Mayor Garcia Loves the Media, Except When We Have Tough Questions
12 minute readThe views expressed in this essay do not necessarily reflect the views of FORTHE Media.
Long Beach Mayor Robert Garcia has helped establish a system of secrecy within local government, in which self-centered career advancement and unfeeling political calculation are more important than truth, integrity, and decency. We can call it “the Garcia Strategy:” Ignore all political opposition and ignore all critical press; but cooperate with friendly coverage and be sure to always praise party elites. The evidence of these tactics is littered on our website in article after article, and every new challenge in Garcia’s career documents it further.
Garcia appeared in a string of interviews in the national press this year, in which he could hardly hold back his blushing as he was buttered up to have a (long) shot at Vice President-elect Kamala Harris’ vacant Senate seat. His chatty disposition when sucking up to national electeds and the national press is quite the contrast to his predictable silence when faced with a moral challenge.
Garcia is happy to appear in the Long Beach Post or Long Beach Business Journal to provide unchallenged statements about positive subjects that help shine his self-image. Those two outlets, after all, are both owned through a subsidiary of Pacific6, a real estate speculation firm whose co-founder and primary investor, John Molina, is also Garcia’s largest individual donor.
What kind of coverage does that get the mayor? A perfect example can be found in the last in-depth interview Garcia has given to the local press. Rather than have a real journalist conduct the interview, so he could theoretically be asked tough questions, the Long Beach Post sat the mayor down with their publisher, David Sommers, who is also Garcia’s long-time friend.
The interview was published at the height of city budget talks and at the end of a summer of protests over police violence against Black lives. Yet somehow the words “violence” and “Black” never came up. Instead, Sommers phrased the crucial question like this:
“[Sommers:] Much attention and reaction has focused on the changes proposed to the LBPD budget and how policing and public safety could or should work in Long Beach. What are the other things in the budget proposal that are noteworthy?”
Yes, he quite literally changed the subject before the mayor even had to.
While Garcia will sit down one-on-one for questions like that through channels he is comfortable with or controls, other outlets with a history of pushing back against the mayor’s narratives cannot even get him or his staff to respond to our emails, and often have trouble getting answers to public information requests. Nor does he ever respond directly to criticism of him in the press. In all his time as mayor, Garcia has never had even a single real, open discussion, appeared in a debate, or answered questions from the press or the community in a truly public forum. His entire political career has been defined, and advanced, by his hiding from challenges.
This must end. It is the job of elected officials to meet with the public in open dialogue, and respond to the press—full stop. Their job is to answer (reasonable) questions, provide information, and lead by example to create an environment of honesty, transparency, and trust. If democracy and justice are not the lifeblood of your entire soul, then what the hell are you doing in public office to begin with?
Garcia has instituted a culture of secrecy, lies, and noncooperation with any media deemed too critical. It is President Donald Trump’s scorched earth politics which disfigures the nation’s press as the nation’s enemy—but at least Trump, as one local reporter from another outlet reminded me, still holds open press conferences where anything can be asked.
The mayor’s strategy meanwhile is slowly spreading—whether through direct apprenticeship to Garcia-endorsed candidates like Second District Councilmember Cindy Allen, or State Senator Lena Gonzalez, or through copycats who see how well ignoring criticism has worked out for Garcia’s career prospects. When FORTHE collaborated with KLBP to conduct a voter guide for the local November elections, the incumbent candidates, along with Allen, did not respond to our questions. Allen also did not respond to FORTHE’s inquiries when we revealed she ran the Long Beach Post for four years as a DBA of her ad firm, and when questioned during a virtual debate about her suspicious sale of the agency, which resulted in her being sued, she simply shut off her camera.
As much as I would like to say that silence in the face of criticism, or when the public’s need for information is at its peak, would be an automatic disqualifier from gaining elected office, the truth is that the strategy of ignoring tough questions works quite well. Allen has exploited it to go from Orange County Republican to advertising agent for the Long Beach government to elected city councilmember; and Garcia has exploited it to go from Young Republican to booster local reporter to the First District council seat to the mayorship, and could now be weeks away from Sacramento or D.C. All he had to do to get there was befriend the police and never say a bad thing about them, accept donations from corporate real estate developers and sell the city to them, and offer praise whenever possible to Democratic Party members above him on the career ladder without ever questioning them.
It would be tragic if Garcia was able to escape Long Beach unscathed by the criticism so many of our community members, and much of our press, have been directing towards him for years. We at FORTHE have published numerous stories this year alone which I am quite sure made Garcia uncomfortable, but he not only refused to answer questions from us about his record or his statements, he also refused to even acknowledge our reporting. If he is now gifted a life boat off his own sinking ship, it would mean the media in this city—including us—failed to do our job. A mayor like Garcia should only ever last one term. He is only interested in what you can do for him, not what he can do for you—the exact opposite of what a public official is supposed to be. This city deserves so much more.
The Post recently published a story concerning the COVID-19 outbreak in the ranks of the LBPD, which is being blamed by two community groups, People of Long Beach and the Long Beach Reform Coalition, on an event in November in which police officers gathered closely for a group photo indoors without masks.
The Post apparently did not reach out to Garcia at all for the story, so it has been interesting to see the mayor remain silent as it gains the sort of national attention he otherwise craves. In fact, it is borderline amusing to see national outlets attempting to reach Garcia to discuss the LBPD virus outbreak, only to then report they were unable to get a hold of the mayor’s office—a result we at FORTHE, and other local outlets, could have predicted.
