Gilbert Salvador Iberri Garcetti (born August 5, 1941) is an American politician and lawyer. He served as Los Angeles County's 40th district attorney for two terms, from 1992 until November 7, 2000. He is the father of U.S. Ambassador to India and former Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti.
Early life and education
Garcetti was born in Los Angeles, the son of Salvador Garcetti and Juanita Iberri. His father was born in Parral, Chihuahua, Mexico, and brought to the United States as a child after his own father, Massimo Garcetti, a judge and immigrant to Mexico from Italy, was hanged during the Mexican Revolution. Gil's mother was born in Arizona, one of nineteen children born to a father whose parents were from Sonora, Mexico, and a mother born in Arizona, to Mexican parents.[1]
In 1959 Garcetti graduated from George Washington High School in South Los Angeles. The school has since become Washington Preparatory High School.
Before becoming Los Angeles County District Attorney, Garcetti served within the office for over twenty years, from trial prosecutor to managerial positions and eventually becoming chief deputy district attorney for his predecessor, Ira Reiner (district attorney from 1984 to 1992). Reiner demoted Garcetti shortly after his 1988 re-election.[2]
Garcetti challenged his former mentor in the 1992 election. The campaign featured both candidates saying their opponent was corrupt. Reiner said Garcetti was a "secretive" person and "(was) not to be trusted in a position of power."[2] Garcetti bested Reiner in the non-partisan June primary (where the top two candidates would advance should no candidate win an absolute majority), taking 34 percent to Reiner's 25, outpacing the incumbent by more than 100,000 votes.[3] In September 1992, just two months before the general election, Reiner announced that he was suspending his campaign, saying he could not stomach the negative tactics he felt that were needed to win.[2] California law allowed candidates to be removed from the ballot only if they died more than 59 days before the election, so Reiner remained on the ballot.[2] Garcetti won the general election with more than 81 percent of the vote.[4]
Los Angeles District Attorney
Entering the 1992 elections, Los Angeles County, California was still recovering from the aftermath of the 1992 Los Angeles riots. His first term was dominated by his office's prosecution of the O. J. Simpson murder case. The long, costly criminal trial ended with a "not guilty" verdict on October 3, 1995. Despite the setback, Garcetti won re-election in 1996, narrowly defeating challenger John Lynch.[5][6]
Garcetti was challenged for re-election in 2000 by Steve Cooley, a veteran of the L.A. County D.A.'s office. In a situation much like Garcetti's demotion in 1988 that led him to challenge Reiner in 1992, Cooley was demoted by Garcetti after Garcetti's 1996 re-election after Cooley supported Garcetti's opponent, John Lynch.[7]
Garcetti came in second in a competitive three-person primary, taking 37 percent of the vote to Cooley's 39.[8] In the two-person runoff, Garcetti lost overwhelmingly, losing by a margin of approximately 64 to 36 percent.[7]
Other activities
Politics
The 2000 election ended Garcetti's 32-year career with the LA County district attorney's office. In 2002, Los Angeles City Council president Alex Padilla appointed Garcetti to the Los Angeles city ethics commission for a five-year term. In the fall of 2002, Garcetti was a fellow at the Institute of Politics at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He has been developing a foundation to help Latino and African-American students complete their high school education. He is currently a strong proponent of Proposition 34, an initiative that will replace the death penalty with life in prison without the possibility of parole. Garcetti has argued that the death penalty is broken beyond repair, that it is "horrendously expensive" and that it carries the risk of executing an innocent person.[9]
Photography
After leaving the DA's office, Garcetti focused on art photography, producing two collections on the Walt Disney Concert Hall: Iron: Erecting the Walt Disney Concert Hall (Balcony Press 2002), focusing on the ironworkers who constructed the landmark, and Frozen Music (Balcony Press 2003), focusing on the finished building itself. Photos from these works were featured in an exhibit at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., and at the Pasadena Museum of California Art. His most recent exhibition, Dance in Cuba: Photographs by Gil Garcetti (Balcony Press 2005), was featured at the UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History in Spring 2006.[10]Water is Key: A Better Future for Africa (Balcony Press 2007) was published via a grant from the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation to the Pacific Institute as a benefit to NGOs supporting clean water projects in Africa.[11]
The Closer
Gil Garcetti was a consulting producer on the TNT series The Closer from its debut in 2005 and Major Crimes from its debut in 2012.
His son, Los Angeles City Councilmember, Eric Garcetti, appeared as the fictional Mayor of Los Angeles Ramon Quintero, in two episodes each of both series, before becoming the real-life Mayor of Los Angeles in 2013.[12] In his first appearance, father and son appeared together onscreen, with Gil playing the LAPD Chief of Police.
Gil and Sukey Garcetti have two children. Their son, Eric, was elected to the LA City Council three times (2001, 2005, 2009) and twice as mayor of Los Angeles (2013, 2017), [14] before becoming U.S. Ambassador to India in 2023. Their daughter, Dana Garcetti-Boldt, a former deputy district attorney in Garcetti's office,[15] became an acupuncturist.[16] She later returned to the law and is now serving as a Los Angeles County Deputy Public Defender. [17]
