Republicans who crossed celebration strains to help Garcetti included Sens. Susan Collins (Maine), Invoice Cassidy (La.), Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.), Invoice Hagerty (Tenn.), Roger Marshall (Kan.) and Todd C. Younger (Ind.). Democrats who opposed Garcetti included Sens. Sherrod Brown (Ohio), Mazie Hirono (Hawaii) and Mark Kelly (Ariz.).
“Let’s simply say I believe we are able to discover someone that may do the job higher,” Brown told the Associated Press Wednesday morning, with out elaborating on why.
Garcetti, a distinguished Democrat who served as co-chair of Biden’s presidential marketing campaign, was nominated for the position in July 2021. His affirmation was stalled for months over considerations that he allegedly didn’t correctly deal with accusations of sexual harassment made towards one in all his former staffers, reportedly triggering private reservations from even some Democrats.
In March 2022, Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) positioned a maintain on Garcetti’s nomination, and two months later launched a report detailing a number of accusations of sexual harassment made towards Garcetti’s former deputy chief of workers Rick Jacobs.
“Based mostly on a preponderance of the proof, we conclude that Mayor Garcetti doubtless knew or ought to have identified that Rick Jacobs was sexually harassing a number of people and making racist feedback in direction of others,” the report stated.
Garcetti has maintained he didn’t witness any inappropriate conduct, and the White Home has mentioned they continue to be assured in Biden’s choose. Jacobs known as a 2020 sexual harassment lawsuit towards him “a work of pure fiction” and has denied sexually harassing anybody.
Biden selected to resubmit Garcetti’s nomination to the brand new Senate in January, slightly than select one other nominee. Earlier this month, the Senate Overseas Relations Committee superior Garcetti’s nomination to the total chamber in a 13-8 vote, with two Republicans voting in help.
On Monday, Naomi Seligman, a former communications director for Garcetti, told CNN’s Jake Tapper that she felt Garcetti was “unfit to turn into an envoy or actually to carry public workplace anyplace on this nation or this world” and accused the previous mayor of enabling a “exhausting, disappointing and poisonous” work atmosphere.
“Sadly, the White Home has put undue stress on Democrats to vote for Eric Garcetti as a result of Eric Garcetti has been a really, very loyal particular person to President Biden, and that’s unlucky,” Seligman instructed Tapper. “These senators that purport to help #MeToo can’t simply do it when it’s politically expedient. They need to do it when it issues, even when it’s your individual political celebration.”
As mayor of Los Angeles from 2013 to 2022, Garcetti labored to boost the minimal wage, centered on increasing transit strains and steered town by the coronavirus pandemic. However he was additionally criticized as failing to handle the homelessness disaster.
America has been with out an envoy to India, the world’s largest democracy, since Biden took workplace. Within the interim, numerous international officers have assumed duties on the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi as chargé d’affaires.
In an look earlier than the Senate Overseas Relations Committee in December 2021, Garcetti famous he had studied Hindi and Indian cultural and spiritual historical past in school. On the time — within the early Nineteen Nineties — U.S.-India ties languished, and the concept of a strategic partnership between the 2 nations “would have been deemed laughable,” he mentioned.
That was now not the case, he added. If confirmed, Garcetti has mentioned, he would champion financial and protection partnerships between america and India.
“The bedrock of our partnership are the human ties that join our nations, embodied by the 4 million sturdy Indian American diaspora that strengthens our nation and the practically 200,000 Indian college students and tens of hundreds of Indian professionals who contribute to our financial system,” he instructed the committee then. “As well as, respect for human rights and robust democratic establishments are key parts of our strategic partnership and values enshrined in our constitutions, and if confirmed, I’ll interact carefully and recurrently with the Indian authorities on these points.”
Liz Goodwin, Paul Kane, Tyler Pager and Mariana Alfaro contributed to this report.
