Long Beach’s Robert Garcia emerges as a political star

Before a class of captivated high school seniors, Rep. Robert Garcia recounted the trajectory of his life: as a boy from humble beginnings in Peru, as a gay man raised in a conservative Catholic family, as an undocumented immigrant worried about his future and, now, as a member of Congress.

The students in an advanced placement government class at Ernest S. McBride Sr. High School in Long Beach peppered him with sharp questions, notably whether his roots and his background ever made him feel like a fraud among his peers.

Rep. Robert Garcia speaks to students at Ernest S. McBride Sr. High School in Long Beach in May.

(Christina House/Los Angeles Times)

“I’ve had impostor syndrome my whole life. I always have impostor syndrome,” Garcia told the students, many of them Latino. “And you guys are gonna have impostor syndrome, too. I have never, in any position I’ve had, felt like I was either ready walking into it, or I was as prepared as I should be.”

His parents, hoping to escape domestic terrorism and economic uncertainty in Peru, brought him to the United States when he was 5 and overstayed their visa. He learned English, in part, by reading comic books, and Superman would later become something of a role model.

Growing up, he saw his mother clean houses and work at a thrift store before she started working at health clinics. Garcia obtained his citizenship when he was a college student and struggled to tell his religious family that he was gay.

The 46-year-old freshman congressman representing a district centered on Long Beach has risen quickly through the Democratic ranks.

Garcia served as the mayor of Long Beach — a city with roughly the same population as Miami and an LGBTQ+ stronghold — from 2014 to 2022, after serving on the City Council for five years. He was the city’s youngest, first openly gay and first Latino mayor. Then he was elected to Congress in 2022, and selected to be the president of the freshman Democratic class.

When Garcia recently visited Cal State Long Beach, his alma mater, he recalled his anxiety as an undergraduate.

“I was low income, first generation obviously, no one in my family had gone to college,” Garcia said as he marveled at a pantry stocked with pasta, fruit and cereal for students experiencing food insecurity. “I spent most of college barely, barely eating. When I was a student here, we didn’t have anything like this.”

Robert Garcia, on a visit to his alma mater, Cal State Long Beach, in May shows current student government President Nikki Majidi where he and other former presidents signed the bottom of a desk.

(Christina House/Los Angeles Times)

Garcia then jogged upstairs to the student union, where he once had an office as student body president. After greeting the incoming leader, Nikki Majidi of Mission Viejo, he crawled under a desk to reveal a Cal State Long Beach tradition among student body presidents. “We all signed the bottom of the desk,” Garcia said.

He was an undergraduate during a tumultuous period of his life — the dichotomy of being an ambitious student while also fearing about his future because of his undocumented status.

“Most of my life, I just wanted to be an American, and a citizen,” Garcia told the high school students in May. “And, you know, when you’re an immigrant, I think what you’re really thinking about is, ‘Am I going to get a job? Am I going to have support?’ I remember being in college, in classrooms thinking, ‘Oh, my God, I don’t have a green card. I don’t have my citizenship. How am I going to actually get a job in the future or have the same access as all my other classmates?’”

Garcia said he and his family ultimately received citizenship because of the amnesty law signed by President Reagan, one of the reasons they all registered as Republicans, a point frequently raised by his critics.

He was a California youth coordinator for George W. Bush’s 2000 presidential campaign and founded the Long Beach Young Republicans in 2005. He then registered as a decline-to-state voter before changing his party affiliation to Democratic in 2007, two years before he won a City Council seat, according to the Los Angeles County voter registration database.

Robert Garcia finds his picture, right, among those of past student body presidents on a wall at Cal State Long Beach.

(Christina House/Los Angeles Times)

His changing views, he said, reflect his political evolution. His background shapes his ideology, which is particularly salient at a moment in the nation’s history when the communities he belongs to — Latino, immigrant, LGBTQ+ — feel increasingly threatened.

“Our community is under direct attack right now,” Garcia said at a fundraiser at a drag brunch at Hamburger Mary’s in Long Beach last year. “And I want everyone, as we’re enjoying and celebrating this incredible day, to not forget that we have not been in this position that we’re in in probably decades.”

Garcia pointed to Republican efforts to limit the content in public school libraries, to stop LGBTQ+ couples from adopting children, to enact new abortion restrictions and to weaken labor unions.

“This is a moment for our community to remember our roots … to remember that we’re in positions to use our voice to help those that are marginalized and need our support,” he concluded.

Garcia recalled that when he ran for mayor, he questioned if voters would support him because of his youth, sexuality, ethnicity and working-class background.

“The first day I got to City Hall, I was like, ‘Oh, my God, what am I doing here?’ You know, I’m mayor of this huge city,” Garcia told the high school students. “And that sticks with you because of the environments that we grew up in. The truth is that I could do the job. And I did the job to the best of my ability. I’m very proud of the work that we did.”

