Kevin de Leon says he’s sorry but won’t resign

Gustavo Arellano, Tribune News Service

After a week and a half of silence, Kevin de Leon emerged on Wednesday afternoon to let the world know he is really, truly, honestly sorry for what he said, and didn’t say, on the racist recording that has rocked Los Angeles.

The embattled councilmember appeared on CBS Los Angeles to repeat again and again that he “failed” to stop one colleague, Nury Martinez, from taking bigoted shots at a range of Angelenos, and another, Gil Cedillo, from plotting to take over seats held by Black politicians.

“I failed in that moment in time to step up and shut that meeting down,” De Leon told reporter Tom Wait. He asked for forgiveness “from my people, my community for the harm caused by the painful words” uttered on the tape.

Also up: an interview in Spanish with Univision anchor Leon Krauze, who flew out from the network’s home base in Florida. Lighted in funereal shadows, De Leon said he felt “horrible” six times about what Martinez, Cedillo and former Los Angeles County Federation of Labor President Ron Herrera had said about Black people, Jews, Armenians, Oaxacans and other councilmembers. When Krauze pressed De Leon on why he stayed quiet, the councilmember responded in Spanglish, “Estaba yo en shock, completamente shock.”

De Leon punctuated his afternoon of apologies with a letter to newly appointed LA City Council President Paul Krekorian, writing with “a shame deeper than I have ever known and from a place of deep humility.” The only thing, De Leon said, that gave comfort during his hard times was “a community of angels” who came to him with encouraging words “I feel I hardly deserve.”

It would’ve been a good exercise in contrition — if any of it was real.

Because, you see, in the midst of this forgive-me farce, De Leon reiterated that, nope, he’s going to stay in his seat despite nearly the entire Democratic establishment, from fellow councilmembers to US Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) to even President Biden, asking for his resignation.

Martinez, who uttered the most offensive comments, has resigned, while Cedillo remains in office. To Krekorian, De Leon wrote that resigning would be “only a solution that benefits me — not the people who elected me to represent them.”

To CBS Los Angeles, he said he wanted to “help heal the wounds that have existed for so many years, if not decades.”

Meanwhile, he told Krauze that resigning wouldn’t help anyone in his working-class district “because there’s still a lot of work ahead” with “COVID, unemployment, the threat of evictions and the humanitarian crisis of homelessness.”

His stance was classic Kevin: self-serving, messianic and calculating.

He’s leaning on his reputation as a Latino political giant — longtime immigrant rights and labor activist, former assembly member and head of the California Senate — in betting that some will cool their ire because they need someone who knows how to get things done for Latinos. He’s banking that his overwhelmingly Latino constituents are far enough removed from City Hall to not care much about the controversy. And he thinks that if he casts stones at Martinez and Cedillo, the public will overlook his sins. I’ve met Kevin a couple of times over the years and find him smarter than most. He’s funny, hardworking and loyal. That’s why I don’t underestimate his strategy — in fact, it’s slowly unspooling as I write.

A group of Latino men showed up outside De León’s house this week demanding that Black Lives Matter-Los Angeles protesters “give him his space.” Other supporters plan a rally this Saturday in East Los Angeles, which isn’t in De Leon’s district — but no matter. “Sadly,” a Facebook posting advertising the event reads, “political opposition has created a media circus to reduce the number of Latino councilmen which will reduce the services going to our community.”

Friends who have long worked with De Leon on many of his signature causes — climate change, turning California into a sanctuary state for immigrants, gun control, but especially Latino representation in California’s corridors of power — keep calling me to argue that to lose him now would be an incalculable blow at a time when Latinos can least afford it. Some have even ridiculously described what has happened to him, Martinez and Cedillo as little better than an execution.

My response, besides slapping down the comparison, is to point out that this episode has illuminated the worst of De León’s tendencies, which he shares with another embattled Latino elected official, Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva.

The massive chips on their shoulders constantly sink their ambition — and put the people they serve at risk. In the grand scheme of the tape, De León didn’t say the worst things. He did call Councilmember Mike Bonin the “fourth Black councilmember” who “won’t ever say peep about Latinos. He’ll never say a word about us.”

He also compared Black political power to the Wizard of Oz — the idea that it’s not all it’s made out to be. And he told both CBS Los Angeles and Univision that when he compared Bonin’s Black son to a Louis Vuitton handbag, it was actually meant as a jab against Martinez’s taste for luxury goods — a face-saving low blow against a former ally. No, what struck me the most about De León is how aggrieved he is.

The leaked tape caught him whining about how people criticised him for holding a party at Walt Disney Concert Hall to mark his ascension as Senate president pro tem “because we as Latinos — whether you’re labour or you’re in the political space — we’re not supposed to fill those positions.” White people would have been OK with the party if he’d had it at El Pueblo, Olvera Street, Roosevelt High or Pacoima, he said.

He mentioned white people six times, from “little white lady” to “white people will cut you in a heartbeat” and the “white liberal world.”

It’s a side of De Leon I’ve noticed from the start — one I always felt was beneath his talents.

When I interviewed him for my 2019 podcast on Proposition 187, the 1994 anti-immigrant ballot initiative that inspired a generation of Latino activists like De Leon to run for office, one of the first things he said was how racist The Times had been for endorsing the measure. I replied that while I agreed that the paper was terribly wrong, The Times of today was vastly different.

He moved on. During a mayoral candidate debate on homelessness this month co-hosted by The Times and KCRW, De Leon punted on a difficult question by my co-moderator Anna Scott by playing the dumb Latino immigrant. “No hablo ingles,” he said — I don’t speak English.