Robert Garcia, First Gay Mayor of Long Beach CA and Congressional Candidate

In house with us today is Long Beach California Mayor Robert Garcia!  He has been Long Beach's first gay mayor, and now is seeking national office as a candidate for the US House of Representatives. Robert is a Peruvian-American educator and politician who is the 28th and current mayor of Long Beach, California. A member of the Democratic Party, he was first elected in the 2014 election and won reelection in 2018. He is both the city's youngest and first elected openly LGBT mayor, as well as the first Latino American to hold the office. He is the second person of color to be elected mayor of Long Beach, after Republican Eunice Sato, a Japanese-American who served as mayor from 1980 to 1982. A former member of the Long Beach City Council, he was vice mayor from 2012 to 2014. In December 2021, he announced that he would be a candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives in 2022.   We will be talking about his priorities from housing as a human right, to ending Citizens United, to ending gun violence and protecting civil rights and more.   With co-host Brody Levesque