Bell Gardens Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia will face Long Beach Mayor Robert Garcia for Congress – Press Telegram
State Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia, D-Bell Gardens, will run for Congress, she announced Thursday, Dec. 23, setting up a battle with Long Beach Mayor Robert Garcia — for a newly created district that merged areas long represented by two Democratic powerhouses.
The newly created 42nd District essentially combines the current 47th — minus the Orange County portions — and 40th districts. That will create a Latino-majority district anchored by Long Beach but also including key cities Cristina Garcia currently represents in the Assembly, including Bell and Downey.
“It’s time for our communities –who have so often been ignored and neglected — to take our place at the table,” she said in a written statement.
Assemblywoman Garcia, who has represented the 58th District since 2012, announced her congressional candidacy three days after Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard announced she wouldn’t run for reelection. Roybal-Allard, the first Mexican American woman ever elected to Congress, made her announcement the same day the final redistricting maps absorbed her 40th District in the 47th, currently held by Long Beach Democrat Alan Lowenthal.
Assemblywoman Garcia, on Thursday, seemed to position herself as a natural successor to Roybal-Allard.
“I can’t move forward in this campaign without first recognizing the incredible career of Congresswoman Lucille Roybal-Allard,” she said. “A pioneer in Latino political empowerment, she had helped bring vital resources to (Southeast Los Angeles) and she is a consensus builder who has served with dignity.”
Assemblywoman Garcia, a native of Bell Gardens and a former mathematics teacher, has campaigned and legislated for gender equity, good government, and social and environmental justice, authoring and co-authoring multiple bills about those issues.
But she has also faced scrutiny while in Sacramento.
In 2018, for example, she faced multiple accusations of sexual harassment, which she repeatedly denied but which also resulted in two investigations.
Garcia, who volunteered to go on unpaid leave during the first investigation, easily won reelection that year — just weeks before the second investigation cleared her of a harassment charge.
Two years later, she won reelection again, with about 63% of the vote.
Assemblywoman Garcia’s announcement also included endorsements from 27 Southeast L.A. elected officials.
“The most important thing to know about Cristina Garcia,” Downey Mayor Blanca Pacheco said in a statement,” is that she always, always puts the interest of the communities she represents above all else.”
The congressional district for which she will run is an incredibly safe one for Democrats, perhaps even more so than the ones the new 42nd absorbed, since it doesn’t include the generally more conservative area of Little Saigon, in Orange County.
But the election could end up being competitive after all.
Assemblywoman Garcia’s main — and, to date, only other — competitor is Robert Garcia, the elected leader of the new 42nd District’s largest city and a rising star in the Democratic Party.
This week, for example, Gov. Gavin Newsom endorsed the Long Beach mayor.
Mayor Garcia announced his congressional bid late last week, a day after Lowenthal announced he would retire from Congress.
“My mom brought me to this country and risked everything so that I could become an American,” Mayor Garcia said in a Twitter video announcing his bid. “She came here never doubting that America was a place where her immigrant son could succeed. That’s why today, I am fighting for every kid to get the same shot that this country gave me.”
The Long Beach mayor did not return a request for comment on Thursday evening.