Op-Ed: Is Eric Garcetti too nice to lead Los Angeles?

As the next mayoral election approaches, Eric Garcetti, like many Los Angeles mayors before him, has reason to ponder just how many of his fellow Angelenos can come up with a list of his accomplishments. Or just one accomplishment. Or even know he’s mayor.

A distinguishing feature of Los Angeles life – as distinct from New York or Chicago life, say – is that its residents seldom give a thought to their mayor. While the chief executives of other cities are familiar faces on local newscasts and tabloid covers, mayors of Los Angeles routinely end up on the cutting room floor.

The problem is partly structural: Los Angeles is just one of 88 cities in the county; an autonomous elected Board of Supervisors controls health and welfare issues, while an autonomous elected school board controls L.A.’s schools. Nor can the mayor invoke party discipline to sway the City Council, since municipal government in California is nonpartisan.

There are exceptions to the rule of civic obscurity, of course. The very fact of Tom Bradley’s election – a black mayor in an overwhelmingly white major city – catapulted him into the spotlight. Like Bradley, the media-savvy and charismatic Antonio Villaraigosa also benefited from personifying the breakthrough of a historically subordinated minority. But in the normal course of events, L.A. mayors tend to fade into the woodwork.

Garcetti should have a shot at resisting that trend. Attractive, a Rhodes scholar, brimming with ideas on progressive city governance, and an Italian-Mexican-Jewish-yuppie to boot, Garcetti is a natural poster boy for trailblazing urban innovation.

He certainly has some achievements he can point to – raising the minimum wage to $15 (though he was late to the movement, originally proposing $13.25), and persuading the Army Corps of Engineers to allocate serious funds to the L.A. River restoration. He’s not done anything, however, that has really made Angelenos sit up and take notice, much less blaze innovative trails. His deliberately modest initial focus in office was to get city government “back to basics,” as he put it: Doing a better job on filling potholes, fixing street lights, improving response times. It’s a necessary agenda and he’s delivered on some of it. It’s also an agenda more befitting a city manager than a political leader who seeks to mobilize, or even just join, constituents in battle for some social good.

The rap on Garcetti is that he’s conflict-averse. He appointed his major rivals in his first run for mayor to civic positions; he also reached a modus vivendi with the union of Department of Water and Power employees, which spent $2 million in its unsuccessful effort to defeat him in that campaign. More important, Garcetti has not taken on any significant power players or constituencies. Inside City Hall, he’s left the work of assembling council majorities on major legislation to council President Herb Wesson. “He’s not the strongest arm-twister out there,” one City Hall veteran told me.

If that sounds like a virtue, consider that political leaders only achieve notice when they engage in serious, high-stakes battles.

During his four years as mayor, Jim Hahn had one such battle thrust upon him, when he led a successful campaign to defeat San Fernando Valley secession, and waged one of his own choosing, ousting Bernie Parks as police chief to create – largely successfully – a more accountable police force. Those battles came at considerable cost: Hahn was not reelected. But by his willingness to make enemies in the cause of civic cohesion, he won what will surely be the admiration of L.A. – and police – historians.

In today’s L.A., the levels of economic inequality and housing unaffordability cry out for a war. To deal with the latter, Garcetti has proposed a linkage scheme, requiring developers of market-rate housing to build or fund affordable housing as well. The question is whether Garcetti will risk creating a few foes by aggressively pushing for its enactment.

Garcetti has demonstrated that he can manage. If he wants anyone to remember him, he needs to demonstrate he can lead.

Harold Meyerson is executive editor of The American Prospect and a contributing writer to Opinion.

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