It seems the mayor loves national press, but only if they have something nice to talk about. That must be why he provides comments for fluff pieces like this one from the New York Times—in which he was quoted glowing about real estate development, “We’ve got the welcome mat out”—but won’t respond to tough questions about the serious problems facing this city.
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When a scandal breaks, the Garcia Strategy instructs you to place your hands over your ears and hope it goes away. If that doesn’t work, release a vague, nonsensical statement. Then repeat step one. That’s the exact strategy Garcia employed earlier this year when we reported on his deep financial relationship with the Long Beach police union. He first ignored the scandal, then released a vague, nonsensical statement about it, and then, when we caught him lying in that statement, he went back to placing his hands over his ears.
As another example, this ongoing COVID-19 outbreak within the LBPD could be a chance for Garcia to seize the national spotlight, puff out his chest, come out strong against a deadly virus, and play superhero to the ineptitude of LBPD Chief Robert Luna. But that would clearly violate the Garcia Strategy. So instead, true to form, Garcia’s lone public comment about the incident was completely vague and nonsensical: “I’m glad the police chief has addressed this with the department and put in place new rules and guidelines.”
“New rules and guidelines”? Now? For a pandemic that has had us in various shades of lockdown since March? What?
The mayor’s response, or lack thereof, is identical to his statement concerning the previous LBPD scandal which made national—actually, global—news. In 2018, the department was discovered to have been using a self-deleting texting app for investigations and communications, thus destroying untold amounts of potentially incriminating records. Community groups called for Luna to be fired (again), but Garcia simply brushed aside the weight of the revelation and released a vague, nonsensical statement, which included the line: “I applaud the Chief’s decision to immediately discontinue use of the messaging application…”
That’s like being caught with your hand in the cookie jar, refusing to answer questions about it, and then quietly releasing a careful statement in which you don’t acknowledge the attempted taking of the cookies, and instead say, “I strongly support our new policy of not having hands in the jar.”
By now we can see a theme: Garcia’s relationship with the police often gets him into trouble, so he prefers not to talk about it. But why is Garcia so careful, if not trepid, when the subject of the police comes up? If I had to guess, it’s because the Long Beach police union is Garcia’s single biggest donor, making the mayor the most police-backed politician in the city. And it has paid off for both sides. This summer, as protests against police violence brought needed conversation to the nation and many of its municipalities, and even as cuts were made across Long Beach departments due to the financial strain of the pandemic, only 1.6% was taken from the city’s police budget.
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“Your silence speaks volumes,” is how Dawn Modkins of Long Beach Black Lives Matter summarized the quiet betrayal the night the budget passed. After everything we said we felt and learned and reconciled, the LBPD remains the city’s top discretionary budget priority. Likewise, nothing is more important to the mayor financially or politically than his alliance with the police; and silence remains Garcia’s best defense against any criticism of himself or the department. So while the mayor is happy to take national interviews to discuss his career, and while he has the courage to hop on Twitter to criticize easy targets like Senator Mitch McConnell or President Trump, he has never once in all my years of observation shown the guts to stand up to the more difficult challenges staring him in the face.
And I mean that literally. When the mayor was faced with reelection in 2018, only one person in the city signed up to run against him, James “Henk” Conn. Conn appeared in the council chambers (timestamp, 5:16:35) on March 13 of that year to challenge Garcia face-to-face to a debate. I’ll always remember what happened next, because I was there, and saw it slowly unravel and drift over the cliff of history into nothingness right in front of me. It told me everything I needed to know about Garcia.
For the three allotted minutes of public testimony, the far-too-nice-for-his-own-good challenger delivered a heartfelt, painfully innocent, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington speech that all-but-begged the mayor to hold a public debate with him. Conn acknowledged his campaign had very little money, but stressed a debate would be really valuable for discourse and democracy in the city, citing issues like the need to protect DACA recipients. Conn even told Garcia it would personally mean a lot to him. Garcia’s response?
“Mr. Conn, thank you very much for being here. I appreciate that. Thank you … so we’re going to move on to the next item.”
What can we, as normal residents without the privilege and power of elected office, do or say in the face of such coldness? If the calculus of career-climbing takes priority over the humanity of conversation, and if appeals to our sympathy and the spirit of democracy are met with “next…”, how can we hold Garcia accountable and force him to take discourse, dissent, and democracy seriously?
Despite the incredible unlikelihood that Conn would even win, and despite him being the only opponent of Garcia in the race, the mayor simply gave his earnest challenger the silent treatment, because he knew he could get away with it.
That’s not courage. That’s not leadership. That’s not humane. It’s a calculated decision on the part of Garcia to avoid situations where something impromptu or candid might occur, so that instead he can always be in complete control of the message. In the logic of the Garcia Strategy, democracy has been replaced by interest groups, dissent has been replaced by focus groups, and public discourse has been replaced by private consultants.
As a result, along with his political adversaries, I have personally witnessed Garcia give the silent treatment to immigrant mothers weeping in Spanish about their stolen apartments on the council chamber floor; Black women expressing their traumatization from the actions of police and their retraumatization from the inaction of city leadership; critical story after critical story revealing the truth inside his city hall; and countless other community members insisting he do or say something—anything—to help.
Unfortunately, it seems the next phase of the Garcia Strategy is to only talk to people who can help him get the hell out of Long Beach.
andrew@forthe.org
