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Kevin de León in 2011 when he was a California state senator. | Photo courtesy of Neon Tommy/Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)
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By ERIC HE
Several of Kevin de León’s colleagues on the Los Angeles City Council criticized the embattled councilman Wednesday over his continued resistance to resigning for his role in the City Hall racism scandal.
The council voted 12-0 Wednesday to censure de León — along with Councilman Gil Cedillo and former Council President Nury Martinez — with some members making it known that they do not appreciate de León conducting rounds of interviews with television and radio stations over the past week without resigning.
During the interviews, de León claimed that resigning would be the easy way out, and he wants to do the work of healing with the communities that he has hurt.
While de León and Cedillo have resisted intense calls to resign, protesters have attempted to disrupt City Council meetings, demanding that the council not conduct business without resignations. The council this week has attempted to hold meetings over the chants and shouts of protesters in the chamber. But on Wednesday, Council President Paul Krekorian had to clear the chamber before taking up the items on censure after protesters refused his requests to quiet down.
Krekorian, in a news briefing Wednesday with several council members, said that if de León — who has not attended a meeting in more than two weeks and will not be at council this week — attempts to come back to meetings, other members of the council would leave the meeting and threaten a quorum.
Without de León and Cedillo, the council can only afford two more absences to maintain 10 participants, the minimum number of members for a quorum.
“That is a clear example of how his continuing presence as a member of the council is actually detracting from our ability to do the important work,” Krekorian said.
In the past week, de León has spoken to Univision, CBS 2, NBC 4, ABC 7 and KBLA 1580.
During an hourlong interview Tuesday with KBLA’s Tavis Smiley — the longest interview he has conducted since the recording of the 2021 conversation was leaked — de León reiterated that he does not plan to resign and attempted to apologize for his participation in the conversation.
De León called the Black community “the community that I’ve aggrieved, I’ve hurt the most” and said he felt a sense of embarrassment and shame.
When Smiley asked how the councilman could claim that he isn’t resigning because his district needs a voice when he isn’t representing them at meetings, de León took a lengthy pause.
“I’m trying to allow some time to heal,” he said. “I’m trying to allow some time to not be part of the chaos at this moment. That’s what I’m asking for right now.”
The council cannot remove de León or Cedillo; they would have to resign or, in de León’s case, be recalled. Cedillo’s term expires in December, as he lost his reelection bid in June.
Pete Brown, de León’s communications director, said Tuesday there was no timeline for de León to return to the council and that he was continuing his “outreach to the community.” A spokesman for Cedillo has maintained that the councilman is at “a place of reflection.”
Councilman Paul Koretz said Wednesday that he doesn’t believe de León will need to be recalled.
“I don’t believe he can keep this up, and I don’t think he should,” Koretz said. “At some point he has to recognize he can’t move on with his life until he resigns.”
Once de León resigns, then “he can go on a healing tour of media and community groups and try to bring this city together,” Koretz said.
Councilman Mitch O’Farrell, in the briefing, said de León’s “atonement and apology tour is really a sideshow and it’s a way of distracting from the original sin” of why the three council members and a top county labor official met — to discuss ways to manipulate redistricting.
The Ad Hoc Censure Committee voted 5-0 Wednesday morning to recommend the two censure motions to the full council. Councilman Marqueece Harris-Dawson, chair of the committee, said before voting to censure that de León “continues to go on a revisionist history tour in the public and continues to make a mockery of this council, and a mockery of the entire city for his own personal benefit.”
“And I think it causes a reaction in the public that we saw today, and I think that will continue to happen as long as he holds the city hostage,” Harris-Dawson said.
But Harris-Dawson also said that was happy to live in a city where the public doesn’t say: “By all means council, carry on, business as usual in peace.”
