Garcia's Tweeted request for funds follows an invitation-fundraiser for his re-election campaign committee at a downtown LB restaurant on April 27. The event was held less than a week after Garcia signed (didn't veto) a narrowly enacted City Council ordinance letting himself and other LB incumbents use sums contributed to their "officeholder" accounts (in annual totals tripled by Council action two years earlier) to support candidates they favor running for other offices.

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As with five Council incumbents elected in the 2014 election cycle (Gonzalez, Price, Mungo, Uranga, Richardson) and now seeking re-election, it's not immediately clear if Garcia will commit to completing a second term of the office for which which he's seeking re-election. If Garcia were to abandon the Mayor's office half through his second term for another office, it would trigger a taxpayer-paid special election to fill the remainder of his City Hall term. This last occurred when then-Councilman Patrick O'Donnell sought and won an Assembly seat in 2014 midway through his Council term, triggering a winner-take-all special election in which Daryl Supernaw was elected to the Council in early 2015.

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Initially a City Hall aide to 3rd dist. Councilman/Vice Mayor Frank Colonna (a Repub), Garcia was a leader in LB's Young Republicans until Colonna was outpolled and outspent in a 2006 Mayoral runoff against newcomer Bob Foster. Garcia then moved into the Dem-majority 1st Council district (where Councilwoman Bonnie Lowenthal was expected run for the state Assembly), changed his voter registered party preference and when Lowenthal won the Assembly seat, Garcia announced his candidacy for her vacated Council seat. Aided by campaign contributions from the 3rd district, Garcia finished first in an April 2009 "winner take all" multi-candidate race with less than a majority vote.

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Garcia was handily re-elected to the Council in 2010 and became an ally of Mayor Foster, who endorsed Garcia as his successor in 2014. Foster also steered campaign contribtuions to an independent expenditure committee supporting Garcia's run for Mayor, famously telling a reporter for the former LBRegister who inquired about the indie committee, "You don't see my name on it." Despite hefty campaign contributions to his own campaign, and the Foster-supported "you don't see my name on it" independent expenditure committee, Garcia was elected Mayor with only 52.04% of the vote in a June runoff with Damon Dunn, a Republican backed by the LB Area Chamber of Commerce and nearly unknown in the City prior to the race.

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Although the Mayor and Council offices are officially non-partisan, Garcia has become a Dem party partisan, ceremonially sworn into his first Mayoral term by then-SF DA (now U.S. Senator) Kamala Harris and serving as a delegate to the 2016 Dem Party convention where he voted to nominate Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders.

Garcia is a political ally of state Senator Ricardo Lara (D, LB-Huntington Park) and was among early endorsers of Lara's 2018 run for Insurance Commissioner. If Lara were elected Insurance Commissioner in November 2018, some have speculated Garcia might pursue Lara's vacated state Senate seat in early 2019 (and if endorsed by Lara might have a good chance of winning.) Councilman Al Austin has also expressed an interest in the state Senate seat if there's a vacancy; other speculated contenders include Councilman Roberto Uranga and Councilwoman Lena Gonzalez.

Still others have said that Garcia has long-eyed an opportunity to seek the House seat currently held by Congressman Alan Lowenthal (D, LB-West OC.)

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