Los Angeles City Council: Anger Erupts at Los Angeles City Council Meeting Over Racist Remarks (Published 2022) (2024)

Pinned

What to know about the controversy.

Los Angeles confronts its racial divide anew after the leak of racist comments.

President Biden on Tuesday called for the departure of the three council members in the nation’s second-largest city. “He believes they should all resign,” Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, said. “The language that was used and tolerated in that conversation was unacceptable, and it was appalling.”

The recorded conversation involving some of Los Angeles’s top power brokers exposed the racial and ethnic factions that have come to dominate politics in California. But it also highlighted the political impatience among leaders of the city’s largest ethnic group: Latinos, who make up roughly half of the city’s population but who hold only four of its 15 City Council seats.

Los Angeles is a kind of microcosm of the world; its roughly four million residents speak a combined 200-plus languages at home. Over the decades, the assorted constituencies have tried to develop a coalition style of politics based on common interests in the heavily Democratic city, but, beneath that veneer, the reality often has been a quest for power and political spoils.

The recording was a conversation among Nury Martinez, the Council president; Gil Cedillo and Kevin de León, council members; and Ron Herrera, the leader of the powerful Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, that took place in October 2021 during intense negotiations over City Council redistricting.

Ms. Martinez is heard comparing the Black child of Councilman Mike Bonin to a “changuito,” Spanish for little monkey, and joking with Mr. de León that Mr. Bonin carries the child around like a designer handbag. Those were only two of the offensive comments in the 80-minute recording, which included ugly remarks describing recent migrants from the Mexican state of Oaxaca and disparaging remarks about the trustworthiness of white liberals and a councilwoman who is of South Asian descent.

News of the recording was first reported on Sunday by The Los Angeles Times; by Monday night, Mr. Herrera had resigned from the labor federation and Ms. Martinez had relinquished her leadership post on the City Council, although she resisted calls for her to leave the Council entirely. Mr. Cedillo and Mr. de León also have resisted calls for them to step down from their council seats.

Although the raw language on the audio riveted the city, political observers said the recording was less a reflection of Los Angeles residents — who in polls largely express pride in the city’s diversity — than of the political climate in City Hall. Challenged by Covid-19, besieged with a succession of public corruption investigations and presented with the political opportunity of new political maps, Los Angeles local government has, in the past couple of years, been a hotbed of internecine conflict.

“As much as it was a racist, racial, ethnic disparagement of everyone in town, it was more about power,” Zev Yaroslavsky, a longtime Los Angeles leader who served for 40 years on the City Council and the county’s Board of Supervisors, said of the meeting.

“It was a raw power grab,” he said.

Mr. Cedillo and Mr. de León appeared on the dais near the start of Tuesday’s meeting and were greeted with shouted profanities from the packed gallery. They left after a brief discussion with Councilman Mitch O’Farrell, who was presiding over the meeting as president pro tem.

Outside, before the session, protesters chanted “fuera,” or “out” in Spanish, demanding that the three council members resign. Inside, the cacophonous demonstration was so relentless and deafening that the council members recessed, hoping, in vain, for calm.

Later, during the meeting, Mr. Bonin said through tears: “I take a lot of hits, and I know I practically invite a bunch of them. But my son? Man, that makes my soul bleed.”

Mr. O’Farrell, the council member leading the meeting, condemned the comments and the political maneuvering of his colleagues. “There are no excuses,” he said. “The court of public opinion has rendered a verdict, and the verdict is they all must resign.”

For more than a half-century, Los Angeles politics have been a study in demographic constituencies and race relations. Not for nothing is Rodney King’s plea during the 1992 riots often viewed as the city’s signature utterance: “Can we all get along?”

White Angelenos, particularly in the San Fernando Valley and on the city’s affluent Westside, have long controlled the city’s wealth and power, but they now represent only 28 percent of the population.

The city’s Black community, with a vibrant middle class and powerful community leaders like Tom Bradley, a former mayor, and Magic Johnson, the Los Angeles Lakers star, has long wielded clout. Still, Black Angelenos are leaving the city as many are priced out of the communities they have built over decades. Although 20 percent of the Council seats are held by Black elected officials, Black Angelenos make up only 8.8 percent of the population.

The city’s Asian community has become a rising political force with nearly 12 percent of the population. But Latinos make up the city’s largest ethnic group by far.

