LA Mayor Eric Garcetti, 'Just your average Mexican-American, Jewish-Italian' to be US envoy to India

WASHINGTON: A pro-immigrant American politician who once introduced himself to voters with the words "I'm just your average Mexican-American, Jewish-Italian" will be the new US Ambassador to India.


Eric

Garcetti

, a Democratic Party insider from California and Mayor of Los Angeles, was nominated on Thursday by President Biden to serve in New Delhi. He will take up the assignment as the 26th US ambassador to India after

senate

confirmation that is expected to be a formality, succeeding Kenneth Juster, who returned to Washington after serving for almost the length of the Trump term.

Garcetti, 50, is considered close to both President Biden and vice-president Kamala Harris. As Mayor of America's second largest city, which is also home to Hollywood, he urged Biden to run for president in 2016, and served as a co-chair of his 2020 presidential campaign. He was also one of four members of the vice-presidential search committee that picked Kamala Harris as Biden's running mate in 2020.

Garcetti's nomination is viewed as a recognition of his loyalty -- and also a ticket out of Los Angeles, which despite his reputation as a problem solver, is beset with crises in the face of the

White House

talking up his record.

"As Mayor, Garcetti oversees the busiest container port in the Western Hemisphere, the largest municipal utility in the country, and one of the busiest airports in the world. He led LA’s successful bid to return the summer Olympic Games to American soil for the first time in three decades. He currently chairs

LA

Metro, the country’s second-busiest transit agency, which is building or extending 15 new transit lines, and shifting to an all-electric fleet," the White House said in its nomination announcement.

But critics unloaded on his record on social media, with many tweets exulting his "slipping town" after a spotty eight years as mayor. Detractors also call him "Mayor Yoga Pants" for his interest in yoga.

While some commentators worried about his resume being thin on India, the White House announcement referred to his 12 years as an Intelligence Officer in the

U.S. Navy Reserve Component

, during which he served under the Commander,

U.S. Pacific Fleet

and the Defense Intelligence Agency, retiring in 2017 as a Lieutenant.

It also noted that he is the current Chair of C40 Cities – a network of 97 of the world’s biggest cities taking "bold climate action" and said he has led the organization’s engagement and expansion in India as well as C40’s global response to the COVID pandemic through the sharing of best practices and resources.

Garcetti has a master’s degree in international affairs from Columbia University and also studied international relations as a Rhodes scholar at Oxford University in Britain. He briefly taught diplomacy and international relations at Occidental College (where Obama once studied) and

University of Southern California

.

India-watchers welcomed his nomination, particularly given his closeness to the White House, lawmakers, and the Democratic establishment. "Inspired choice by @POTUS to name
@ericgarcetti for US Ambassdor to India. Excited to see Mayor Garcetti put his bits of hindi to good use and advance the US-India partnership," tweeted Nisha Desai-Biswal, the former Assistant Secretary fo

State

for South and Central Asia.

Garcetti is an unabashed supporter of immigrants, speaking during the 2016 Democratic convention (when he talked of his "average Mexican-American, Jewish-Italian" heritage) of how his forbears, faced with war and prosecution, crossed oceans and rivers to come to this "improbable, miraculous democracy."

"My grandfather, Salvador, as a baby was carried over the border in his mother's arms during the Mexican revolution. My other grandfather, Harry was the son of Russian Jews flew in -- fleeing prosecution. They and their wives, Juanita and Julia, a meatpacker and a public school teacher, made their lives here, and after Pearl Harbor one of my grandfather's answered his nation's call and manufactured uniforms for GI’s. The other put that uniform on, fought for the only country he knew, crossed an ocean never knowing if he would come home, and earned his citizenship as a result," he revealed.

"When we mock immigrants and the disabled, when we mock (Native American) Indians and women, we mock our own history. This in a nation where Navajo code-talkers, and women on assembly lines, and Japanese-American GI’s whose families were in internment camps won a war with a president who couldn't walk," he said in a stirring speech that first brought him into the national limelight.