Tag: Mayor of Los Angeles

Eric Garcetti, the mayor of Los Angeles, has ended months of speculation by announcing that he will not run for the US presidency in 2020. “I have decided not to throw my hat into the ring to run for president in 2020,” the mayor told reporters on Tuesday outside Los Angeles city hall. “This was not an easy decision, given the extraordinary times that we live in.” But explaining his decision to remain in his current job, the 57-year-old added: “I realised that this is what I am meant to do and this is where I want to be.” The announcement came days after Garcetti helped negotiate an end to a teachers’ strike in Los Angeles public schools. It may represent good news for Senator Kamala Harris of California, who could have faced competition from Garcetti for the state’s donors and in the California primary, planned for March 2020. His $2.5m-plus in party fundraising included $100,000 each for the state parties in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina – which happen to be the first four nominating states in the Democratic primary. But Garcetti would have faced significant hurdles on the way to the White House. At rallies, Republican leaders have increasingly whipped up hostility towards California liberals in general and Hollywood in particular. They would have been likely to accuse Garcetti of presiding over a homelessness crisis in Los Angeles. Senators Harris, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts have all entered the race, along with Congressman John Delaney of Maryland, Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, and the tech entrepreneur Andrew Yang. Many more candidates are expected to join.

Gavin Newsom, the favorite of the California Democratic Party's core liberal base, coasted to a first-place finish in Tuesday's primary election for governor and faces a November showdown with John Cox, a multimillionaire Republican hitched to the far-right policies of President Trump. After a five-year hiatus from political office, Villaraigosa hoped to recapture the magic that led to his two terms as mayor of Los Angeles, but failed to stitch together support from enough Latinos, moderates and lower-income Californians to finish in the top two. Cox declared a second-place victory Tuesday night and wasted no time blasting Newsom and the Democratic Party for California leading the nation in poverty, and government regulations that he said have made homes unaffordable, leading to an explosion of homelessness. Newsom, you've had eight years, and your party has made a colossal mess of this once golden state,” Cox told supporters at an election night party held at the U.S. Grant Hotel in downtown San Diego. “California’s vision and America’s values are one and the same,” Newsom said. In the run-up to election day, Newsom's campaign made a brazen effort to tilt the primary to its advantage by attacking Cox in ads and on the campaign trail as Trump’s handpicked favorite and a rabid gun-rights supporter. The tactic was seen as a transparent attempt to elevate Cox among California conservatives so he would have enough Republican support to finish in the top two, squeezing out a more formidable Democrat. He first entered the race in February 2015, more than a year before any of the other major candidates, and has topped the field in fundraising with tens of millions of dollars. The candidates running for governor and their allies spent more than $75 million on efforts to persuade voters before Tuesday’s primary. As of Sunday, these groups had spent more than $34.4 million.

"Dream with me," Antonio Villaraigosa urged in his 2005 inaugural address as mayor of Los Angeles, sketching out a vision of a comprehensive public transportation system that could redefine his car-choked city. Chief among them, the measure would help advance — but not fully fund — a subway heading west from downtown along the heavily trafficked Wilshire corridor — branded by Villaraigosa as the "subway to the sea." The half-cent sales tax hike is expected to bring in about $35 billion over 30 years, primarily for rail and bus programs. As mayor, I remembered that," he says in one campaign ad, touting the rail lines built during his tenure. Villaraigosa said the "subway to the sea" campaign promise — first in his failed 2001 mayoral bid and then his successful run in 2005 — was meant to be a stand-in for the broader goal of a comprehensive transit network. "People could imagine a subway to the sea." And there was hope that enthusiasm over then-Sen. Barack Obama's candidacy for president would mean high turnout at the polls. Supervisor Michael Antonovich, a Republican who represented the northern part of the county from 1980 until 2016, said the projects outlined in Measure R — named for traffic "relief" — shortchanged most in the county "except for [Villaraigosa's] wealthy constituents in the West L.A. She first began working for the Los Angeles Times in 2011 in Washington, D.C., where she covered money and politics during the 2012 presidential campaign. She is originally from Los Angeles and is a graduate of Georgetown University and the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.