201901.20
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Garcetti dives into LAUSD, UTLA strike talks, with presidential ambitions on the line

by in News

With tens of thousands of teachers striking all over the city he governs, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti stepped up to a City Hall podium last week with a message:

“This is the time to make an agreement,” Garcetti said, the first day of a teacher strike that over the next five days would ripple across the region and the nation.

Since the strike began, Garcetti, 47, has taken a very public stage with UTLA’s Alex Caputo-Pearl and district chief Austin Beutner.

While Caputo-Pearl implored striking teachers to keep marching for the cause of smaller class sizes and regulation of charter schools, and Beutner was lamenting the financial the hit to the district, Garcetti was seen lunching with teachers, actively engaged and visible in the drama.

With a war of words echoing between the teachers union and its school district, and with seemingly so much distance from a long-elusive deal, Garcetti  has been playing a kind of peacemaker —  asking both sides to tone down the rhetoric and get behind closed doors and find some common ground.

“There is not much that separates the two sides and there has been movement towards what the teachers have demanded and what the district can afford,” he said.

Turns out, it was a marker moment in the week’s unfolding drama: Big-city mayor voluntarily parachutes in to help broker a deal, his presidential ambitions on the line.

In fact, the strike started just as he was expected to announce a run for the presidency, and that has complicated things for a Democratic mayor whose longshot ambitions for 2020 already face the daily headwinds of urban headaches.

In that context, Garcetti has jumped in to strike negotiations, with much at stake. Some think he didn’t really have much of a choice.

“Politically, it was something I thought he would have to do if he’s considering the possibility of running for president,” said Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, senior fellow at the USC Price School of Public Policy and expert on politics in L.A. “It’s all about leadership.”

In fact, she said, the strike — while the mayor exerts no official authority over the Los Angeles Unified School District — might be his first real test of an ability to lead on a such a grand scale, and voters will be watching on whether he can “induce compromises,” she said.

It’s that “compromises” theme that the mayor seems to be doubling down on.

And sure enough, there he was over the weekend at City Hall, filtering in and out of a bargaining room marked “Private.” He declined to say anything about the negotiations and stressed that they were confidential. But later he addressed the strike while speaking to the crowds gathered for the Women’s March.

“They deserve justice and we will get it this weekend,” he said. “Let’s hear it for the teachers.”

But even if he manages to help broker a deal to end the strike, things won’t necessarily be a political panacea for Garcetti, observers said.

First off, even someone who can seal a compromise is not a shoo-in.

“If you ask a Democratic party primary voter what they want in a president, they’re not likely to say somebody’s who’s good at mediation and compromise,” said Jack Pitney, professor of politics at Claremont McKenna College.

And then there’s history.

LA’s City Hall has for years been a “dead end” for a succession of former mayors who had their eyes on higher office.

Former Mayor Tom Bradley unsuccessfully tried twice for governor. His predecessor, Sam Yorty, lost in bids for governor and president. Former Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa fell in his run for governor last year.

Pitney noted the fortunes — or lack of them — of former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who briefly made an unsuccessful bid for U.S. Senate in 2000 and was out early in the 2008 presidential race. John V. Lindsay, a Republican, switched parties in 1971 and sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 1972, but dropped out after a few primaries. He also flopped in a U.S. Senate bid.

“Mayors often have to take the fall for problems they only have limited power over,” Pitney said.

Thousands of picketing teachers in the street, and, in fact, in a separate L.A. crisis, thousands of homeless people living on the street, are among those problems.

Plus, resolving this strike, while it would be a big victory, still comes with winners and losers.

“It’s difficult to resolve these things in a way that satisfies everybody,” Pitney said, adding that the district’s supporters might criticize the mayor because a deal was too expensive, or not friendly enough to teachers.

Garcetti’s involvement in the teacher strike negotiations also brings up a tricky issue that’s unique to mayors. Imagine if he was on the campaign trail when the teacher strike broke out. As mayor, Garcetti has much to tout under his watch. The local economy is rolling along nicely, Google and Facebook are among companies expanding here. The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art has broken ground, and the Olympics are coming in 2028. And once dingy parts of the city are seeing a rebirth.

But his potential opponents for the Democratic nomination — including Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and former Vice President Joe Biden — don’t have the urban crisis work cycle he would have to deal with on the campaign control, Pitney said.

Case in point: The teachers strike.

But it could also be an earthquake, a flood, fires that tangle up a mayor in a way that affects a mayor in a unique way, Pitney said.

As mayor, Garcetti said he takes responsibility for a teachers strike happening in the city, and has been communicating with district officials, union leaders and public officials, including Gov. Gavin Newsom.

He said earlier this week that he’s not planning any announcement about his political future while the walkout continues.

“My first priority is making sure that kids are safe, that our schools are open,” he told KPPC radio.

In the meantime, strike talks continued Sunday, and Garcetti remained involved, his office often tweeting out updates that they were “productive” and what time they began and started.

“People are going to judge Garcetti by what he does in relation to the school board strike,” said Sherry Bebitch Jeffe. “This is pretty important.”

Garcetti’s working on it.

“I don’t think that we can be working any harder,” he said early last week.

Correspondent Bradley Bermont and the Associated Press contributed to this story.