Mayor Gordo Explains Decision to Call on Biden to Step Down

Mayor Victor Gordo on Sunday explained his decision to call on President Joe Biden to step down.

Gordo told POLITICO on Wednesday that safeguarding the core pillars of our democracy — and what makes America, America — is literally what’s at stake in the 2024 presidential contest.

Gordo’s plea was not an isolated one. The same day, local Congressman Adam Schiff (D-Pasadena) became the highest-profile Democrat to call for President Joe Biden to drop his reelection bid.

On Sunday, Biden announced that he would drop out of the presidential race, and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris. 

Gordo said he was compelled to move after listening to speakers at the Republican National Committee convention talking about mass deportations and rolling back some of the gains the nation has made in healthcare, like the Affordable Care Act.

Gordo said that as an immigrant, the attacks on immigrants cut very deeply. 

“The rhetoric takes us back to a time where I believe we didn’t value the contribution of immigrants,” Gordo said.  “As an immigrant myself, I recall growing up in a garage in Pasadena and in that garage was a can of Folgers, the gallon size. It  was empty. It had no coffee in it, but it did have some cash. It had copies of my parents’ birth certificates and driver’s license, my birth certificate and a handwritten list of family and friends with their phone numbers.”

“I knew that at age [of] six…  I knew that if my parents did not come home, I was to take that coffee can and knock on the neighbor’s door and ask for help.”

Trump, who accepted his party’s nomination last week at the Republican National Convention has repeatedly insulted immigrants and said he would have no problem using the National Guard to deport millions of immigrants.

Gordo and his family struggled with the constant threat of deportation. 

“As today, there existed a general fear of people being swept up, legitimately or not,” Gordo told Pasadena Now in 2020. 

“When I listened to the rhetoric at the RNC, all I could think about was that experience, the coffee can and the idea that hundreds of thousands, if not millions of families and kids of immigrants would feel that again,” Gordo said. 

In 2017, Gordo voted in favor of an ordinance prohibiting the Pasadena Police Department from engaging ICE. A month later, Gordo voted in favor of a resolution that prevented police from investigating or aiding ICE in the prosecution of federal immigration law violations.

Gordo’s father eventually found steady work at Ranchero Mexican Restaurant & Cantina in East Pasadena, from which he recently retired after 50 years. Gordo’s mother worked as a piecework seamstress.

Gordo worked as a paperboy whose route helped him better understand the city’s socio-economic landscape. He also cut lawns, sold flowers on street corners, shoes at the swap meet and souvenirs at the Rose Bowl. During nights and weekends, he worked alongside his father at Ranchero. 

“In school, we were demeaned, called Wetbacks, called all sorts of [things] — “beaners” — and it was regrettably the tone set in the country and society by the political rhetoric, and it just brought me back,” Gordo said. “And listening to the RNC brought me back to that time. And so I felt compelled to speak up because we need a candidate who can effectively and energetically present the issues, our Democratic (big D) principles to the American public. The selection is very important, consequential, and so we need a candidate who can forcefully, effectively present the issues to the American public. President Joe Biden, for all of his contributions over so many decades, I am thankful to him, but at this point in time in his life and in American history, I just didn’t see him as that candidate.”

Gordo said the nation should take no joy in that. Instead, “we should view it as an act of courage, an act of selflessness in an act of determination to ensure we put the best candidate possible forward to take on Donald Trump.”

“I think we should all be open to candidates that step forth,” Gordo said. “There are some procedural rules within the DNC that we should all familiarize ourself with, and then once again, clearly assess the facts, the process, and make a determination of those who can and are willing to take on the baton from President Joe Biden, who among them is  most effectively communicate the issues to the American public and importantly do so in a convincing way. And I’m going to look for a candidate with conviction.”