LA City Council President Resigns from Leadership amid Backlash over Racist Remarks, Will Remain on Council

Los Angeles City Council president Nury Martinez resigned from her leadership position on Monday after audio leaked over the weekend of her making racially charged comments about other city officials, their family members, and the municipalities’ political demographics during a conversation with two colleagues.

“I take responsibility for what I said and there are no excuses for those comments,” Martinez said in a statement. “I’m so sorry.”

While Martinez has stepped down as president, she will remain on the 15-member council, the Los Angeles Times reported.

In the recording of the conversation between Martinez, Councilmen Kevin de León and Gil Cedillo, as well as Ron Herrera, the president of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, Martinez referred to a white colleague’s two-year-old black son as a “changuito,” which means “little monkey,” and said she believed “he needs a beatdown.”

De León chimed in to call the child’s adoptive father, Mike Bonin, the council’s “fourth Black member,” and charge Bonin with carrying his son around like a designer handbag.

Martinez also fretted that the county’s district attorney, George Gascón, was “with the blacks” and disparaged Oaxacan immigrants in the city as “short little dark people.” The conversation was centered around redistricting efforts in the city and the participants attempts to shore up their own re-election chances and guarantee greater Latino representation on the city council.

As part of the discussion, Martinez implied that Nithaya Raman, who is of South Asian descent, should not represent a Latino neighborhood. Raman won her 2020 election with just under 53 percent of the vote.

In a statement announcing her resignation, Martinez said that “as someone who believes deeply in the empowerment of communities of color, I recognize my comments undercut that goal,” and promised that “going forward, reconciliation will be my priority.”

De León has professed to “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.”

Upon being chosen to serve as president by her fellow councilmen, Martinez said that “as the daughter of Mexican immigrants, it is not lost on me that in one of the most diverse cities in the world and the second-largest city in the nation, I will soon become the first Latina City Council President in Los Angeles’ storied history.”

In June 2020, Martinez introduced a motion to cut Los Angeles Police Department funding in the aftermath of the the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

“American society is founded on racial hierarchy,” stated Martinez at the time, before declaring that “we can begin to slowly dismantle those systems that are designed to harm people of color.”

Martinez and her colleagues cut the police department budget by $150 million, resulting in over $47 million in unpaid overtime hours by LAPD officers in the 2020-2021 fiscal year that will need to eventually be paid back, with interest, by taxpayers.

She reacted to a Los Angeles Times report on the council’s fiscal mismanagement by arguing that “regardless of any inevitable overtime pay, it’s undeniable that this council has listened and is focused on creating a more equitable city.”

Three hundred and ninety seven murders were recorded in Los Angeles in 2021, the most since 2006. It’s on track for roughly the same number of homicides this year.