LA City Council Goes Virtual Due to COVID Case, Amid Audio Leak Scandal
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The Los Angeles City Council’s next two meetings will be conducted remotely due to the possible COVID exposure after Councilman Mike Bonin tested positive Oct. 12 for COVID-19. Bonin was present at the council meeting earlier that day.
“With the possibility that there will be more positive cases, out of an abundance of caution we will hold both Tuesday [Oct. 18] and Wednesday’s [Oct. 19] meetings virtually, as we did for over a year during the height of the pandemic,” Acting Council President Mitch O’Farrell said in a statement.
Bonin wrote on Twitter Oct. 15 that his most recent COVID test, taken on the morning of Oct. 15, was negative.
The Oct. 14 council meeting was canceled due to multiple protests this week in the Council Chamber regarding a recorded October 2021 conversation leaked a week ago involving four elected officials that included a series of racially charged remarks and discussions over the city’s redistricting process.
Two of them—former Council President Nury Martinez and former LA County Federation of Labor President Ron Herrera—have resigned, but Councilmen Kevin de León and Gil Cedillo have resisted the growing calls. Currently, the council is functioning under an acting president—O’Farrell—after Martinez resigned.
“The situation is fluid right now,” Councilman Marqueece Harris-Dawson told City News Service on Oct. 14. “We’re in a period where we’re in a holding pattern, waiting for these resignations.”
O’Farrell said the previous day, the “people’s business cannot be conducted” until de León and Cedillo resign, but Dan Halden, O’Farrell’s communications director, said Friday that “we do have to conduct business” after planning the virtual meetings for next week.
The council is set to take up several major items Oct. 18, including electing a new council president, considering placing a measure on the 2024 ballot to create an independent redistricting commission for the city, and a motion to explore expanding the number of council seats.
Martinez—who was the most vocal on the released recording—resigned Oct. 10 as council president, took a leave of absence on Tuesday, then resigned her seat altogether on Wednesday under intense pressure.
It is unclear what will happen if de León and Cedillo do not resign by Oct. 18, the council’s next regular meeting.
At least two council members—Harris-Dawson and Bonin—and Councilwoman-elect Eunisses Hernandez said the council should not meet without the pair’s resignations.
Harris-Dawson expects to meet that day “because they will have already resigned,” he told City News Service, though he did not have any knowledge of the two embattled councilors’ decisions.
Protests will be expected again in the Council Chamber in the upcoming meeting if the council met in person without their resignations.
When asked by City News Service if the potential for another disruption factored into the decision to hold the meetings virtually, Halden said the move was “about the COVID-19 diagnosis.”
Halden later said it was important for the council to move forward and have a meeting. Halden added that the pain and anger Angelenos feel from the release of the recording “comes from a real place,” but “at the same time, we do have to conduct business.”
De León and Cedillo—who attempted to attend Oct. 11’s meeting but were asked to leave after protesters voiced objections to their presence, would be able to attend the virtual meetings without facing the public face-to-face. Their attendance would “not be appropriate, no matter the format in which we are meeting,” Halden said.
Harris-Dawson sought a bit of empathy for de León and Cedillo, noting the intense media focus on the scandal and the potential that they might feel like they’ve been misunderstood.
“They all, particularly Gil Cedillo, they have a body of work that sort of gets overlooked in the heat of this particular moment,” Harris-Dawson said. “So, I just think it takes a moment emotionally and logistically to get to the place where you can step up and do the right thing.”
Harris-Dawson, who is black, was mentioned in the leaked recording. He said he hasn’t spoken to either councilman.
“You always know that there’s anti-black racism all around you,” Harris-Dawson said. “You don’t realize that there’s anti-black sentiment sitting right next to you. So I think it’s going to be a while before we get to the stage where there can be regular interaction.”
Rep. Judy Chu (D-Monterey Park) told CNS that the council “can’t have an actual, calm meeting unless these two resign.”
“The feelings are too raw in the city,” Chu said, “So people are angry, people are outraged, people are feeling that anger right in the soul of their bodies, and so that’s why I think they cannot have a LA City Council meeting until these two resign. Then we can start the process of healing.”
Despite no meeting on Oct. 14, a couple of dozen protesters showed up at City Hall to demand de León and Cedillo’s resignations, blocking off Main Street until around 11 a.m.
George Hurod, one of the protesters, was at City Hall this week during the disrupted meetings. Hurod, a member of the Los Angeles Community Action Network, told CNS he had planned to return to the chamber to shut down the upcoming meeting again, echoing several others who have attended the meetings since the scandal broke.
“Of course,” Hurod said. “Until they’re out, I’ll be here.”
A group of protesters showed up outside de León’s home on the morning of Oct. 15 dressed as sanitation workers, making noise with a bullhorn and leaf blower.
“NOTICE OF MAJOR CLEANING: Kevin De Leon is getting a wake-up call this morning since he still hasn’t decided to resign,” the left-wing group People’s City Council-Los Angeles wrote on Twitter. “Looks like LA SAN and crew are here to give him the same treatment that our Unhoused neighbors get in his district every day.”
Later that day, hundreds of members of local indigenous communities marched in downtown Los Angeles, demanding the councilors’ resignations. Some of the demonstrators wore traditional Oaxacan outfits—referencing the leaked recording, in which Martinez can be heard calling Oaxacans “little short dark people.”
“I don’t know what village they came [from], how they got here, but boy they’re ugly,” the former council president says at one point.
De León, 55, has been on the council since 2020 and made an unsuccessful run for mayor this year. Prior to the city council, he was in the state Senate and Assembly from 2006 to 2014. Cedillo, 68, has been in office since 2013 but was defeated by Hernandez in the June primary.
Bonin—whose young black son was targeted by some of Martinez’s racial slurs—again called for the two councilors to resign on Oct. 15.
“[D]e León’s and Cedillo’s refusal to resign is another deep wound they’re inflicting on us all. Let Los Angeles heal. Resign today,” he wrote on Twitter.
Sophie Li and Joyce Kuo contributed to this report.
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