Garcia has assumed an unusual amount of power and public attention for a freshman member of Congress in the minority party. His chief of staff used to hold that position for House Speaker Emeritus Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco). He sits on the Homeland Security and the Oversight and Accountability committees, as well as a subcommittee about the pandemic. His mother and stepfather died of COVID complications in the early days of the pandemic.

Rep. Robert Garcia, left, and his chief of staff, Robert Edmonson, walk briskly to a congressional hearing in Washington in June.

(John Boal / For The Times)

At the nation’s Capitol, Garcia walks remarkably fast. His communications director, Sara Guerrero, said she has broken three pairs of heels attempting to keep up with him.

His role as the Democrats’ freshman class president has granted him access to House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), Cabinet secretaries and other top leaders. It has also helped him develop amicable relationships with freshmen Republicans, including South Carolina Rep. Russell Fry, New York Rep. Mike Lawler and, from Rocklin in Northern California, Rep. Kevin Kiley (“I think his politics are horrific,” he clarified about Kiley).

Asked if these relationships could lead to bipartisan legislation, Garcia demurred.

“We’ll see. Right now is not this bipartisan kumbaya moment in the country,” he said in an interview in his congressional office. “We’ve got to defeat Donald Trump and ensure that these kinds of extremists don’t destroy our country. So I’m not thinking about, right now, how I’m going to work with Mike Lawler — I’m thinking about how I’m going to beat Mike Lawler. And I tell Mike that.”

It’s vastly different from his days as a nonpartisan mayor in an overwhelmingly Democratic city. On Capitol Hill, Garcia quickly shifted to taking on “what I consider, like, the villains of D.C.”

His mode of operation is to “call out every single lie, push back on every single insane conspiracy theory.”

Robert Garcia criticizes former President Trump during a congressional hearing in Washington in 2023.

(John Boal / For The Times)

In committee hearings and in the news, he has taken on Republicans, notably Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, whom he calls “a national embarrassment.”

“I make it my job to try to make their lives miserable because they deserve it,” Garcia said. He upbraided Greene after she attacked Dr. Anthony Fauci for his work in the COVID-19 pandemic. Garcia called Fauci a hero for his efforts against the disease and, decades ago, AIDS.

“I also feel it’s my personal responsibility to call her out and I do,” he said of Greene, “and she hates me.”

Robert Garcia at Ernest S. McBride Sr. High School, where he shared his life story and rise to Congress.

(Christina House/Los Angeles Times)

And he called out Peru when the nation declared transgender people “mentally ill” and pulled out of an event at the nation’s embassy.

He has faced criticism. In the 2022 congressional primary, his Democratic rival raised his Republican past and alleged he was overly cozy with powerful interests, such as real estate developers.

These days, the greatest vitriol he faces is often on social media. During a recent lunch at Hof’s Hut with Long Beach’s elected female leaders, Garcia pulled up his X profile on his phone. Nearly every post, regardless of subject, was met with a slew of homophobic and racist reactions.

“It really doesn’t bother me,” he said. “I feel like if we’re pissing off these horrible people, we’re doing something right because we’re fighting for what we believe in, you know?”

But he also uses social media and pop culture with humor and to drive home his message. This year, when Politico put him on a list 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 best thing that’s happened in Congress in ages,” his office said in a press release.

He has spoken on the House floor about RuPaul and Beyoncé, and quoted a monologue from the “Real Housewives of Salt Lake City” during a Oversight and Accountability Committee hearing about Hunter Biden.

Rep. Robert Garcia, a self-described “comic-book nerd,” collects Superman memorabilia and books. As a Peruvian immigrant, he learned English, in part, by reading comics books.

(John Boal / For The Times)

Garcia was among the least experienced members of President Biden’s national advisory board for his reelection bid before he withdrew from the race and Harris became 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 in the 2020 presidential campaign.

Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Long Beach) reviews notes en route from the Capitol to an interview with National Public Radio in June. For a freshman congressman, Garcia has an unusually high media profile.

(John Boal / For The Times)

Garcia’s congressional seat is so Democratic that he could hold it for decades if he wants. But in political circles, many assume he will one day run for statewide office — a possibility he did not dismiss.

“I have no idea if I would run for anything else. So I don’t ever rule anything out,” he said over dinner at a Peruvian sushi restaurant in Long Beach.

Nor does he appear to forget the roots he shared with the high school students. Garcia’s campaign logo has a superhero vibe, a nod to the comic books that helped him learn English and taught him social justice values. He identifies most with Superman because of his quests for truth and good, his love of country and his tagline as a “strange visitor from another planet,” a metaphor for the immigrant experience.

When Garcia was sworn in to Congress, he set his hand on a copy of the Constitution placed atop his citizenship certificate, a picture of his late mother and stepfather and, borrowed from the Library of Congress, an original print of the first Superman comic book from 1939.

Mehta reported from Long Beach and Castillo from Washington, D.C.