Watching father and son at the most recent Los Angeles mayoralty debate at the Japanese Cultural Center in Little Tokyo formed a fascinating scenario:
Throughout the entire televised hour, former Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti’s unerring second-row gaze seldom strayed from the on-stage perch of his son, City Councilman Eric, favored at the moment to succeed Mayor Villaraigosa, either in the March 5 primary or in the May 21 runoff.
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Gil Garcetti Photo by Najee Ali
Although Eric Garcetti’s answers sometimes feel pre-recorded and a little too mechanical, there never is a pause or a stutter in his technically perfect answers to all questions at all times.
On the night of Dec. 15 with his proud papa on a laser line from him in the audience, the electrifying glow that father and son set off created enough light to illuminate Los Angeles for a week.
Nothing mechanical. Nothing automatic here. Only genuine paternal love.
Gil Garcetti spoke with his nimble hands, flashing thumbs-up signs after Eric delivered a home run answer, which, in the family’s judgment, was after each question.
You Are on Candid Camera
Photography is Gil Garcetti’s Nos. 1 through 10 hobby, and his ever-present camera was even busier that night than his left and right thumbs.
There isn’t a heavier hitting family in hometown politics today than the Garcettis.
Seventy-one-year-old Gil Garcetti, tanned and trim, looks at least as fit as he did a dozen years ago when he left the D.A.’s office after two terms, starting in the ashes of the Rodney King debacle and the Watts Jr. riots.
Forty-one-year-old Eric Garcetti, a man of considerable electoral achievement, former president of the City Council, is leading City Controller Wendy Greuel by two whiskers in most polls. Both of them are bracing to hold off onrushing Kevin James, the lone Republican.
Question for Gil Garcetti: How much of you is there in your son’s campaign?
“This is his campaign. Very little of me.”
Does he consult you?
“On occasion.”
How are you helpful?
“However he may ask me. But he is his own man. He is much brighter. He has a much broader picture than I had. This came early, early on,” and therein lies a revealing story.
“After Eric finished at UCLA Lab School, both my wife and I are LAUSD products, and we had hoped that is where he would go. We concluded, though, that he wasn’t going to get the same education, unfortunately. He ended up applying to what is now Harvard Westlake in the San Fernando Valley – before the merger.
“They said he would have to come for an interview. What? He is 11 years old, and he is to come for an interview? Yeah.
“So on a Saturday morning, I drove him down there. He went in by himself. A half hour later he comes out.
I said, ‘How’d it go?’ ‘Okay,’ he says.
“Did they ask you anything you didn’t expect?”
“‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘They asked me what I would do if I was walking by myself down Ventura Boulevard, saw an envelope and picked it up. They said there was $500 in the envelope, and they said I had to spend it. How would I do it?
“‘I told them which Nintendo games I would buy for $50.’
“Then,” interjected his astonished father, “Eric articulated where the other $450 would go. He named every non-profit I could think of, and he gave the reasons why for each one.
“He blew me away,” proud papa said. “I said to him, ‘Where did you get that?’ I mean, we had talked about it, saying this is what you have to do. But he wasn’t involved in the discussions.
“That is who Eric is.”
Next year, the mature version of 11-year-old Eric Garcetti may become one of the youngest mayors in Los Angeles history.
