The race to succeed retiring Congressman Alan Lowenthal is heating up as a new entrant denies Mayor Robert Garcia his hoped-for sense of inevitability. The Long Beach mayor had been the only prominent candidate in the race, having entered immediately following the announcement of Lowenthal’s retirement last week.
But today his prospects have changed radically with the entry of Democratic five-term Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia of Bell Gardens, as reported by The Hill. Known as a champion of good government for her co-leadership of BASTA (Bell Association to Stop the Abuse), the reform organization which cleaned up the City of Bell after the Rizzo scandal by replacing the corrupt City Council.
Assemblywoman Garcia (whose campaign released this bio and this previous campaign video) is also known as a political survivor, after beating back a $1.3 million onslaught from Big Oil-aligned unions, and the charter schools lobby, during her 2018 re-election in retaliation for her environmental legislation (attempting to exploit unfounded allegations of misconduct, of which she had been cleared by an Assembly ethics investigation). Her environmental justice record includes authoring AB617, which created the West Long Beach/Carson/Wilmington air quality monitoring district and opposition to I-710 expansion.
The state legislator enters the race with a host of endorsements, according to her press release, from the northern half of the congressional district, which overlaps with the Assembly district she has represented since first being elected in 2012, including the following:
City of Downey Mayor Blanca Pacheco
City of Bell Councilmembers Ali Saleh, Fidencio Gallardo, Monica Arroyo, and and Mayor Alicia Romero
City of Bell Gardens Councilmembers Lisseth Flores, Marco Barcena, and Mayor Pro Tem Jorgel Chavez
City of Commerce Mayor Leonard Mendoza and Mayor Pro Tem, Oralia Rebollo
City of Cudahy Councilmember Daisy Lomeli and Vice Mayor Liz Alcantar
City of Maywood Mayor Herber Marquez, Mayor Pro tem Frank Garcia, and Councilmembers Eddie De La Riva, Ricardo Lara, and Jessica Torres.
City of Huntington Park Mayor Graciela Ortiz, Councilmembers Karina Macias, and Manuel “Manny” Avila
City of Vernon Mayor Melissa Ybarra and Councilmember Leticia Lopez
Downey Unified School Board member and clerk Martha Sodetani and School Boardmember Linda Salomon Saldaña
Montebello Unified School Board Member Elizabeth Cabrera
Cerritos College Board of Trustees Mariana Pacheco and Carmen Avalos
According to The Hill piece, “Cristina García will run to the left of the Long Beach mayor, a former Republican who’s been criticized for his support of GOP immigration policies in the ’90s.”
One can see how formidable her candidacy will be simply by examining the new congressional district lines.
Essentially the southern part of the newly drawn congressional district, depicted above, has been represented by Mayor Robert Garcia since 2014, and the northern part has been represented by Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia since 2012. Her current Assembly district can be seen here:
Other political factors include the fact that Cristina Garcia’s reputation as a good governance heroine who emerged out of the Bell scandal precedes her throughout the small, corruption-plagued cities of southeast Los Angeles County, beyond her own Assembly district lines (the City of Bell is just outside her current district).
On the other hand, the portion of Long Beach included in the new congressional district is largely composed of eastern Long Beach, where Robert Garcia has traditional performed poorly. For example, in Robert Garcia’s last campaign in 2020, in which he led an effort to pass the Measure A tax extension, his campaign lost nearly all the east side precincts of Long Beach.
The map below overlays the new congressional district lines in red over the City of Long Beach results for Measure A in March 2020:
Clearly, the mayor of Long Beach was done no favors by the independent California Citizens Redistricting Commission, which left much of his northern and western Long Beach bastions of political strength outside the new Long Beach-anchored congressional district but left in many areas where his unpopularity has been manifest.
As a result, the year 2022 is set to be an interesting one for southeast LA County congressional campaigning. Given the power of incumbency, whoever wins this new district is likely to represent the region in the halls of Congress for many years to come.
The assemblywoman’s congressional campaign web site is CristinaGarcia4Congress.com.
