Mayor Eric Garcetti attended a fundraiser for his 2017 re-election campaign during a trip to Washington, D.C. on the eve of the Police Commission’s ruling on the fatal officer-involved shooting of Ezell Ford.
Garcetti told protestors outside his home last Monday he was going to Washington in an attempt to get federal funds for community policing and homelessness programs.
Garcetti had two 30-minute meetings with Obama administration officials, but also attended a reception for his re-election effort hosted by one of the Democratic Party’s most prominent fundraisers, Harold Ickes, the Los Angeles Times reported Monday night.
Melina Abdullah, a professor of Pan-African Studies at Cal State Los Angeles, told The Times Garcetti’s attendance at a political fundraiser “absolutely contradicts” the explanation for his Washington trip he gave her and other demonstrators outside his house last week.
Raising money for his campaign “speaks to his placement of ambition and ego ahead of the interests of an important portion of his constituency,” Abdullah told The Times.
Ickes — a veteran political operative and former top campaign and White House aide to President Bill Clinton — told The Times Garcetti was at his home in Georgetown last Monday night for a fundraising event for Garcetti’s 2017 campaign.
Ickes told The Times the reception lasted about two hours and had between 40 and 50 guests, each of them asked to donate $1,300, the maximum individual contribution under Los Angeles’ campaign finance limits.
Bill Carrick, a consultant for Garcetti’s 2017 campaign, acknowledged that Ickes held the fundraiser. Garcetti spokesman Jeff Millman said this week the campaign paid for the trip and Garcetti would not be commenting further on his time in Washington.
“We’ve said everything we have to say on it,” Millman told The Times. “We’ve given you the schedule and we said what he did.”
Later that day, Garcetti met with Ford’s mother, who praised the mayor for finally reaching out to her but said the meeting came “10 months late.” Afterward,Garcetti held a news conference at which he spoke admiringly of Tritobia Ford’s “quest for justice” for her son.
—City News Service