Last week, Los Angeles police Chief Michel Moore announced the department’s Major Crimes Division has opened an investigation into allegations of “eavesdropping” to find whoever recorded and leaked a secret meeting at the L.A. County Federation of Labor last October that revealed ugly racism within the ranks of L.A.’s elites. In a city that tolerates homelessness, vandalism, arson, theft and political corruption, exposing the truth about our elected officials is the one crime that must not go unpunished.
California has a two-party consent law requiring all participants in a recorded conversation to agree in advance, so it’s likely whoever did the taping is guilty of violating the law.
Chief Moore said the case came about at the request of former councilmember Nury Martinez, and councilmembers Gil Cedillo and Kevin de Leon. Yet a spokesperson for de Leon said the councilman did not ask for an investigation.
So, which is it? Did Chief Moore make it up? We can’t even get a straight story about something as simple as this.
During another near-riotous council meeting on Wednesday, what’s left of the City Council called again for Cedillo and De Leon to resign, then voted unanimously to censure Martinez, Cedillo and de Leon the maximum penalty they have the legal authority to impose.
Cedillo hopes to run out the clock on his term tghat ends in December thanks to his defeat in the June primary, so he can pretend he left office honorably. De Leon is another story. He belligerently refuses to resign, insisting he’ll serve out his remaining two years because he’s indispensable to his district.
Councilman de Leon’s career is the perfect prism through which to trace California’s incestuous game of office-hopping and back scratching.
Kevin De Leon was elected to represent the 45th Assembly District in 2006 and quickly made his mark in Sacramento when he “ghost voted” for fellow Democratic Assemblywoman Mary Hayashi. De Leon allegedly voted opposite to the position Hayashi was on record as supporting. This incident prompted an investigation by then-State Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, who subsequently outlawed ghost voting and had Hayashi’s vote changed. De Leon suffered zero consequences. (In a footnote to this story, Mary Hayashi’s political career hit a reef when she was caught shoplifting $2,400 worth of clothes from a Neiman Marcus.)
This is who has been running California.
Meanwhile, Karen Bass, the front-runner in L.A.’s mayoral race, is embroiled in the USC scandal that landed Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas in hot water. Bass received a free $90,000 graduate degree from the same corrupt School of Social Work dean who cut a plea deal with prosecutors.
After being termed out of the Assembly, Kevin de Leon was elected to the state Senate, winning the seat held by Gil Cedillo. When de Leon finally termed out of the Senate, he was replaced by Maria Elena Durazo, former head of the L.A. County Federation of Labor, in whose offices De Leon, Cedillo and Nury Martinez not only tossed around racist insults, but conspired with Federation boss Ron Herrera (who succeeded Durazo) to carve up council districts and chip away at Black power at City Hall.
For those of you keeping score, here’s how Maria Elena Durazo became Federation of Labor boss: Her husband, labor icon Miguel Contreras, died suddenly. He was succeeded by Martin Ludlow who was promptly indicted six months later in a fund-raising scandal, clearing the way for Durazo to claim her late husband’s post.
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Kevin De Leon ran for City Council to fill the vacancy created when Jose Huizar was arrested for his alleged part in a massive pay-to-play bribery scheme that inadvertently uncovered Councilman Mitch Englander’s bathroom stall cash-grabs that sent Englander to prison.
The astonishing musical-chairs career of de Leon not only demonstrates the endless recycling of the same people who have mismanaged us into today’s mess, but also illustrates the epidemic of arrests, convictions, plea deals and impending trials that have become the rule rather than the exception in Los Angeles.
But rest easy! The LAPD is out to catch the person responsible for us knowing about any of this. Proving that even in crime-tolerant L.A., some lines simply can’t be crossed.
Doug McIntyre can be reached at: Doug@DougMcIntyre.com.