Charter school founder Steve Barr will run for Los Angeles mayor in 2017, challenging Mayor Eric Garcetti in what had been shaping up as an all but uncontested re-election bid, it was reported today.
Barr, a Silver Lake resident and darling of education reform advocates who has not previously held elected office, told the Los Angeles Times he has grown impatient with what he sees as Garcetti’s passivity in the face of a worsening public education crisis.
He said that though he plans to draw attention to other measures of urban decline, such as the city’s rising crime rate and growing homeless population, the focus of his campaign will be innovation and improvement in the nation’s second-largest school system — even though the mayor has no direct responsibility for Los Angeles Unified.
Barr said he would file paperwork to run today.
In taking on Garcetti, Barr faces long odds against an incumbent who has built a broad base of political support and an impressive fundraising machine — and who has made no major missteps during his first three years in office.
Jaime Regalado, an emeritus professor of political science at Cal State Los Angeles, told The Times he thought nothing short of a serious scandal — or perhaps an abrupt exit by Garcetti to accept an appointment in a Clinton White House — would create “any chance at all” for Barr’s success.
Others cautioned against underestimating Barr’s appeal.
“He’s running as an outsider at a time when voters are powerfully suspicious of the political establishment, and he’s running on an issue that’s close to the hearts of most Angelenos,” said Dan Schnur, director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at USC.
“It will be an uphill fight for him, but this is something that Garcetti and his team would be smart to take very seriously,” Schnur told the newspaper.