In recent years, young progressives who studied the Los Angeles riots in school have risen to power, learning from past racial and ethnic conflicts in the city. Labor organizations also have gained influence as their ranks have swelled with Latino workers following California’s battle over immigrant rights in the 1990s.

“There are naturally tensions,” said Mr. Yaroslavsky, who now teaches at the Luskin School of Public Affairs at the University of California, Los Angeles, which conducts annual surveys of Los Angeles County. “The question is how you deal with that tension. I think there’s been a lot of effort made in this city and county to manage it.”

Constance L. Rice, a veteran civil rights lawyer in the city, said that efforts to work together tended to intensify during zero-sum contests such as the redrawing of political boundaries that occurs each decade. A citizen advisory committee conducts Los Angeles’s redistricting process and recommends maps, but — unlike California’s statewide line-drawing by an independent commission — the final boundaries are determined by the City Council.

In years past, Ms. Rice said, lawyers with expertise in federal voting rights law wielded considerable influence on the drawing of local political boundaries. As the Supreme Court has eroded the federal Voting Rights Act, however, outside experts have wielded less clout and political battles have intensified, she said.

“It used to be all about maximizing rights and balancing power,” Ms. Rice said. “Now it’s ‘Game of Thrones.’”

As Angelenos processed the furor, calls for solutions focused on whether the city’s redistricting process had been changed — and whether it might have been corrupted. Council members said on Tuesday that they intended to seek an independent redistricting process that doesn’t allow them to draw their own political lines.

Stephen Jn-Marie, a pastor and longtime activist in Los Angeles, said he participated in a Zoom call with roughly 60 Black organizers to discuss the audio recordings on Sunday night. On Tuesday morning, he arranged a news conference ahead of the City Council meeting “so folks could get the word out about how we feel and what must be done to move forward.”

According to Mr. Jn-Marie, the questions arising about redistricting were the most important. “We are going to need to look at those maps,” he said. “Because of the fact that it was redistricting in the context of Black and Indigenous folks and minimizing their power, we are calling for an investigation.”

Adam Nagourney, Ken Bensinger and Corina Knoll contributed reporting.

Advertisem*nt

SKIP ADVERTIsem*nT

Yet another scandal disrupts Los Angeles City Hall.

Mark Ridley-Thomas

Almost a year ago to the day, Mr. Ridley-Thomas, then a member of the Council, was indicted on federal corruption charges. The Oct. 13, 2021, indictment alleged that Mr. Ridley-Thomas had participated in a “bribery scheme” in which his son received free tuition from the University of Southern California “in exchange for Ridley-Thomas supporting county contracts and lucrative contract amendments with the university.”

Early this year, Mr. Ridley-Thomas was expelled from the Council.

Last month, a former U.S.C. dean pleaded guilty and admitted to arranging a $100,000 payment to the councilman. Mr. Ridley-Thomas has pleaded not guilty.

Incidentally, that same investigation has touched Los Angeles mayoral candidate and current congresswoman, Karen Bass. Court filings last month showed that prosecutors were looking into the full scholarship Ms. Bass received to pursue a master’s degree in social work.

The Justice Department recently said that Ms. Bass is “not a target or a subject of our office’s investigation.” Nonetheless, the issue has come up repeatedly in the heated mayoral race.

José Huizar

On June 23, 2020, Councilman José Huizar was arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation as part of a Justice Department investigation into bribes that real estate developers paid to politicians. The charges allege that Mr. Huizar received about $1.5 million in cash and other benefits in exchange for his assistance with getting projects approved.

Mr. Huizar was removed from office on the day of his arrest. He has pleaded not guilty and is scheduled to go on trial in May.

Mitchell Englander

Los Angeles’s 12th district seat was held by Mitchell Englander from 2011-18, and he was the Council's only Republican. He resigned in 2018 to take a job in the private sector, but on June 7, 2020, he pleaded guilty in the same probe that ensnared Mr. Huizar.

According to his plea, Mr. Englander accepted gifts and bribes from a businessman and then lied to F.B.I. agents about it. He was sentenced in January 2021 to 14 months in prison.

Eric Garcetti

Los Angeles’s outgoing mayor, Eric Garcetti, was nominated by President Biden to be the American Ambassador to India in June 2021.

