Garcetti Calls for More Latinos In Next President’s Administration

*This is the complaint I’ve been hearing coming from the Convention in Philadelphia – there needs to be more Latino senior staff in the White House. Bill and Barack fell short, the pressure is on Hillary. VL

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By City News Service

Mayor Eric Garcetti, who is in Philadelphia for the Democratic National Convention, said Tuesday he feels more Latinos need to be appointed to top-level positions in the next presidential administration, and not just to positions focusing on immigration and labor.

During a panel discussion and briefing on Latino political participation, Garcetti noted that recognizing the power of the Latino vote is not enough, and more Latinos need to be placed in positions of power in the federal government.

The National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, which organized the panel discussion, projects that the number of Latinos expected to vote in November is expected to grow by more than 30 percent to 13.1 million, up from the 9.7 million who voted in the 2008 presidential
election.

“I think that we still have (presidential) candidates who are getting comfortable with the Latino community,” said Garcetti, who recently joined the NALEO board. “There’s not anybody really speaking with the fluency that I think we need to see.”

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With appointments made under the recent two Democratic presidential administrations, “there’s like this ceiling,” he said.

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[Photo by The White House/Flickr]

Suggested reading

Rick Rivera’s first novel charts the sometimes hilarious, sometimes bitter-sweet saga of growing up in two cultures with the American Dream as a guiding light. In a series of poignant vignettes, the reader follows Ricky Coronado’s search for identity—a search made more difficult by the specter of his father’s suicide and the pressures placed upon him by his strong-willed mother. The narrator is a quiet but mischievous boy who retells the antics of his close-knit and often eccentric family. The amusing adventures of the clan include his stepfather’s proposal to his mother, visits to the psychiatrist and the comic misconstruction of Catholic catechism by well-meaning nuns. In his journey of self-discovery that harkens to the pioneer work of Oscar Zeta Acosta’s Brown Buffalo adventures, Ricky comes to the same solution that generations of hyphenated Americans have reached: the painful but rewarding creation of a new self that combines elements of both ethnic realities.

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