As mayor of Long Beach, California, Robert Garcia has tried to turn his city into a model for how to respond to the 2020 COVID pandemic, with lockdowns, expanded public testing and a rapid vaccine rollout. But it wasn’t easy.
Garcia, 45, lost both her mother and stepfather to the coronavirus in 2020, before vaccines became widely available.
“It’s disheartening to be in a situation where your parents are in the hospital, intubated — and you’re yelling and screaming at people in our community, people in positions of power, about reopening the golf courses,” Garcia said in December. . in a farewell speech.
That experience will guide him as he settles into his new job as the U.S. Representative for California’s 42nd Congressional District and his new role as Democratic Freshman Class President.
“What happened to disinformation, encouraging people in positions of power, like [Rep.] Marjorie Taylor Greene [R-Ga.] and others to attack our medical community for discouraging vaccinations, that is shameful,” Garcia told HuffPost in a recent interview.
“I don’t know if I can forgive some of these people for what they did to this country and just because they believed in basic medical science,” he said.
Garcia’s freshman Democrats elected him “class president,” a ceremonial title meant to give new members a voice in party decision-making.
“He was an immigrant. I was an immigrant.”
– Congressman-elect Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), on Superman
As class president, Garcia is poised to be one of the most important lawmakers in the 34-member class, one shaped not only by the pandemic but also by the Jan. 6, 2021, uprising.
“Many of us in our class are being called to serve because of what has happened in recent years,” he said. “We are a post-Trump class. I have seen the worst in leadership, the worst in government.”
Being class president as a freshman is often an early stepping stone to party leadership. Garcia hired Robert Edmonson, former chief of staff to former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), as his own chief of staff, which could also be seen as preparation for an upward move. Garcia, however, declined to address that prospect.
“I’m grateful [Edmonson] he comes to work for a freshman,” Garcia said.
Garcia is emblematic of the increasingly diverse face of the national Democratic Party. He is an immigrant, brought to America from Peru by his mother at age 5 and naturalized at age 21. He is also gay.
Both aspects of his life are part of his great passion outside of work: comics. One of the his first tweets after he won in November, it was a photo of the Library of Congress’s elegant wood-paneled reading room for members of Congress.
“Ok scares me,” he tweeted. “I can pull any comic from the largest public comic collection in the country and read it here. Let’s go!”
The post received more than 40,000 likes on Twitter.
Garcia said he first fell into comics as a way to learn English. The Superman character in particular spoke to him. “He was an immigrant. I was an immigrant,” he said.
“I think the love of helping others, the love of country, being different, hiding your identity — I’ve been a closeted gay person for a long time — those things got me into comics.”
Garcia is no amateur: He can speak knowledgeably about Rob Liefeld, the artist who helped launch Image comics in the 1990s, as well as DC Comics artist-turned-director Jim Lee and “X -Men” writer Chris Claremont.
“I love the Mark Waid Flash ride. It’s one of my favorite races,” he said. “There are also periods of time that stand out for me, the Dan Jurgens Superman stuff. I love that era.
He’s been to 20 San Diego Comic-Cons, the quintessential pilgrimage for sequential art fans, and he’s been to Hall H, the largest event hall, about 10 to 12 times, he said.
It’s unclear when Garcia and the rest of his fellow elected officials will be sworn in, given Republicans’ ongoing problems choosing a speaker. But he’s ready to take the oath, as only a comic book fan could.
In a tweet, Garcia announced Tuesday that he plans to take the oath of office on a copy of the U.S. Constitution with three items below: his certificate of citizenship, a photo of his parents, and, courtesy of the Library of Congress, a copy of the first issue of “Superman.”
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