A vote on his confirmation was held up by Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa , a Republican, because of allegations that Mr. Garcetti was aware of sexual misconduct by a close aide but did nothing about it. The adviser, Rick Jacobs, was sued by a former Los Angeles Police Department officer for making unwanted advances and giving excessive hugs.

An investigation found that Mr. Garcetti “likely knew or should have known” about the conduct of Mr. Jacobs, a longtime Democratic fund-raiser who served as the mayor’s chief of staff from 2013-16.

Separately, another chief of staff to Mr. Garcetti, Ana Guerrero, went on leave in June 2021 after disparaging comments she made about other elected officials, government employees and labor leaders in a private Facebook group surfaced.

Advertisem*nt

SKIP ADVERTIsem*nT

If the council members do not resign, they cannot be forced to leave.

If they do not resign, it is unlikely that other City Council members could expel them. The city charter allows the Council to force members out under limited circ*mstances, including if they are convicted of crimes or leave the city for an extended period. But none of those circ*mstances seemed likely to apply in this situation.

By a two-thirds vote, the City Council could censure — or, formally express its disapproval of —members whose actions the Council determined to be a gross failure “to conform to the highest standards of personal and professional conduct.” Separately, Los Angeles voters can recall members, but the process is not fast or easy: Forcing a recall election requires the support of at least 15 percent of the voters in the council member’s district.

Of the three council members in the imbroglio over the audio recording, Mr. Cedillo was already scheduled to leave office in December; he lost his primary for re-election in June. The terms of Ms. Martinez and Mr. de León, however, are set to run through 2024.

If any of the three were to resign, replacement members could be chosen by a vote of the other members of the Council. They already must choose who will replace Ms. Martinez as the council’s president. Mitch O’Farrell, who is acting as president after she gave up the post, said he would hold a vote of the Council next week for a permanent successor.

If a member resigns, the Council could also call a special election for voters to choose a replacement, according to the City Clerk’s office. The LAist, a local news outlet, said such an election would be likely if Ms. Martinez, whose term still has two years to run, were to resign.

Jill Cowan contributed reporting.

Advertisem*nt

SKIP ADVERTIsem*nT

Speaking through tears, Mike Bonin calls on three council members to resign.

Through tears, Mr. Bonin said, “I take a lot of hits, and I know I practically invite a bunch of them. But my son? Man, that makes my soul bleed.”

Mr. Bonin, who represents several of Los Angeles’s Westside neighborhoods, said he first learned of the remarks, which were made in a meeting in 2021, about his son when speaking to The Los Angeles Times on Saturday. He said his first instinct was to implore the paper not to run an article about the remarks, or at least to keep the details vague.

“I knew that I did not want this story about virulent anti-Black racism to be centered on an angry white dad,” he said.

Mr. Bonin and Marqueece Harris-Dawson, who represents several neighborhoods in South Los Angeles, introduced a motion calling for the resignation of the three council members responsible. It was seconded by five other council members.

Mr. Bonin said that he could never fully comprehend his son’s experience of relentless racism, but he knew “the fire that you feel when someone tries to destroy Black boy joy.”

He said that since the audio recording of the conversation was leaked, he had heard from residents about the racism affecting communities across the city. Mr. Bonin also said those residents told him about coordinated efforts to weaken progressives’ voices and undermine people trying to build multiracial coalitions in Los Angeles.

He called for the council members involved in the racist conversation to resign.

“People should not ask me for forgiveness,” Mr. Bonin said. “I can’t forgive them, because it’s not my prerogative. It’s the prerogative of a boy who is too young to really understand” what was going on.

Advertisem*nt

SKIP ADVERTIsem*nT

Disparaging remarks expose long-held racial tensions in the city’s governance.

The Black community in Los Angeles — with 20 percent of the Council seats and powerful civic leaders dating back to Mayor Tom Bradley — has wielded clout beyond its 8.8 percent share of the population. And the Asian American community has become a rising political force in the city, with nearly 12 percent of the population. White Angelenos, with more than 28 percent of the population, have long controlled much of the city’s wealth and power.

Yet residents of Los Angeles routinely tout their diversity as an asset. Since the 1992 riots after the acquittal of police officers in the beating of Rodney King, Angelenos have expressed pride in the strides they have made in race relations.

