US President Joe Biden on Friday nominated close associate and Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti to head the American diplomatic mission in India, the move prompting many Angelenos to rejoice at seeing the back of the controversial politician and wish India luck.

The long-anticipated nomination of Garcetti, who had studied Hindi and Urdu for a year in college, now needs clearance from the Senate.

Garcetti is known to have the President’s ear — he is among those who had urged Biden to run in 2016 and was co-chair of the successful 2020 presidential campaign. He was also one of the four members of the search committee that picked Indian American Kamala Harris to be Biden’s running mate.

Garcetti, a climate advocate, has been mayor of America’s second-largest city since 2013, following 12 years as member of the city council. He has travelled several times to India.

According to the White House brief on Garcetti, he led Los Angeles’s successful bid to host the 2028 summer Olympic Games. He co-founded the bipartisan Climate Mayors network and led more than 400 US mayors to adopt the Paris Climate Agreement.

As an intelligence officer in the US Navy Reserve Component, Garcetti had served under the commander of the US Pacific Fleet, and with the Defence Intelligence Agency. He has lived and conducted fieldwork on nationalism, ethnicity and human rights in Southeast Asia and Northeast Africa.

But a vocal segment of Los Angeles residents holds a poor view of Garcetti, going by the social media comments posted since the White House picked the pro-immigrant politician for New Delhi.

No sooner had Garcetti announced his nomination from his official social media handles than the floodgates opened on Twitter and Instagram, with users essentially saying “good riddance”, peppered with expletives.

The People’s City Council-Los Angeles tweeted: “Never forget Eric Garcetti’s legacy in Los Angeles: really ineffectual leadership that at its best was just self-serving, but at its worst was very deadly. He gave $3 billion to LAPD (Los Angeles Police Department) every year and he marched… under a Blue Lives Matter flag. #GoodRiddanceGarcetti.”

Blue Lives Matter is a counter-movement in the US advocating that those convicted of killing law-enforcement officers should be sentenced under hate crime statutes.

The Los Angeles chapter of Black Lives Matter said: “Eric Garcetti, the mayor of increasing police budgets, gentrification, displacement and appropriator of movement language, is finally leaving LA.”

Many such posts made the hashtag #GoodRiddanceGarcetti trend all day. Some of these posts came with warnings and sympathy for India.

Angel Martinez tweeted: “Omg, @ericgarcetti. Run. Don’t walk. Do not pass Go. Go directly to your ‘service calling’ to India. Why the @POTUS would consider you for this position is beyond logic. You know you destroyed LA…. Watch out, #India.”

Speculation of this posting has been rife in LA for months now, with the “waiting game” pushing the city into what the Los Angeles Journal described as “political purgatory”. For Garcetti, the Journal said, this could be a turning point.

“He has been mayor for eight years, and with the coronavirus, an intractable homelessness crisis, harsh media coverage, and occasional protests outside his home, the gig is now a grind. A diplomatic assignment could start a new chapter for the ambitious 50-year-old politician,” the Journal said.

Garcetti issued a statement saying he was “honoured” to accept the nomination, which has to be confirmed by the US Senate.

If confirmed by the Senate, Garcetti will replace Kenneth Juster, who served as the US ambassador to India during Trump’s tenure.

“Today, the President announced that I am his nominee to serve as US ambassador to India. I am honoured to accept his nomination to serve in this role,” Garcetti, a Democrat, said in a statement.

In an interview to the Los Angeles Times, Garcetti said the Biden administration had raised the idea of the India posting in early spring. The White House called him on Thursday to finalise his nomination, he said.

“It’s the largest democracy in the world, soon to be the most populous country in the world, one of the top handful of superpowers in the world,” Garcetti said.

“We can’t get our climate goals without India hitting its climate goals. We can’t see the economy truly reopened to international commerce and tourism until Covid is under control. We’re all very closely connected.”