We live in a world the L.A. City Hall audio leak scandal wrought. Thank God
If I ever need to humble myself — if my head inflates with grand visions of becoming the next Steve Lopez or Bill Plaschke — I pull up the transcript of the secret recording that upended Los Angeles politics after The Times broke the story exactly four years ago.
It’s like a modern-day version of “Ozymandias,” except far more vulgar, nowhere near as poetic and a better warning against hubris than anything Shelley could have penned.
“The thing for us is to exercise our power,” said then-City Councilmember Gil Cedillo, about halfway through an hourlong conversation he was having with three of the city’s most powerful political figures.
Oh, did they ever — and nowhere near the way they intended.
Nury Martinez and Ron Herrera, the president of the City Council and head of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, respectively, quickly resigned for their roles in the racist, homophobic drivel on the recording. Cedillo — who was finishing out his term — and Councilmember Kevin de León refused to step down, besmirching their well-earned reputations as progressive lions.
The L.A. they sought to create — where Latinos ascend at the expense of the Black community, and anyone who gets in the way is crushed — never came to be. And the recording that exposed their machinations ultimately destroyed the type of ethnic politicking that made the careers of too many self-serving power grabbers, including this quartet.
The transcript of their back-and-forth now reads as prophecy — and we’re far better for it.
Much of the discussion, which happened in October 2021 at the headquarters of the L.A. County Federation of Labor, was devoted to whining that L.A.’s Latino-majority council districts, and some cities elsewhere in the county, were represented by Black leaders instead of Latinos, even as Latino residents far outnumbered Black ones.
“F—, the way I see it, all of the seats are Latino,” said Herrera, who hailed the rise of a “little Latino caucus of our … own” that he felt should reign permanently.
He and the others predicted a future in which vengeful Black politicians would try to sabotage future Latino leaders on their way out of office, creating “poor Latino districts with nothing,” as Martinez put it.
She was referring to redistricting proposals that would chop off assets like the Coliseum and Exposition Park from South L.A.’s District 9 — the most Latino district in the city, represented by a Black council member, Curren Price.
“So they f— a future Latino for CD 9,” De León whined. “That’s how arrogant, just how arrogant it is.”
That’s not what ended up happening.
Los Angeles City Councilmember Kevin de León at a council meeting in December 2022 after a two-month absence following his role in that year’s audio leak scandal.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
District 9 didn’t lose any assets. Black leaders saw the writing on the wall and didn’t run a serious Black candidate to replace the termed-out Price this year. That created space for two Latinos — Estuardo Mazariegos and Jose Ugarte — to make it to the general election. No matter which candidate wins in November, the City Council will have fewer than three Black members for the first time in 63 years.
Both Mazariegos and Ugarte say that the anti-Black scheming of the audio leak villains inspired them to run campaigns focusing on Black and Latino residents as one constituency, reflecting how life is actually lived in South L.A., not how Latinos from elsewhere in the city imagine it to be.
Mazariegos attended the first City Council meeting after The Times dropped the audio leak bombshell in October 2022. He remembers Cedillo peeking at the angry audience and temporarily returning to the council’s back room.
“No community should have to lose power for another to gain it,” said Mazariegos, who would become the first Central American immigrant to serve on the council if he were to win. “Our power grows when we build it together.”
Ugarte, formerly one of Price’s top aides, agreed. He argued that the best way to lead in South L.A. as a Latino council member is “with respect for those who came before us, the humility to listen to those doing the work today, and the understanding that District 9 is strongest when [Black and Latino residents] move forward together.”
Born in Oaxaca, Ugarte would become L.A.’s first Indigenous council member if he wins. That would be a rich coda to the audio leak, considering that Oaxacans received some of the nastiest insults. Martinez described them as “ little short dark people” who were feos — ugly. Cedillo joked that they were “little ones,” while Herrera cracked that they were “indios.”
Who’s laughing now?
The Feos Four also spent time kvetching about Nithya Raman, who was finishing her first year on the council. In 2020, she had upset an incumbent to become the first democratic socialist council member.
At the time of the recording, rivals were trying to diminish Raman’s power by drawing boundaries that would put her district “in the blender and chop [it] up, left and right,” as De León described it.
“She’s not our ally,” Cedillo said. “She’s not going to help us. Her district is not a district we can count on.”
Give credit to Cedillo and his pendejo pals: They were already seeing Raman and other democratic socialists as an emerging force, even while downplaying the DSA’s chances. De León said that Raman’s politics were “about just her as an individual.” Herrera dismissed Hugo Soto-Martínez, then a no-name union organizer aiming to unseat Councilmember Mitch O’Farrell, as a “kid.” Nury Martinez blithely mispronounced Eunisses Hernandez’s name while cackling about the first-time candidate’s challenge to Cedillo.
If Cedillo and De León weren’t so convinced of their own political immortality, they could have helped check the DSA’s rise that has so vexed L.A.’s liberal leaders. Instead, Hernandez beat Cedillo in a shocking upset in 2022, while Soto-Martínez won in the fall. And fellow democratic socialist Ysabel Jurado took out De León in 2024. Those triumphs paved the path for DSA-LA-backed candidate Marissa Roy to make a strong run for city attorney this year. Mazariegos is also endorsed by DSA-LA, which is backing Raman for mayor against incumbent Karen Bass.
Then-Councilmember Gil Cedillo at the Los Angeles City Council meeting on Oct. 11, 2022, two days after the release of explosive audio involving him led to protesters demanding his resignation.
(Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)
The group should send Cedillo and De León bouquets of red roses as gracias for assisting their ascendancy. All of us owe the foursome a thanks for hastening the demise of the old Latino political machines that birthed them and kept the city stuck in tribalism for too long.
Now, Latino politicians must run on their bona fides for all Angelenos, instead of just their latinidad. Soto-Martínez and Hernandez won reelection outright in the June primary because their constituents appreciated their sewer socialism approach, focusing on quality of life issues instead of ideological revolution. Meanwhile, Chicanosauruses are wheezing with diminished power as they urge Latinos to back Bass. The message doesn’t seem to be landing: A recent Berkeley IGS/Times poll found that 45% of Latino voters favored Raman to Bass’ 21%, with 34% undecided.
Gone are the days when Latino voters blindly believed Latino leaders. Why bother, after Martinez and her crew proved the folly of ethnic politics?
Near the start of the recording, Martinez complained that voters and the media always seemed to forgive Black politicians caught up in scandal, while Latinos didn’t get the same treatment.
“They’re never done,” she complained. “They never close a chapter on us.”
L.A. did close the chapter. Now, the Feos Four’s only legacy is “that colossal wreck” of their conversation, to quote the finale of “Ozymandias,” left to rot forever.
