Los Angeles council president takes leave amid calls for her resignation over racist remarks

Los Angeles City Councilmember Nury Martinez said Tuesday she would take a leave of absence amid calls for her resignation following the release of tape of her making racist remarks in a conversation with colleagues.

The decision by Martinez, who resigned her post as council president over the weekend, marked the latest turn in a political crisis that began to engulf California’s largest city Sunday with the emergence of the recording of her speaking in private with councilmembers Kevin de León and Gil Cedillo, and then-labor leader Ron Herrera in which they make racist comments and denigrate colleagues.

Elected officials have reacted with revulsion and calls for the council members to resign. The fallout led Herrera to resign Monday from his position leading the powerful Los Angeles County Federation of Labor. Martinez stepped down from presidency of the city council on Monday and followed up on Tuesday by saying she would "take some time to have an honest and heartfelt conversation with my family, my constituents, and community leaders."

That step was unlikely to mollify the many elected officials who have called for Martinez to leave office. It meant she would be absent from a planned Tuesday city council meeting.

A growing swath of city and state Democratic officials demanded Martinez, de Léon and Cedillo relinquish their seats. The list includes both the state and county Democratic parties, several Los Angeles city council members, numerous state lawmakers and Congress members representing Los Angeles, and U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla – a Los Angeles native who is a longtime ally of Martinez.

“At a time when our nation is grappling with a rise in hate speech and hate crimes, these racist comments have deepened the pain that our communities have endured,” Padilla said in a statement. “Los Angeles deserves better.”

The recorded conversation rocked Los Angeles and conjured a painful history of racism that coexists with the city’s celebrated diversity. Rep. Karen Bass, who followed fellow mayoral candidate Rick Caruso in calling for the members’ resignations, said in a statement she had spent Sunday “speaking with Black and Latino leaders about how to ensure this doesn’t divide our city.”

“As President Biden has said, we need to heal the soul of America, and now is the time for us to heal the soul of Los Angeles,” Los Angeles Democratic Party leaders said in a statement Monday.

The three members had not stepped aside as of Tuesday morning, about 48 hours after the Los Angeles Times first published the contents of the recordings. That raised the prospect of a deeply divided city council in which two serving members would be profoundly alienated from their colleagues. While Cedillo is on his way out after losing a primary, Martinez and de Léon are not up for re-election until 2024.

In the recordings — which were posted anonymously to Reddit but whose authenticity has not been disputed — the council members refer to another council member’s Black son as a “little monkey” in Spanish and liken him to an “accessory” who deserves a “beatdown.”

The conversation also veers into the raw power politics of redistricting and competition between ethnic groups. They talk about distributing “assets” to “Latino districts,” undermining a colleague by putting her district “in a blender” and using new lines to “create districts that benefit you all.” The four Latinos deride Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón as “for the Blacks,” argue white council members ignore Latinos, and warn African-American council members could “come after us” in an act of political reprisal.