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2020 elections

LOS ANGELES — Eric Garcetti will not run for president in 2020, he confirmed late Tuesday, saying that being mayor of Los Angeles is “what I am meant to do.”

Garcetti, who traveled extensively for months as he mulled a presidential run, said at a hastily arranged news conference here that in local government he saw a “vision of a brighter future and a better day” that stood in “contrast to what we see coming out of Washington, D.C., every day.”

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“Reflecting on those travels and recognizing the incredible opportunity that I have every single day as mayor of this great town,” Garcetti said, “I realized that this is what I am meant to do, this is where I want to be, and this is a place where we have so much exciting work to finish.”

Garcetti called the recently settled teachers’ strike in Los Angeles “a little bit of a kick in the pants for me that what we have right here in Los Angeles sets the pace for the nation.”

He said he had decided against running for president “a couple of weeks ago in my mind, but not finally until this morning.”

The 47-year-old mayor, whose term does not end until 2022, declined to foreclose on a future campaign. When asked about running for vice president on a potential 2020 ticket, however, he said, “I think I’ve got a better job than that.”

He said, “I kind of believe that whenever possible, you should finish the job that you set out to do.”

He said no other candidate’s entry into the race — including that of Sen. Kamala Harris, a fellow Californian — dissuaded him. However, he said that he was confident the Democratic nominee in 2020 could defeat President Donald Trump and that “I feel even more secure in my decision watching the field of candidates who are jumping into the race in 2020.”

Garcetti, a fourth-generation Angeleno of Mexican-Italian-Jewish descent, had been edging toward a presidential run, using the midterm elections to launch a tightly choreographed play in which he traveled the country and built up goodwill by raising more than $1 million for state Democratic parties.

But the demands on his time in working to help settle a recent teachers’ strike in his home city put those plans on hold, Garcetti acknowledged to reporters last week at the U.S. Conference of Mayors in Washington.

Several Democratic activists and officials on the ground in Iowa, South Carolina and New Hampshire told POLITICO that they had heard nothing from the mayor recently about a possible run.

“It’s radio silence,” said one Democrat in an early presidential state.

No mayor has ever jumped directly from City Hall to the White House, and the prospects of such a feat in 2020 appeared long. But Garcetti had been at the front of a handful of Democratic mayors considering presidential campaigns. Earlier this month, Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind., entered the race.

In 2017, Garcetti started a nonprofit group of mayors working with labor and business leaders to fund investments in cities around the country, giving him a platform to travel extensively as he mulled a campaign.

During the midterm elections, Garcetti used his expansive Hollywood donor network to raise money for state parties — including some small, typically overlooked states — hosting fundraisers for them in Los Angeles.

Last year, he hosted a Hollywood fundraiser with talk show host Jimmy Kimmel and DJ Khaled that raised more than $1 million, divided among 10 state parties. Garcetti had previously raised $100,000 for the South Carolina Democratic Party at a fundraiser in Los Angeles’ Hancock Park.

Thanking Garcetti at that event, the chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party, Trav Robertson, said to applause, “After the mess we’ve got in Washington, we all may need somebody who’s got experience managing a large government and an economy.”

As he considered running, Garcetti sought to position himself as an officeholder who is especially grounded in the day-to-day concerns of governing. Contrasting Los Angeles explicitly with Washington in his State of the City address last year, he described the city he oversees as “thriving, strong, stable and decent.”

Still, Garcetti has been dogged by a pervasive homelessness crisis in Los Angeles. Writing in the Los Angeles Times last year, columnist Steve Lopez told readers that with a such a crisis in their city, “this could be the year Garcetti’s presidential pipe dream ruptures under a shantytown in the homeless capital of the United States.”

Garcetti’s exit comes two days after Harris launched her presidential campaign with a massive rally in Oakland. Earlier this month, a third Californian, billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer, announced that he would not run for president in 2020.

Garcetti said he is a friend of many of the Democratic Party’s top contenders, and he called Buttigieg, a fellow mayor, “a big sleeper who’s going to surprise people.”

He pledged to continue to advocate for cities, saying, “I think it is time for a radical federalism in this country, where people trust innovation coming from the local level and ramp that up.”

Garcetti acknowledged “some sadness about this moment, but not much. I mostly have excitement about it.”

He said that when he told his 7-year-old daughter he did not plan to run for president, she told him” “That’s good. You’ll be home more.”

Garcetti said, “That’s when I knew it was the right decision.”