Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said Thursday evening that he had turned down an offer to join President-elect Joe Biden’s Cabinet, despite speculation that he would be rewarded for his early endorsement of the former vice president with a post.
“Joe Biden has told me for the last two years that he was very interested in me coming to Washington, D.C., and there were things on the table for me,” Garcetti said.
He added: “As the administration reached out to me about serving, I let them know early this week that my city needs me now, and then I want to be here and that I need to be here.”
Garcetti did not indicate precisely which position he had been offered.
Black Lives Matter activists have staged constant protests outside Garcetti’s home in recent weeks to demand that he not be allowed to serve in Biden’s Cabinet.
Garcetti is one of several supposed “moderates” that the movement has said it would oppose for Cabinet posts, including former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Biden’s pick for Secretary of Transportation.
The mayor also said that his nine-year-old daughter had tested positive for coronavirus. Los Angeles is in the midst of a surge that has resulted in new restrictions across the county. Garcetti’s stay-at-home orders, issued earlier this month, were so strict that they even barred residents from walking outside, except for a limited range of purposes.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). His newest e-book is Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.