Which CD 1 Candidate Has Eric Garcetti Endorsed—Gardea or Cedillo?

A question that has been swirling around in the frequently contentious Council District 1 electoral campaigns of José Gardea and Gil Cedillo centers around which of the two candidates has won the endorsement of mayoral contender Eric Garcetti and is using the support as political leverage with voters.

Although it seems clear that Garcetti has endorsed Gardea, judging from a YouTube video in which Garcetti emphatically says that Gardea is "the only person I've endorsed in the 1st District," Cedillo's campaign also claims the allegiance of the mayoral hopeful.

According to Arturo Chavez, a close campaign aide of Cedillo, Garcetti had initially endorsed both the CD 1 candidates. Subsequently, however, alleges Chavez, Gardea's camp pressured Garcetti to endorse only the former chief of staff to Councilmember Ed Reyes. The problem, according to Chavez, was that Garcetti didn't clarify to the Cedillo campaign exactly whom he was eventually backing.

"I was on the phone with Garcetti and he never gave us a clear answer," Chavez told Highland Park-Mount Washington Patch at Cedillo's Figueroa Street campaign office on Sunday. "He did a classic flip-flop," says Chavez. "He didn't want us to retreat on printing flyers that show his endorsement because he wanted his name to be out there on our material."

After Garcetti evidently switched his endorsement only to Gardea, says Chavez, Cedillo met with the former City Council president and told him that he had already printed a lot of campaign material pointing to Garcetti's support.

"What am I going to do with all the material?" Chavez quoted Cedillo as asking Garcetti. "Do you want me to destroy it?"

Asked just what sort of campaign material Cedillo was referring to, Chavez produced a colorful four-page flyer whose cover shows an image of Cedillo shaking the hand of a constituent, with these words below: "Bringing People Together to Get Things Done."

At the back of the flyer is a list of 55 officials (six of them retired) who are said to have endorsed Cedillo. The names range from Gov. Jerry Brown and State Controller John Chiang to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and L.A. County Sheriff Lee Baca. The 11th name on the list? Councilmember Eric Garcetti.

The Cedillo campaign flyer testifying to Garcetti's alleged endorsement is nowhere near as explicit, let alone powerful, as the flyer that Gardea's campaign has been circulating among voters.

"I'm proud to support José Gardea for City Council," says the front of the flyer, which shows a nine-inch by six-inch image of Garcetti standing in a blue suit, smiling into the camera. An eight-sentence message at the back of the flyer starts as follows: "José Gardea is my candidate in the 1st District. He's all about public service, not politics."

(Coincidentally, the last four words—"public service, not politics," also happen to be the chief campaign message of CD 13 candidate Mitch O'Farrell, Garcetti's one-time chief of staff whom Garcetti reportedly fired not long ago and who won a curious last-minute endorsement from his former boss recently.)

For his part, Gardea tells Highland Park-Mount Washington Patch that "there should be no confusion" about which of the two CD 1 candidates Garcetti endorsed about a month ago.

That candidate isn't Cedillo, according to Gardea, who dismisses the idea that Garcetti might have endorsed both candidates at some point, only to end up backing one of them.

"I'm hoping he [Cedillo] is not trying to confuse voters by putting Eric's name on his flyer," says Gardea, adding that if that's the case he finds it "very offensive as someone who has worked hard over the last 10 weeks to educate voters about the issues important to this district."

Patch repeatedly contacted several members of Garcetti's campaign staff for a clarification, but none of them called back, despite promises, to confirm just where the mayoral candidate stands on this issue and whether or not he ever lent his support to Cedillo in any way.