Leaked L.A. City Council Audio Exposes the Racial Underbelly of Local Politics

The leaked October 2021 recording, published first on Reddit and then by the Los Angeles Times, captures a shockingly candid conversation among City Council President

Nury Martinez

and Councilmen

Gil Cedillo

and

Kevin de León.

Ron Herrera,

Los Angeles County’s top union leader, was also present. The four met to discuss how they might carve up the city’s voting districts to maintain Latino political power. Few of the hyperdiverse city’s racial and ethnic groups went uninsulted.

In Spanish, Ms. Martinez called the adopted black child of white Councilman

Mike Bonin

a changuito, or little monkey. She called Mr. Bonin himself “a little bitch,” and accused him of adopting his son for use as a political prop. “It’s the white members on this Council that will m—f— you in a heartbeat,” she said. Even woke District Attorney

George Gascón

got sideswiped. “F— that guy,” she said. “He’s with the blacks.”

The backlash was immediate and intense. Ms. Martinez resigned her role as council president but not, initially, her seat. Mr. Herrera resigned as president of the 800,000-member Los Angeles County Federation of Labor. Mr. Cedillo protested that he “did not engage in the conversation in question” although he was “present at times.” Mr. De León played the same tune: “I regret appearing to condone and even contribute to certain insensitive comments made about a colleague and his family in private.” In the future, he promised, “I will hold myself to a higher standard.”

When the 15-member council attempted to meet Wednesday morning, African-American activists swarmed the chambers and demanded that the three council members resign immediately. When that didn’t happen, the activists shut down the meeting in the presence of city police dressed for a riot. One protester was arrested. By the end of the day, Ms. Martinez acknowledged reality and resigned her council seat.

By then, the story had gone national. “The president is glad to see that one of the participants in that conversation has resigned, but they all should,” said

Karine Jean-Pierre,

the White House press secretary. She called the discussion “unacceptable” and “appalling.”

It is those things, but it’s also ironic. The Democrats who rule Los Angeles fly the woke flag of social justice proudly. Yet here they were, behind closed doors, speaking like Jim Crow racists.

Los Angeles is a one-party city in a one-party state. Its politics lack real philosophical rigor, so political competitions routinely devolve into narrow personal attacks and the division of spoils—like redistricting maps. The old cliché is still true: The brilliant sunshine and Hollywood glamour mask darker realities. The city is financially hollowed out and faces “recessionary economic conditions and inflationary pressure on labor, capital, and energy costs,” according to

Mark Moses,

a former city finance director. “You can be assured that little productive fiscal work can be done in such an environment.”

You can also be assured that while the politicians call each other names in private, the city will continue to spiral downward. Homeless camps and open-air drug markets will continue to metastasize. Construction of new housing will remain effectively prohibited, save for those who are magnificently wealthy, politically connected or both. And the public education system will continue to be run by a teachers union more interested in transgenderism,

Donald Trump

and the Israel-Palestine conflict than in teaching students to read and write.

In all likelihood, Ms. Martinez’s political career—distinguished by allegiance to the woke issues of the day—is over. After the 2020 murder of

George Floyd,

she pledged to cut funding for the Los Angeles Police Department. She called on her colleagues “to finally end the sin of racism and all of its illogical, dehumanizing and sometimes deadly consequences. . . . Ultimately, we cannot talk about change, we have to be about change.”

An overlooked irony of this week’s drama was the timing of the recording’s release, on the eve of Indigenous Peoples Day. “I see a lot of little, short dark people,” said Ms. Martinez, apparently referring to immigrants from Oaxaca, Mexico, who have concentrated in Los Angeles’s Koreatown neighborhood. “I was like, ‘I don’t know where these people are from, I don’t know what village they came [from], how they got here.’ ” Ms. Martinez was among those on the City Council in 2017 who voted to rename the holiday formerly known as Columbus Day in honor of indigenous communities.

Even in her resignation letter Ms. Martinez was still using the incantatory language of race and gender. “To all little Latina girls across this city,” she wrote, “I hope I’ve inspired you to dream beyond that which you can see.” Unfortunately, there are some things little girls can’t unsee—or unhear.

Mr. Swaim is president of the California Policy Center and cohost of National Review’s Radio Free California podcast.