Earlier than a category of captivated highschool seniors, Rep. Robert Garcia recounted the trajectory of his life: as a boy from humble beginnings in Peru, as a homosexual man raised in a conservative Catholic household, as an undocumented immigrant anxious about his future and, now, as a member of Congress.
The scholars in a complicated placement authorities class at Ernest S. McBride Sr. Excessive Faculty in Lengthy Seashore peppered him with sharp questions, notably whether or not his roots and his background ever made him really feel like a fraud amongst his friends.
Rep. Robert Garcia speaks to college students at Ernest S. McBride Sr. Excessive Faculty in Lengthy Seashore in Could.
(Christina Home/Los Angeles Instances)
“I’ve had impostor syndrome my entire life. I all the time have impostor syndrome,” Garcia instructed the scholars, a lot of them Latino. “And also you guys are gonna have impostor syndrome, too. I’ve by no means, in any place I’ve had, felt like I used to be both prepared strolling into it, or I used to be as ready as I ought to be.”
His mother and father, hoping to flee home terrorism and financial uncertainty in Peru, introduced him to the USA when he was 5 and overstayed their visa. He realized English, partially, by studying comedian books, and Superman would later develop into one thing of a task mannequin.
Rising up, he noticed his mom clear homes and work at a thrift retailer earlier than she began working at well being clinics. Garcia obtained his citizenship when he was a school scholar and struggled to inform his non secular household that he was homosexual.
The 46-year-old freshman congressman representing a district centered on Lengthy Seashore has risen rapidly by means of the Democratic ranks.
Garcia served because the mayor of Lengthy Seashore — a metropolis with roughly the identical inhabitants as Miami and an LGBTQ+ stronghold — from 2014 to 2022, after serving on the Metropolis Council for 5 years. He was the town’s youngest, first brazenly homosexual and first Latino mayor. Then he was elected to Congress in 2022, and chosen to be the president of the freshman Democratic class.
When Garcia lately visited Cal State Lengthy Seashore, his alma mater, he recalled his nervousness as an undergraduate.
“I used to be low revenue, first era clearly, nobody in my household had gone to varsity,” Garcia mentioned as he marveled at a pantry stocked with pasta, fruit and cereal for college students experiencing meals insecurity. “I spent most of faculty barely, barely consuming. After I was a scholar right here, we didn’t have something like this.”
Robert Garcia, on a go to to his alma mater, Cal State Lengthy Seashore, in Could reveals present scholar authorities President Nikki Majidi the place he and different former presidents signed the underside of a desk.
(Christina Home/Los Angeles Instances)
Garcia then jogged upstairs to the coed union, the place he as soon as had an workplace as scholar physique president. After greeting the incoming chief, Nikki Majidi of Mission Viejo, he crawled underneath a desk to disclose a Cal State Lengthy Seashore custom amongst scholar physique presidents. “All of us signed the underside of the desk,” Garcia mentioned.
He was an undergraduate throughout a tumultuous interval of his life — the dichotomy of being an formidable scholar whereas additionally fearing about his future due to his undocumented standing.
“Most of my life, I simply needed to be an American, and a citizen,” Garcia instructed the highschool college students in Could. “And, you realize, whenever you’re an immigrant, I believe what you’re actually fascinated about is, ‘Am I going to get a job? Am I going to have assist?’ I keep in mind being in faculty, in lecture rooms pondering, ‘Oh, my God, I don’t have a inexperienced card. I don’t have my citizenship. How am I going to really get a job sooner or later or have the identical entry as all my different classmates?’”
Garcia mentioned he and his household finally acquired citizenship due to the amnesty legislation signed by President Reagan, one of many causes all of them registered as Republicans, a degree continuously raised by his critics.
He was a California youth coordinator for George W. Bush’s 2000 presidential marketing campaign and based the Lengthy Seashore Younger Republicans in 2005. He then registered as a decline-to-state voter earlier than altering his social gathering affiliation to Democratic in 2007, two years earlier than he gained a Metropolis Council seat, in accordance with the Los Angeles County voter registration database.
Robert Garcia finds his image, proper, amongst these of previous scholar physique presidents on a wall at Cal State Lengthy Seashore.
(Christina Home/Los Angeles Instances)
His altering views, he mentioned, replicate his political evolution. His background shapes his ideology, which is especially salient at a second within the nation’s historical past when the communities he belongs to — Latino, immigrant, LGBTQ+ — really feel more and more threatened.
“Our neighborhood is underneath direct assault proper now,” Garcia mentioned at a fundraiser at a drag brunch at Hamburger Mary’s in Lengthy Seashore final yr. “And I need everybody, as we’re having fun with and celebrating this unimaginable day, to not neglect that we’ve got not been on this place that we’re in in most likely a long time.”
Garcia pointed to Republican efforts to restrict the content material in public faculty libraries, to cease LGBTQ+ {couples} from adopting youngsters, to enact new abortion restrictions and to weaken labor unions.
“It is a second for our neighborhood to recollect our roots … to do not forget that we’re in positions to make use of our voice to assist these which can be marginalized and wish our assist,” he concluded.
Garcia recalled that when he ran for mayor, he questioned if voters would assist him due to his youth, sexuality, ethnicity and working-class background.
“The primary day I received to Metropolis Corridor, I used to be like, ‘Oh, my God, what am I doing right here?’ You realize, I’m mayor of this big metropolis,” Garcia instructed the highschool college students. “And that sticks with you due to the environments that we grew up in. The reality is that I might do the job. And I did the job to the very best of my means. I’m very pleased with the work that we did.”
