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ELECTION 2024 - Exactly two years after being caught making racist and homophobic slurs on leaked audio recordings, disgraced L.A. Councilmember Kevin de Leon tried to turn the tables.
This week, de Leon struggled uphill through the mud of his own making and sought to besmirch the young woman attorney and progressive Democrat, Ysabel Jurado, now running a strong campaign to replace him in L.A.’s Council District 14. But de Leon’s ambush didn’t unfold quite as planned.
De Leon might have thought he had sprung an “October surprise” with release of a recording by campaign operative posing as an opponent of police. The recording captured Jurado, who has criticized increases in spending on police by the City of L.A., talking to college students at Cal State L.A., which is in her Eastside Council District near the 10 and 710 freeways and adjacent to City Terrace. In the clip, Jurado quoted the title of a rap song from the 1980s to express defiance to the over-policing of Black, Latino, and immigrant communities in L.A. It’s a perspective shared by her student audience and by many Angelenos.
De Leon, with assistance from a reporter friendly to him at the L.A. Times, quickly turned the flippant remark into a weapon to attack Jurado. Police groups that were heavily funding and already promoting de Leon’s bid for re-election also piled on to denounce Jurado.
But in the communities of Council District 14, which stretches from Boyle Heights and Downtown L.A. through El Sereno and Hermon to parts of Lincoln Heights and Highland Park and all of Garvanza and Eagle Rock, the ambush landed differently. An incumbent wounded by shooting off his mouth and shooting himself in the foot two years earlier did not get the reaction he intended.
Some voters all but called it a contrived hit. “Well-behaved women rarely make history,” said teacher and Eagle Rock resident Julie McManus in a posting on her neighborhood’s public Facebook page. “Still know she’d make a better candidate than the carpet-bagging KDL, who is already gathering a war chest to run for statewide office. This community is too smart to be fooled twice.”
McManus went on to cite more than $460,000 in taxpayers’ money that de Leon misspent through requests by the Council District 14 office in 2023 to promote himself to voters in a desperate quest to launch his re-election. That came even while, as McManus added “he hid from us under his desk … hoping we’d all forget his racist remarks.”
She concluded, “Enough! ¡basta! #byekevin”
In the neighborhood of Highland Park, another CD 14 voter, Air Force veteran Michael Lee, was more put off by what appeared to be a sanctimonious stunt by de Leon than any transgression by Jurado.
“I grew up believing in the concept of public service,” says Lee, whose Air Force duty came during the Vietnam War from 1971 to 1974. “Whether that was in uniform or as a worker for government.
“I am grateful to this nation. My Latino ancestors were here before it was the U.S. My family is proud to be part of this country. We have worked hard to protect it and to change it to better fulfill the promise of democracy.
“We believe that Ysabel keeps alive this tradition of service. She puts others before herself. She grew up here in our neighborhoods and is part of this community. As a product of our community, she is also a change-maker. She knows that government needs to work better. She rightly believes that giving more money to police is not the way to get people housed or treat mental health.
“How do I know that? Because Ysabel Jurado came to my door and we talked about it. She didn’t pay some hired gun to come knock on my door or send me slick mailers,” adds Lee, in a rebuke to de Leon’s campaign tactics. “She did the work. She earned my vote and my family’s support.”
Nearby in the neighborhood of Garvanza, Navy veteran Dave Lara was moved to speak out after hearing a news report about the dust-up.
"I’m a Navy veteran, openly gay Latino, and a voter in Council District 14,” says Lara. “And I have been disappointed by the Council members representing us for the past several years,” he adds, alluding to de Leon and his predecessor José Huizar, now imprisoned for fraud, extortion, and tax crimes after running a racketeering operation out of the Council office.
“YsabelJurado is the only candidate who will turn the page from the self-serving misuse of our Council office by its past two occupants. I am eager to vote for Ysabel.
“I was a hospital corpsman combat medic during the Vietnam War, 1966 to 1967. I was less than honorably discharged from the United States Navy in 1970 for the sole crime of being a homosexual. In 2020 I was able to get my discharge changed to honorable after 50 years. As you can realize, the word 'honorable' has very special meaning to me,” Lara says.
“The last two Councilmembers dishonored our district, and that must change. An example of that dishonor is Councilmember DeLeon’s racist, homophobic remarks on the leaked audio tape from October 2022. In it he was scheming to deprive Black Angelenos of representation in redistricting.
"Ysabel Jurado is from our community. She puts service before self. She listens to others in shaping her plans to serve our district better. She has worked hard to earn our support. The opportunity to elect Ysabel Jurado will restore the honor that was lost by the last two Councilmembers.”
In Council District 14, what might have been intended as a bombshell ended up more like a de Leon dud. Jurado acknowledges being chastised by her father to not to use a swear word, even by implication or in quoting a song title. She also reports a wave of low-dollar donations from community supporters eagerly chipping in to help her win. Meanwhile, having recently recovered from a bout with COVID, she returned to the campaign trail, meeting directly with constituents and knocking on doors to earn each vote.
(Hans Johnson is a longtime leader for LGBTQ+ human rights, environmental justice, and public education. His columns appear in national news outlets including USA Today and in top daily news outlets of more than 20 states. A resident of Eagle Rock, he is also president of East Area Progressive Democrats (EAPD), the largest grassroots Democratic club in California, with more than 1,100 members.)
