Eric Garcetti, First Jewish Mayor Of Los Angeles, Wins Reelection In 81% Landslide
Eric Garcetti Image by Getty Images
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti clinched re-election on Tuesday in a landslide victory that handed him a second four-year term in charge of America’s second-largest city.
Garcetti won 81 percent of the vote, according to a tally of all ballots early on Wednesday.
The nearest of his 10 challengers Mitchell Schwartz, who was California state director of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign in 2007 and 2008, trailed with just 8 percent of the vote.
Garcetti, a 46-year-old Democrat whose mother is Jewish, was “deeply honored” to serve a second term, he said on Twitter early on Wednesday.
During his campaign, the mayor highlighted his support for a measure to raise the city’s minimum wage, and employment gains in the aftermath of a nationwide recession.
Schwartz, 55, made the city’s rising crime rate and soaring housing costs focal points of his campaign, also warning of a looming pension fund crisis.
Garcetti, is the son of former prosecutor Gil Garcetti, whose office tried O.J. Simpson for murder and lost.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