Garcia has assumed an uncommon quantity of energy and public consideration for a freshman member of Congress within the minority social gathering. His chief of employees used to carry that place for Home Speaker Emeritus Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco). He sits on the Homeland Safety and the Oversight and Accountability committees, in addition to a subcommittee concerning the pandemic. His mom and stepfather died of COVID problems within the early days of the pandemic.
Rep. Robert Garcia, left, and his chief of employees, Robert Edmonson, stroll briskly to a congressional listening to in Washington in June.
(John Boal / For The Instances)
On the nation’s Capitol, Garcia walks remarkably quick. His communications director, Sara Guerrero, mentioned she has damaged three pairs of heels trying to maintain up with him.
His position because the Democrats’ freshman class president has granted him entry to Home Minority Chief Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), Cupboard secretaries and different high leaders. It has additionally helped him develop amicable relationships with freshmen Republicans, together with South Carolina Rep. Russell Fry, New York Rep. Mike Lawler and, from Rocklin in Northern California, Rep. Kevin Kiley (“I believe his politics are horrific,” he clarified about Kiley).
Requested if these relationships might result in bipartisan laws, Garcia demurred.
“We’ll see. Proper now shouldn’t be this bipartisan kumbaya second within the nation,” he mentioned in an interview in his congressional workplace. “We’ve received to defeat Donald Trump and be sure that these sorts of extremists don’t destroy our nation. So I’m not fascinated about, proper now, how I’m going to work with Mike Lawler — I’m fascinated about how I’m going to beat Mike Lawler. And I inform Mike that.”
It’s vastly completely different from his days as a nonpartisan mayor in an overwhelmingly Democratic metropolis. On Capitol Hill, Garcia rapidly shifted to taking up “what I take into account, like, the villains of D.C.”
His mode of operation is to “name out each single lie, push again on each single insane conspiracy principle.”
Robert Garcia criticizes former President Trump throughout a congressional listening to in Washington in 2023.
(John Boal / For The Instances)
In committee hearings and within the information, he has taken on Republicans, notably Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, whom he calls “a nationwide embarrassment.”
“I make it my job to attempt to make their lives depressing as a result of they deserve it,” Garcia mentioned. He upbraided Greene after she attacked Dr. Anthony Fauci for his work within the COVID-19 pandemic. Garcia referred to as Fauci a hero for his efforts towards the illness and, a long time in the past, AIDS.
“I additionally really feel it’s my private duty to name her out and I do,” he mentioned of Greene, “and she or he hates me.”
Robert Garcia at Ernest S. McBride Sr. Excessive Faculty, the place he shared his life story and rise to Congress.
(Christina Home/Los Angeles Instances)
And he referred to as out Peru when the nation declared transgender folks “mentally ailing” and pulled out of an occasion on the nation’s embassy.
He has confronted criticism. Within the 2022 congressional main, his Democratic rival raised his Republican previous and alleged he was overly cozy with highly effective pursuits, resembling actual property builders.
Lately, the best vitriol he faces is commonly on social media. Throughout a latest lunch at Hof’s Hut with Lengthy Seashore’s elected feminine leaders, Garcia pulled up his X profile on his cellphone. Practically each submit, no matter topic, was met with a slew of homophobic and racist reactions.
“It actually doesn’t hassle me,” he mentioned. “I really feel like if we’re pissing off these horrible folks, we’re doing one thing proper as a result of we’re preventing for what we imagine in, you realize?”
However he additionally makes use of social media and popular culture with humor and to drive dwelling his message. This yr, when Politico put him on a listing of the thirstiest members of Congress — the “most shamelessly media-seeking members” — Garcia responded by posting a GIF of “RuPaul’s Drag Race” star Adore Delano sipping a drink and wrote, “I’m parched.”
“We stan a messy queen, and having one on Capitol Hill is the very best factor that’s occurred in Congress in ages,” his workplace mentioned in a press launch.
He has spoken on the Home ground about RuPaul and Beyoncé, and quoted a monologue from the “Actual Housewives of Salt Lake Metropolis” throughout a Oversight and Accountability Committee listening to about Hunter Biden.
Rep. Robert Garcia, a self-described “comic-book nerd,” collects Superman memorabilia and books. As a Peruvian immigrant, he realized English, partially, by studying comics books.
(John Boal / For The Instances)
Garcia was among the many least skilled members of President Biden’s nationwide advisory board for his reelection bid earlier than he withdrew from the race and Harris grew to become the nominee. Garcia has a longtime relationship with Harris, who swore him in when he was elected mayor in 2014 and whom he initially backed within the 2020 presidential marketing campaign.
Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Lengthy Seashore) critiques notes en route from the Capitol to an interview with Nationwide Public Radio in June. For a freshman congressman, Garcia has an unusually excessive media profile.
(John Boal / For The Instances)
Garcia’s congressional seat is so Democratic that he might maintain it for many years if he needs. However in political circles, many assume he’ll sooner or later run for statewide workplace — a risk he didn’t dismiss.
“I do not know if I’d run for anything. So I don’t ever rule something out,” he mentioned over dinner at a Peruvian sushi restaurant in Lengthy Seashore.
Nor does he seem to neglect the roots he shared with the highschool college students. Garcia’s marketing campaign emblem has a superhero vibe, a nod to the comedian books that helped him be taught English and taught him social justice values. He identifies most with Superman due to his quests for reality and good, his love of nation and his tagline as a “unusual customer from one other planet,” a metaphor for the immigrant expertise.
When Garcia was sworn in to Congress, he set his hand on a duplicate of the Structure positioned atop his citizenship certificates, an image of his late mom and stepfather and, borrowed from the Library of Congress, an unique print of the primary Superman comedian e book from 1939.
Mehta reported from Lengthy Seashore and Castillo from Washington, D.C.
