By Erin B. Logan
Earlier this week, The Times published an audio recording where the then-City Council President made racist remarks during an October 2021 meeting about redistricting. The conversation between Los Angeles County Federation of Labor President Ron Herrera and Councilmembers Nury Martinez, Kevin de León and Gil Cedillo has shocked much of the city and led to calls for their resignations. Mayor Eric Garcetti, California Sen. Alex Padilla, Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank) and mayoral candidates Rep. Karen Bass (D-Los Angeles) and billionaire developer Rick Caruso have all said the council members should resign. On Tuesday afternoon, a spokesperson for Joe Biden said that the president agrees.
This week, we are going to look west and chat with City Hall reporter Julia Wick about what’s happened and the potential consequences for upcoming elections.
Erin Logan: Julia, what’s going on at City Hall?
Julia Wick: A leaked recording reported on Sunday morning by The Timeshas had explosive reverberations in the city. The roughly year-old conversation largely focused on the city’s once-every-decade redistricting process.
Much of the naked racism on the tape came from then-City Council President Nury Martinez describing a white councilmember’s young Black son as a “changuito,” or little monkey, and suggested the boy deserved a “beat down.” That horrified Angelenos. Martinez’s openly anti-Black and anti-Indigenous racist remarks occurred while other participants —Councilmen Kevin de León and Gil Cedillo and Los Angeles County Federation of Labor President Ron Herrera — laughed and occasionally chimed in. It feels like an open wound in the city right now. People are shocked by how our leaders speak behind closed doors, and are deeply, deeply upset.
EL: What have the repercussions looked like so far?
JW: Martinez stepped down as council president Monday morning. On Tuesday morning, she announced that she was taking a leave of absence, but she remains on the council as of Tuesday afternoon. Calls for all three councilmembers to resign have grown deafening, with many of their closest political allies demanding that they step down. The council had their first meeting since the leak on Tuesday morning, where anger boiled over and dozens of people lined up to ask Cedillo, De León and Martinez to resign.
Councilmember Mike Bonin, whose young Black son was derided by Martinez, gave an emotional speech at the beginning of the meeting where he said, the words “cut and they stung.”
As a white father, Bonin said, “I can never really know or comprehend or feel the weight of the daily relentless racism, anti-Black racism that my son is gonna face.
“But man, I know the fire you feel when someone tries to destroy Black boy joy. Man, it’s a rage.”
There is no precedent in recent L.A. political history for such upheaval.
EL: Julia, can you talk about the reaction from the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor? Why were they even in the room to begin with?
JW: The Fed has an enormous amount of political power in Los Angeles. They are very closely aligned with a number of politicians and they pour big money into city races. This has been like a bomb going off at City Hall and I think it’s had similar repercussions both in the labor community and at the federation, which is the umbrella organization for a large group of unions. I think people have been really, really shaken by what’s on the tape. Ron Herrera, president of the Federation, which is a very influential position in Los Angeles, resigned last night. It’s not yet clear who will replace him.
EL: In an earlier version of the first story we published about the recording, it seemed as if the federation was trying to stop The Times from publishing the story.
JW: Yes, so anytime we publish a story, we would go out to the parties involved and ask for comment. And with this story, we went out to everyone who was on that tape, including Ron. We got a letter back from the federation’s lawyer, saying the conversation was “recorded in violation of California and privacy and recording laws on Los Angeles County Federation property.” And basically, saying that if we publish the information, it would be condoning this illegal conduct.
California is a two-party consent state, which means that it’s illegal to record a conversation unless everyone consents. That’s not the case in a lot of states, but it is in California. The thing is though, on the journalist side, that doesn’t really matter. There’s a large body of legal precedent that says that journalists can move forward with the publication of newsworthy leaked audio, even if it was secretly recorded.
EL: Do we know who recorded the audio? How do we know the location where the conversation took place? Why it took one year to leak?
JW: That’s a great question. This is an area where I’m sorry to say we still have a lot more questions than answers.
What we know is that the audio was recorded at the Fed last October. We have a pretty good sense of the date because of [them] referring to Councilmember Mark Ridley Thomas’ arraignment being on Wednesday. So we know it was within a week of that. And they’re talking about things in the redistricting process that we know happen on certain days. There was a point in the conversation where then-Council President Nury Martinez appears to answer her phone and say something like, ‘I’m at the Fed.’ The federation’s lawyers’ letters to us confirmed the conversation took place on their property.
What we don’t know is whether anyone else was in the room with them and who recorded the tape. It appears to be part of a larger set of leaks that happened at the Fed.
EL: Larger leaks? Can you talk more about that?
JW: Yes, all the leaks came from a Reddit user who had their account suspended. It has since been restored. But they had a couple of other postings that were also leaks. Those are much harder to hear, but they appear to be conversations that took place at the Fed. It’s possible that these council members were not at all the target of this. But the timing is pretty pivotal with elections in about a month. Talk about an October surprise.
EL: Ah, yes. The election. Could this leak influence down-ballot races?
I think this will play into down-ballot races but it’s too soon to say exactly how. The Fed has endorsed a number of candidates and put quite a bit of money into races of this election cycle. But they’re such a staple in the Los Angeles political ecosystem and I don’t think that suddenly people are going to be backing away from Federation-endorsed candidates.
EL: Could this influence the mayor’s race?
JW: It’s really hard to say. This is a massive, massive scandal and we’re still at the tip of the iceberg of how this is going to unfold. I feel certain that it will have an impact on the mayor’s race. But I don’t yet know what that impact will look like.
EL: Could it look like either voters backing candidate Karen Bass, who is Black, to show solidarity with her and their distaste for the racist remarks? Or could voters want to get rid of the current L.A. political power structure, which Bass is part of, and back candidate Rick Caruso, who has recently emerged on the political scene?
JW: Yes, that could be the main way it could cut. But politics are rarely binary. It’s very possible it will play both of those ways and also six other ways that I can’t yet imagine because it will be in reaction to things that haven’t happened yet.
Source: