Eric Garcetti
I lived in Burma for a couple of summers in the '90s, working with the democratic resistance that had fled to the jungles.
I have an incredible compass. You can put me back in a country I haven't been in 20 years and say, 'Get me from point A to point B,' and I'll take you there.
L.A. is a great city to get lost in. The best thing to do is to drive in any direction, find a strip mall, and go from one store to the next. I guarantee you will see a collision of cultures you never imagined.
I'm pretty skinny, and I can sleep at the drop of a hat. So, take that middle seat in economy and save the money for other things you can do.
My wife and I are foster parents.
Cities are those laboratories of democracy that states used to be.
Tax cuts that actually go to working-class, middle-class people, I'm not opposed to.
If you can speak Spanish, then you can have a stronger connection with the residents of Los Angeles.
Los Angeles has all the ingredients of success... but we need to start with our education system.
The struggle of African Americans is everybody's struggle.
There's no question we need more housing, and we have to fight for that throughout California.
I'd hate to see new housing building accelerating while taking down buildings where there's 50 people living in rent-stabilized apartments.
I always thought Grover Cleveland was from Cleveland.
Mayors in any city are pretty non-partisan people where it's problem solvers.
The problem with the Democratic Party is, we're like, 'If we just get another presidential candidate in there, everything will be OK.' We should be focusing on school boards, city council races, state legislatures.
I always say, as a leader, you've got to know when to get out of the way.
I look forward to working with the White House in areas like infrastructure, where President Trump says he wants to spend a trillion dollars. Great - we'd love to start right here in Los Angeles.
Withdrawing federal funds to prevent radiological or biological terrorist attack - that doesn't just hurt Los Angeles: that hurts America.
I won't let anybody, even the most powerful person in this country, trample our values or our Constitution. And no matter who's in the White House, I am incredibly vigilant about that and will continue to fight that fight.
It is the responsibility, I think, of anybody in elected office to look for opportunities to help serve their people.
We're looking to rebrand L.A. Not in some sort of radical way, but we've forgotten to sell this city, internationally and nationally... it's important for us to say who we are.
I have to spend my time worrying about poor families at the expense of helping businesses, or vice versa. To me, I really see that's the bridge I need to build.
I want to be high-profile with the average Angeleno. I want to be out there holding office hours on a curb in Boyle Heights.
We need to make sure teachers are in schools and that children have teachers.
I'll never stop listening to police officers over politicians.
The questions that consume me, that keep me up at night, are the people that are sleeping on the streets.
Think about Kennedy. Think about Carter. Think about Clinton. Think about Obama. They've all been in their forties and from outside Washington, or underdogs in one way or another. I just think that Americans are looking everywhere, saying, 'Hey, show me some authenticity. Show me somebody who's practical. Show me people who run things.'
My grandfather was an undocumented immigrant. My great-grandmother, my bisabuela, carried him over the border in her arms.
On things like the minimum wage, where cities as well as states are increasingly looking at income disparity, mayors will have, I think, a very strong voice.
I have a piano in my office, and sometimes during meetings, I'll sit down and goof on the keyboard a little bit.
The reason I like Steve Aoki is because I can trace my love of electronic music all the way back to when I was listening to not just new wave but to YMO [Yellow Magic Orchestra] which, to me, was the ultimate Japanese band and launched synth electronic music.
There are two rules in politics. They say never ever be pictured with a drink in your hand, and never swear.
Campaigns are these moments of suspended animation where people usually learn how to be friends afterward.
What I think the average person wants is not a fight; they want to see something move forward in their own neighborhood.
I won't be a perfect mayor, but I will be the mayor of a great city.
Los Angeles is the strongest defender of immigrants perhaps of any city in this country.
I think poverty is the biggest challenge for Los Angeles and for many of our cities that have come back from the recession.
Latinos are not monochromatic. You know, they trace their ancestry back to South America, to Central America, to Mexico, like in my family, and the Caribbean. And it's - we're a very diverse group. And we care about a lot more than just immigration, though we're passionate about having sensible immigration policies that don't go after our families.
I think it's really important to talk education, to talk infrastructure, to talk good jobs and the future of work.
When President Trump got out of the Paris climate accords, we got 412 cities to say we will do it instead, because we're on the front line with our firefighters dealing with historic fires and floods.
I don't think you can lead a nation if you don't have a definition of the nation. We have to define, as Democrats, what a nation is and embrace the entire nation.
People elect me to make sure the chief of police is the right chief of police. They elect me to make sure I have the right person running the airport.
I kind of believe that, whenever possible, you should finish the job that you set out to do.
You see as mayors and local officials our jobs are designed so we have more in common with our constituents than Washington politicians can ever have.
I'm not one of those politicians, to my probably discredit, who thinks very far ahead. It has to feel right to me and not be about a careful plot and plan.
I recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. And I have always recognized Jerusalem as the capital of the independent, fully sovereign Palestinian state that we all want to emerge from negotiations toward a true two-state solution.
The idea of red-washing or blue-washing an entire county because a few more people vote one way or the other does a disservice to the people who live there.
My main job and my overwhelming job starts with my family, my street, my neighborhood, and my city.
I'm an average American. As I joke, I'm the average Mexican American Jewish Italian mayor of the most diverse city in the world.