Eric Garcetti’s parents are trying to get him a job.
There’s nothing wrong with that, but the situation here is unusual, because Eric Garcetti is the mayor of Los Angeles, and he has been nominated by President Joe Biden to serve as ambassador to India.
That’s the job Garcetti’s parents, former Los Angeles District Attorney Gil Garcetti, 80, and his wife Sukey, 82, are trying to get for him. The nomination has been stalled for months after some senators expressed concerns about Garcetti’s knowledge and handling of sexual harassment allegations against his former top advisor, Rick Jacobs.
Garcetti says he didn’t know anything about it. Multiple witnesses have come forward to dispute that.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, decided to conduct a new investigation and hear from those witnesses. His report concluded that Garcetti likely knew or should have known about his advisor’s alleged conduct.
Back on April 3, Axios reported that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s team was privately acknowledging to Senate Democrats that Garcetti did not have the 50 votes for confirmation. And now Politico has reported that a federal lobbying registration filing on April 5 revealed that Garcetti’s parents hired McGuireWoods Consulting, a high-powered law and lobbying firm with 24 offices in the U.S., Europe and Asia, to persuade the Senate to confirm their son as the next ambassador to India.
“McGuireWoods Federal PAC has donated more than $900,000 in the 2021-22 election cycle,” the Los Angeles Times reported.
It’s hard to imagine that reluctant senators will be persuaded by a lobbyist’s pressure on this particular nomination. India “is maybe the most pivotal country to the current crisis,” said Sen. Christopher Murphy, D-Connecticut, who serves on the Foreign Relations Committee. “If they make a choice to join the West instead of to stay linked to Russia, it has huge implications for both China and Russia.”
Murphy said he has not given up on the L.A. mayor’s nomination, but he thinks “the White House has to make a call” in the next “couple of weeks.” Garcetti was nominated in July.
Although the sexual harassment allegations have been cited as the reason for “concerns” about Garcetti’s confirmation, the senators are surely aware that the FBI has an open and ongoing investigation into public corruption at Los Angeles City Hall. One City Council member has already pleaded guilty and two more face upcoming trials. The Department of Justice has also obtained guilty pleas from individuals high up in the city-owned Department of Water and Power and the city attorney’s office.
If Eric Garcetti didn’t know about misconduct by his own top advisor, he’ll probably say he didn’t know anything about any of that, either.
But the senators could also have understandable concerns about the condition of Los Angeles itself under Garcetti’s leadership. The city budget has a deep structural deficit. A billion-dollar tax increase to build housing for the homeless has produced only a handful of projects with price tags as high as $800,000 per unit. Skid Row conditions have spread to every community in the city.
In Washington politics, doomed nominees often withdraw voluntarily, but there’s no sign of that happening in this case. Meanwhile in Los Angeles, the leading candidate in the race to replace Garcetti as mayor is developer Rick Caruso, known for building outdoor malls that simulate the experience of walking in a safe, well-run city.
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