actually do things, and that really energizes them. They don’t talk like D.C. types or cautious governors who have to wrangle with state legislatures. They tend to love their jobs and people really like them. It’s the one level of government in which Dems have a huge advantage and a deep well of talent.”
“I think all the rules are off. No African American could be president until one was. No reality star could be president until one is.”
— Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti (D), quoted by the Los Angeles Times, on a mayor being elected president.
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti (D) “logged 112 days, or nearly one-third of his time, away from California over the last 12 months, according to his public calendar,” the Los Angeles Times reports.
“Reelected in March with 81% of the vote, Garcetti has refused to commit to serving his entire second term. As he visits New Hampshire and Wisconsin, the mayor remains coy about whether he’ll run for president in 2020.”
“But as he flirts with the idea, Garcetti tests the public’s willingness to tolerate his absences.”
“Eric Garcetti started the week toying with a 2020 presidential run on a trip to New Hampshire, but the Los Angeles mayor is still keeping his options open for a 2018 run closer to home,” Politico reports.
“That includes next year’s open governor’s race, and possibly a Senate race, should Sen. Dianne Feinstein decide not to seek a fifth term.”
Politico: “Just like that, the 2020 retail campaigning for president began right here in a strip-mall campaign headquarters Monday, when Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti showed up for what he called ‘the most important race in the country.’”
“He was talking about the Manchester mayor’s election. Joyce Craig, the Democratic candidate, invited him to join her for an afternoon that also included a speech to the Manchester Young Democrats and a fundraiser. Garcetti worked the crowds, introduced himself as ‘Eric,’ and took a bumper sticker and put it on the back of the black SUV he was driving around in.”
Politico: “The Los Angeles mayor and his staff like to say his trip to the state Hillary Clinton famously forgot to pay attention to last year — he’ll keynote the state Democratic convention June 2 — is because the state party finance director is a friend who used to fundraise for him, or that he was just such a hit when he spoke to the Wisconsin delegation during the Democratic convention last year that they invited him for more.”
“Or, crazy as it may seem right now, it’s exactly what you think.”
“Just weeks after Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti (D) was reelected to a second term, rumors continue to circulate about whether he may already be eying his next political milestone,” CBS Los Angeles reports.
“A spokesman for Garcetti said Monday the mayor had no comment on a New York Times article identifying him as one of several high-profile Democrats who could be poised for a run for the White House in 2020.”
CNN: There are at least 22 Democrats considering a run for president in 2020.
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.
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