After lying vacant for 26 months, the position of the US ambassador to India is all set to be taken up by Eric Garcetti. The US Senate confirmed Garcetti’s appointment on Wednesday (March 15).
President Joe Biden first nominated Garcetti in July 2021 and renominated him in January this year. The 52-year-old Biden loyalist received 52 votes in his favour and 42 against.
His predecessor Ken Juster, nominated by then President Donald Trump, was the envoy to India from May 2017 to January 2021, when he resigned after Biden became the US President.
So, who is Eric Garcetti? He is a former Mayor of Los Angeles, a post he held for nine years, the last of which were rocked by scandals. Those nearly cost him the India job besides a Cabinet post.
Early life
Garcetti’s website says he was raised in the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles County, California. He completed his BA and MA from Columbia University, was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, and studied at the London School of Economics (LSE) as well.
He had a couple of teaching stints — one at Occidental College and the other at the University of South California (USC). Garcetti also served as an officer in the US Navy Reserve for 12 years.
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He is also an “avid jazz pianist and photographer,” says his website. He is married to Amy Elaine Wakeland, a fellow Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, with whom he has a daughter. His father, Gil, served two terms as the 40th district attorney of the Los Angeles county.
A mixed record
Garcetti served as the President of Los Angeles City Council from 2006 to 2012, and as a Councilmember of the 13th District before that. In 2013, he became Los Angeles’s youngest mayor in 100 years, and the first Jewish person to hold the post in the country’s second-largest city.
His mayoral tenure — which continued till 2022 — had its high points as well as low. One of his achievements was to have the city chosen as the 2028 Olympics venue. Among his other feats were improving the LA transit system and making it more earthquake-resilient.
Garcetti was also praised for adopting a $15 minimum wage and for his regular briefings during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, he faced flak for rising homelessness in the posh city and for trying to find a middle ground during the “defund the police” campaign in the wake of George Floyd’s death. At the same time, the City Council headed by him faced corruption charges.
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The Jacobs controversy
However, the worst of the controversies was involving allegations of sexual harassment against his aide, Rick Jacobs. Though Garcetti has repeatedly claimed that he had no idea about Jacobs’ alleged misconduct, he was accused of not acting against his friend.
The lawsuit against Jacobs was filed in 2020 by police officer and Garcetti’s bodyguard Matthew Garza, who alleged that Jacobs touched him inappropriately and made “crude sexual remarks”. While Jacobs resigned, Garcetti’s detractors alleged that being unaware of what was going on in his team did not speak highly of him. And if he knew about the allegations and did not act on them, that was even worse.
How the path to India cleared up
Anyhow, Garcetti remains a major political ally of Biden. He was expected to be a part of Biden’s Cabinet, but the Jacobs controversy cost him that position and nearly the India ambassador position too.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved his nomination in January 2022. But in March, US Senator Chuck Grassley, a Republican, placed a hold on it, citing the Jacobs controversy. Other While other Republicans opposed the nomination as well, even some Democrats reportedly had reservations about Garcetti. Naomi Seligman, a former communications director for Garcetti, told CNN, “He is unfit to … hold public office anywhere in this country or this world.”
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However, last week, the US Senate adopted a cloture motion on Garcetti’s nomination. A cloture motion, if adopted, limits further debate on a matter by allowing the majority to defeat efforts by the minority to delay or obstruct proceedings on a matter. That is how Garcetti’s path to India was cleared.
(With agency inputs)