Biden selects Garcetti as India ambassador
Biden has nominated LA Mayor Eric Garcetti as the ambassador to India, fitting in with his multiple studies and accomplishments.
Eric Garcetti, who has served as Los Angeles mayor since 2013, was nominated Friday, by President Joseph Biden, as the next US ambassador to India.
If confirmed by the US Senate, Garcetti would be the first Los Angeles mayor in more than a century to voluntarily leave the office before the end of his term.
The White House emphasized Garcetti’s career has been filled with sweeping responsibilities including the Los Angeles global role, highlighting the mayor’s oversight of the busiest container ship port in the Western Hemisphere and one of the planet’s busiest seaports. He has also networked with counterparts around the globe, including in India, to push for stronger policies to battle climate change.
Garcetti, in a statement announcing his nomination, expressed his profound love for Los Angeles and declared he “will always be an Angeleno.”
“I have committed my life to service — as an activist, as a teacher, as a naval officer, as a public servant and, if confirmed, next as an ambassador,” he said. “Part of that commitment means that when your nation calls, you answer that call.”
Garcetti’s nomination signaled that the White House is standing by him amid high-profile controversies that have engulfed the mayor’s office over the last year.
He is poised to leave office as the city continues its recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, which pushed many Angelenos out of work and wiped out numerous small businesses.
An ambassadorship in Biden’s administration give Garcetti a new career path, away from electoral politics. But it also opens him to criticism that he is abandoning Los Angeles as it grapples with an intractable homelessness crisis and rising gun violence.
Garcetti, the son of former district attorney Gil Garcetti, has a long history with Biden. The mayor urged Biden to run for president in 2016 and served as a co-chair of his 2020 presidential campaign. The ambassadorship nomination is viewed in part as a recognition of the mayor’s loyalty.
He has traveled several times to India, most recently as a councilman.
In college, he spent years studying Hindi and Urdu — two of the dozens of languages spoken in the country — and during at least one visit, stayed at the ambassador’s residence.
Garcetti has a master’s degree in international affairs from Columbia University and studied international relations at Occidental College and USC.
“We can’t get our climate goals without India hitting its climate goals,” he said.
A Democrat, Garcetti has championed liberal causes, such as increases in LA’s minimum wage and local ballot measures that raised billions of dollars to raise housing for the homeless and also transit lines.