[guest post by JVW]

If you hearken back to that momentous time at the end of the first year of the Reign of Donald Trump when Republicans lumbered through Washington like Colossus stuck in molasses and laden with crosses like a bunch of asses, you may recall that fleeting moment when, fresh from his successful reelection campaign as mayor of Los Angeles, Eric Garcetti was briefly seen as a plausible choice for the Democrats’ 2020 Presidential nomination. No, really: I was there and I remember it. As Democrats continued to reel from the recent loss of the single worst Presidential candidate in our nation’s history to the second worst Presidential candidate in our nation’s history, they began casting a wide net, thinking outside the box, coloring outside of the lines, and all those other business school clichés, hoping to find somebody who could recreate some of that Bill Clinton/Barack Obama magic that had carried their party’s previous two successful nominees to victory. With an academic background similar to Bubba’s (Ivy League, Oxford), intersectionality cred that reasonably approximated that of The One (Latino, Jewish), and not yet 50 years old, just like the Dems’ two most recent messiahs at the time of their respective elections (46 and 47), for a veritable nano-second Eric Garcetti was seriously considered as The Future of the Party.

That has all since come crashing down in spectacular fashion. Now limping through his final months before being termed out of office, Eric Garcetti faces a very uncertain future. His electoral prospects in California seem for the time being to be dead: he won’t appear on the 2022 ballot in any capacity and he is probably locked out of any significant statewide office (governor) or federal office (Senator) due to incumbency and plenty of his fellow Democrats jockeying for those positions. And even within the friendly media environment of Los Angeles there are scant few commentators who would deem his nine years in office (his second term as mayor was artificially extended by a year when Los Angeles moved mayoral elections from the first odd year after a Presidential election to the midterm elections in even years) to be a particular success, lacking any significant accomplishment beyond landing the 2028 Summer Olympics (which, it should be noted, pretty much fell into our lap when no other cities emerged as plausible hosts). To add insult to injury, recent events have caused further embarrassment to young Eric’s political prospects, both of which stem from his ill-fated appointment by President Biden to serve as the United States Ambassador to India.

A few weeks back came the report that his parents, former Los Angeles District Attorney Gil Garcetti and his wife Sukey, were riding to the rescue of their 51-year-old son:

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti’s nomination as an ambassador to India has stalled because of fallout from allegations, which he has denied, that he ignored sexual misconduct by a top staffer — but it appears his parents are now trying to help.

The firm McGuireWoods Consulting registered with the federal government this week on behalf of Sukey and Gil Garcetti to lobby on the issue of “Outreach Related to Confirmation for Ambassadorship Nomination.”

[. . .]

Sukey and Gil Garcetti hired McGuireWoods to lobby on their behalf for the purpose of “outreach related to confirmation for ambassadorship nomination,” Politico reported Friday, May 20.

The lobbyists assigned to that account are Ryan Bernstein, the former chief of staff to Sen. John Hoeven, R-North Dakota, and Breelyn Pete, Garcetti’s former deputy mayor and advisor, according to Politico.

I mean, come on Eric: I know all of you Democrats aspire to be modern-day Kennedys, but perhaps having daddy and mommy grease the skids for your career might be taking things a wee bit far, no? And as if that weren’t enough, news emerged this week that our sweet little tyro badly bungled what was supposed to be a strong-armed power play:

According to recent reporting by Politico, “Democratic powerbrokers close to Eric Garcetti privately pressured Sen. Mark Kelly to support the Los Angeles mayor’s ambassadorial nomination, according to five people familiar with the outreach. As part of the push, they left the strong impression that the Arizona Democrat could find himself cut off from donor networks should he refuse to back the beleaguered nominee to be U.S. ambassador to India.”

The result?

The outreach has backfired as Kelly understandably became infuriated and reportedly told people close to him he felt like he was being “strong-armed.”

Kelly is among the many Democratic senators concerned that Garcetti knew about and ignored his close aide Rick Jacobs’ alleged sexual misconduct. Which makes sense, especially in light of a U.S. Senate investigative report finding that Garcetti “more likely than not” knew about what was going on.

The Boy Mayor of course denies that he had anything to do with the attempted isolation of Sen. Kelly, but if that is true than it only goes to show how completely inept the people surrounding Garcetti fils truly are. It sure sounds as if his nomination is likely now toast, with more than one Democrat Senator expressing hesitancy about moving forward under the circumstances. Sal Rodriguez of the Los Angeles News Group no doubt speaks for a number of us when he suggests that the nomination be pulled.

I hope Eric Garcetti has paid attention to George C. Scott in Patton.

– JVW