In polls, Latino residents of the city repeatedly say that their Black neighbors understand them better than do any other ethnic group in Los Angeles, and vice versa, said Fernando Guerra, whose Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University regularly surveys the city’s residents.

Mr. Guerra noted that, as in most of California, getting along remains a work in progress and that unlike the county and state, the city of Los Angeles still allows elected officials, rather than an independent commission, to have the final say in their own district maps. That practice, he said, has contributed to ongoing racial tensions.

Advertisem*nt

SKIP ADVERTIsem*nT

Advertisem*nt

SKIP ADVERTIsem*nT

Here’s what was said on the leaked recording of L.A. City Council members.

It was unclear who leaked the recording, which was of an October 2021 meeting between Ms. Martinez; Gil Cedillo and Kevin de León, council members representing parts of the city’s East Side; and Ron Herrera, who was the head of the powerful Los Angeles County Federation of Labor before he resigned Monday night. They had gathered to discuss how to create new City Council boundaries under the redistricting process.

It was also unclear who had made the recording, which was initially uploaded to Reddit earlier this month by an unidentified, now-suspended user and continued to circulate via email after the post was taken down.

Ms. Martinez, who is not up for re-election until 2024, added that Nithya Raman, a council member of South Asian descent, should not represent Koreatown, which is now largely Latino.

During the conversation, Ms. Martinez also weighed in on a dispute between two Black council members over whose district would include Exposition Park and the University of Southern California. Rather than fight among themselves, Ms. Martinez said, they should demand a map in which one of them gets the massive Los Angeles International Airport. That asset, she noted, is in the district of a white council member, Mike Bonin, whom she referred to with a vulgarity.

In the ensuing exchange, Mr. de León referred to Mr. Bonin as the council’s “fourth Black member” and joked with Ms. Martinez that Mr. Bonin carried his adopted son, who is Black, as if the toddler were a designer handbag. Ms. Martinez complained that on a parade float on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Mr. Bonin had failed to control his son and said that the child’s antics had nearly tipped the float over.

“They’re raising him like a little white kid,” Ms. Martinez said on the recording. “I was like, this kid needs a beatdown. Let me take him around the corner, and then I’ll bring him back.”

The recording was so shocking that local and state leaders on Monday called for all involved to resign immediately. Ms. Martinez said Monday she would no longer serve as council president and then took a leave of absence Tuesday before a regularly scheduled council meeting. Mr. Cedillo and Mr. de León have given no indication that they will step down.

Advertisem*nt

SKIP ADVERTIsem*nT

Advertisem*nt

SKIP ADVERTIsem*nT

Prominent leaders call for the people involved to resign their posts.

Here are some of the prominent figures who have called for resignations.

• The two leading candidates in the closely fought race for mayor of Los Angeles: Rick Caruso, a white billionaire developer on the police commission, and Representative Karen Bass, who is Black and has represented the city in the Legislature and Congress for many years.

• Mayor Eric Garcetti, who is awaiting confirmation as the United States ambassador to India.

• Eunisses Hernandez, a progressive who defeated one of the three council members, Gil Cedillo, in a June primary and will succeed him when his term ends later this year.

• Mike Bonin, a white City Council member with a Black son, both of whom were the targets of bigoted remarks in the recorded conversation. His statement was issued jointly with his husband, Sean Arian.

• Marqueece Harris-Dawson, a Black City Council member, who said he planned to call for an investigation into whether the recorded conversation, which was about redistricting, violated state transparency laws or the federal Voting Rights Act.

• United States Senator Alex Padilla, Democrat of California.

Top Democratic Party officials in the state also called for the three council members’ resignations, as did a wide array of advocacy groups.

As of Tuesday morning, however, Gov. Gavin Newsom had not. He said in a statement on Monday that “words matter, and racist language can do real harm,” and added that he was “encouraged that those involved in this have apologized and begun to take responsibility for their actions,” but did not specifically call for any resignations.

Advertisem*nt

SKIP ADVERTIsem*nT

The outrage in Los Angeles has extended to its tight mayoral race.

After Ms. Martinez resigned from the council presidency — but not her council seat — on Monday, Mr. Caruso and then Ms. Bass joined calls for all three council members to step down. It was an awkward call for both candidates: Mr. Cedillo endorsed Mr. Caruso for mayor and Ms. Martinez endorsed Ms. Bass.

