Pete Buttigieg Ran. Eric Garcetti Didn’t.
LOS ANGELES—Eric Garcetti would like to apologize for the cliché. We are in a juice bar in Brentwood, California, and the mayor of Los Angeles is singing along to the Coldplay song on the sound system. He loves this song, he tells me. He’s having tea. It’s all very Southern California.
A year ago, he was finalizing preparations for a presidential run, telling me that mayor was the perfect position from which to run for president, and that he didn’t think managing his city from Iowa would be an issue. He had a team in place and he was all set to declare. And then … he announced at the end of January 2019 that he wasn’t going to do it, citing his obligations to Los Angeles and the time he wanted to spend with his young daughter.
Last month, he was in Waterloo, Iowa, at a presidential forum he had helped organize, finishing his final candidate introduction of the night by pointing out that he, like the candidate, is
