President Joe Biden on Friday announced Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti as his pick for ambassador to India, confirming rumors that have been circulating for weeks. Garcetti, if confirmed by the U. S. Senate, would be moving from one tough job to another — he’d be dispatched to India during a time when it’s been swamped by a surge in coronavirus infections and deaths. He departs a city he served for two terms — plus bonus time. The term Garcetti is serving is nearly 5 1/2 years long, rather than the usual four years. That’s the result of the shifting of municipal elections from odd-numbered to even-numbered years, to align with the national election schedule to boost voter turnout. A San Fernando Valley native — son of Sukey and Gil Garcetti, the former L. A. County District Attorney — who ascended to the City Council, Garcetti became a national figure who even flirted with a presidential run. As mayor, he compiled a legacy filled with both successes and failures and he would be departing a city with significant challenges on the horizon. He has been credited with continuing a transit buildup in a city choked with traffic, establishing tougher earthquake safety standards and steering the city though the deadly pandemic as it became a hotspot for infections. But Garcetti found himself often overwhelmed by a deepening homelessness crisis that became a national embarrassment despite years of massive spending to tackle the problem. A lawsuit alleges that a former top staffer sexually harassed one of the mayor’s police bodyguards while Garcetti ignored it or laughed it off. The mayor denies the claims. One of his former deputy mayors was also indicted on corruption charges in an ongoing federal investigation at City Hall. The pandemic has left the city’s economy shaken. The city balanced its budget with help with a massive influx of federal and state relief dollars and restaurants and other businesses have mostly shed coronavirus restrictions and reopened. But fears over the employment picture, a potential wave of evictions and myriad other issues make a full recovery far from certain. And as is the case in many large cities, the crime rate in LA is spiking. The White House also announced Friday that Biden is nominating Democratic fundraiser Denise Bauer to serve as ambassador to Monaco, career foreign service officer Peter Haas to serve as ambassador to Bangladesh and former Obama-era national security aide Bernadette Meehan to serve as ambassador to Chile. Garcetti, who considered a 2020 White House bid and later became part of Biden’s inner circle, emerged as a widely discussed possibility to join Biden’s Cabinet last year. But he took himself out of the running, saying the raging coronavirus crisis made it impossible for him to step away.
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