The situation has been delicate for both candidates because the altered electoral landscape in this year’s mayor’s race makes it politically perilous to alienate Latino voters, who make up roughly half the city’s population. All four people on the audio recording are Latino.

In the past, Los Angeles elected its mayors in odd-numbered years, which deeply depressed voter turnout, particularly among Latinos. But this year, for the first time, the mayoral election will be held in an even-numbered year, at the same time as Congressional and state races. And all registered and active voters will automatically have a ballot mailed to their households. The two changes are expected to sharply increase voter participation in the mayoral race, and both candidates have been aggressively courting Latino voters.

Moreover, whoever wins the race will have to work with a 15-member City Council that is now deeply split. Mr. de León, who has apologized for the audio recording but has not yet offered to resign his council seat, is a savvy former state legislator who ran unsuccessfully for mayor himself, finishing a distant third in the June primary.

Late Monday afternoon, the outgoing mayor, Eric Garcetti, who has been in a prolonged state of limbo as he awaits confirmation as the United States ambassador to India, said that all three council members should resign.

“Stepping down from the council would be the right response by these members in a moment that demands accountability and healing at a time of great pain and deep disappointment,” Mr. Garcetti said, adding that he planned to spend his remaining days in office “moving kindness, transparency and respect forward as core values of our city.”

He did not elaborate on what that might mean.

Read the apologies issued by the officials who attended the meeting.

City Council president and member for the Sixth District; her term as council member ends in 2024.

On Tuesday, Ms. Martinez said she would take a leave of absence from the City Council:

This has been one of the most difficult times of my life and I recognize this is entirely of my own making, At this moment, I need to take a leave of absence and take some time to have an honest and heartfelt conversation with my family, my constituents, and community leaders. I am so sorry to the residents of Council District 6, my colleagues, and the City of Los Angeles.

Ms. Martinez issued this statement on Monday:

I take responsibility for what I said and there are no excuses for those comments. I’m so sorry.

I sincerely apologize to the people I hurt with my words: to my colleagues, their families, especially to Mike, Sean and your son. As a mother, I know better and I am sorry. I am truly ashamed. I know this is the result of my own actions. I’m sorry to your entire family for putting you through this.

As someone who believes deeply in the empowerment of communities of color, I recognize my comments undercut that goal. Going forward, reconciliation will be my priority. I have already reached out to many of my Black colleagues and other Black leaders to express my regret in order for us to heal.

I ask for forgiveness from my colleagues and from the residents of this city that I love so much. In the end, it is not my apologies that matter most; it will be the actions I take from this day forward. I hope that you will give me the opportunity to make amends.

Therefore, effective immediately I am resigning as president of the Los Angeles City Council.

In a statement on Sunday, she said:

In a moment of intense frustration and anger, I let the situation get the best of me and I hold myself accountable for these comments. For that I am sorry. The context of this conversation was concern over the redistricting process and concern about the potential negative impact it might have on communities of color. My work speaks for itself. I’ve worked hard to lead this city through its most difficult time.

Gil Cedillo

City Council member for the First District; due to leave office when his term ends in December after a primary defeat in June.

On Monday, Mr. Cedillo issued this statement:

I want to start by apologizing. While I did not engage in the conversation in question, I was present at times during this meeting last year. It is my instinct to hold others accountable when they use derogatory or racially divisive language. Clearly, I should have intervened. I failed in holding others and myself to the highest standard. The hurtful and harmful remarks made about my colleague’s son were simple unacceptable. We choose public life, but our families and should always be off limits and never part of the political discourse.

Kevin de León

City Council member for the Fourteenth District; his term ends in 2024.

Mr. de León issued this statement on Monday:

There were comments made in the context of this meeting that are wholly inappropriate; and I regret appearing to condone and even contribute to certain insensitive comments made about a colleague and his family in private. I’ve reached out to that colleague personally. On that day, I fell short of the expectations we set for our leaders — and I will hold myself to a higher standard.

Ron Herrera

President of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor; resigned on Monday.

Mr. Herrera issued a statement on Sunday night apologizing “for my failure to stand up to racist and anti-Black remarks in that immediate moment,” adding that “there is no justification and no excuse for the vile remarks made in that room.”