Part 120: Kevin de León vs. The Truth – Will the CD-14 Curse Ever Be Broken?

Published October 15, 2024.

Oct 15, 2024

Photo of Los Angeles City Councilmember Kevin de León at Dolores Mission Church after debating challenger Ysabel Jurado with members of the public by author (GoPro Hero 11 Black).

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By Zachary Ellison, Independent Journalist

The power of incumbency in politics is strong. Former Councilmember José Huizar had just reported to federal prison in Lompoc to begin his 13-year sentence, and at the end of three debates, one-person and two virtual, it still wasn’t clear that challenger Ysabel Jurado could unseat Kevin de León. The upstart Democratic Socialists of America-backed candidate, who had even received the endorsement of the Los Angeles Democratic Party, had struggled across the three in-person debates with De León’s forcefulness, attacking her shamelessly. To be fair, the venue locales were all favorable to De León: Lincoln Heights, El Sereno, and Boyle Heights. Los Angeles Times columnist Gustavo Arellano had called the performance of De León in the third showdown in Dolores Mission Church, beneath a crucifix, “a man with a huge chip on his shoulder eclipsed by an ego as large as the General Sherman tree.” Comparing him to Donald Trump, who has no actual connection with KDL, as they call him, was probably a mistake.

Kevin de León seemingly has relished in the MAGA energy, so much so you’d like he was almost going to Make The Eastside Great Again; he was, as Arellano had previously cast him, now the ultimate “Eastside politico.” Try as they may, comparing José Huizar and Kevin De León simply hadn’t worked because, well, unlike Huizar, whatever baggage of corruption that KDL carried has simply remained out of the limelight. Even the furor of the LA Fed Tapes, the notoriously leaked recordings in which KDL sat down with former LA City Council President Nury Martinez, former Councilmember Gil Cedillo, and the former President of the LA County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO (the LA Fed). His recovery campaign had worked; despite the turmoil, De León had simply outwaited his critics. Unlike the second debate, Black Lives Matter Los Angeles was simply locked out of the venue hosted by the Boyle Heights Beat to the sidewalk. A few Los Angeles Police Department officers stood across the street chatting.

Kevin De León’s attacks were stinging on Ysabel Jurado, who complained that one of his supporters had followed her daughter in a shopping mall with little effect. Fresh off a bout of COVID-19, her attempts to respond to him simply came off as too little, too late; after all, who was she to question De León, a legend of Sacramento politics, an upstart? De León, seated before the eyes of God, was even willing to attack her for not voting for Barack Obama in 2008, when she was 8 months pregnant. No one seemed to change their mind that night by end, and so Wednesday, October 9, drew to an end with not a bang but a whimper. Ysabel Jurado quickly exited with young campaign manager Naomi Roochnik, an organizer of Democratic politicians campaigns, and left the scene. For his part, KDL, phalanxed by his supporters, may have disappeared artfully into the night, but he appeared unwounded, unashamed to have dragged her through the proverbial mud. Newsflash, it’s working for Donald Trump, who remains dead even with Kamala Harris in new polling from NBC News, with a 4-point gain from last month.

American’s love a strongman, and even as Donald Trump overperforms among Latinos, as even the legendary Gustavo Arellano had recently noted on this platform, so many are “populist in the conservative sense yet not quite Republican, collectivist yet not quite wokoso, and ultimately up for grabs." There has been no publicly released polling on Council District 14, which is assuredly the hottest race in Los Angeles, but according to a source, there are 3 polls that have been conducted privately, by unions and Kevin De León’s campaign, and they have shown him 5 points, 11 points, and 22 points behind Ysabel Jurado, who’s riding a wave. That reddish wave started in 2020 with the election of Councilmember Nithya Raman and followed in 2022 with Councilmembers Hugo Soto-Martinez, Eunisses Hernandez, and Controller Kenneth Mejia.

Can Jurado capitalize on this electoral movement and add to the so-called DSA-LA block? Or will she flounder ultimately against a lifelong politician who now has the full backing of the Los Angeles Police Protective League PAC (LAPPL)? A potent force in local politics, the police union was now all in on De León, dropping $113,601 on a door-hanger campaign. To be fair, the LAPPL had aligned with other labor unions, which were now seeming to spurn Jurado in favor of the established De León, despite the LA Fed Tapes. The LAPPL flyer noted that KDL had “secured $8 million in LAPD overtime to ensure that communities get additional foot patrols to combat serious crime issues like smash-and-grab robberies, catalytic converter thefts and dangerous street takeovers.” The move was first reported by UnrigLA journalist Rob Quan.

Ysabel Jurado had trailed Kevin De León in fundraising, and KDL was now buoyed by hundreds of thousands in union dollars. Along with the forgiveness of Los Angeles City Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson, whatever impact the LA Fed Tapes had seemed to be waning. Harris-Dawson, had he attended the Boyle Heights debate, would have likely been appalled by the conduct of De León, who spoke mostly in Spanish, railing against Jurado for wanting to “defund the police,” a rallying cry of the George Floyd protests. As Los Angeles Times journalist David Zahniser noted, Harris-Dawson had even “appointed De León to a coveted seat on the council’s powerful Planning and Land Use Management Committee, which reviews the biggest development projects in the city.” Huizar had once chaired the powerful branch of City Council, using his power to engage in bribery and extortion so severe that it earned him a racketeering charge. De León has consistently sought to distance himself from Huizar, including on the LA Fed Tapes, claiming that he barely knew the guy and even attacking Jurado as anti-Latino male.

The Los Angeles Times transcript of the infamous October 18, 2021 LA Fed meeting reads from Kevin de León: “You know, what I did during the course of my campaign with the City Council? I never criticized Jose Huizar.” To be fair, Jurado's platform doesn’t even explicitly call for defunding the LAPD; rather, it’s reform-minded, but don’t let that slowdown De León and the LAPP; they have an election to win. Almost the entirety of Black Los Angeles, the NAACP-LA can stand outside City Hall and give him an F-grade, and it mostly won’t matter. While the scandal has assuredly hurt De León, it might not be enough to tank him in the general election. Like it or not, people are naturally forgiving. I caught up with David Zahniser, the Times City Hall reporter, after the debate. That morning we had both been at a small rally organized by Catalyst California, LA Forward, and others to demand independent redistricting, “fair maps,” as they had called it. An even smaller group had assembled to demand the recall of Euinisses Hernandez for failing to improve the MacArthur Park area, which De León had railed against previously.

David Zahniser and I talked over how the Times had not covered in detail Kevin de León’s 414-page and counting civil lawsuit against the two alleged leakers, former employees of the LA Fed. The two leakers have filed a Notice of Appeal to contest the judge’s ordering of a jury trial in June 2025. According to an attorney for Santos Leon, De León and his compadre Gil Cedillo had gone to pressure District Attorney George Gascón in October 2022 to find evidence on Santos Leon and his wife Karla Vasquez. Did the disclosure even matter? Would the Los Angeles Times even cover the voluminous court documents? And if they didn't, what did it mean for LA, much less the fate of the two alleged leakers who maintain their innocence?

At the time of the scandal, some had even compared it to Watergate. Los Angeles Magazine journalist Michelle McPhee had written in July 2023 following Santos Leon’s termination that “Leon is now suspected of running a political op with shades of the Watergate scandal that toppled President Richard Nixon, only instead of Deep Throat meeting with reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein in a parking garage.” She continued, noting that “the tipster — who is not believed to be the leaker (more on that to come) posted a rant on Reddit with the clandestinely recorded audio.” More has never come, because simply put, as long as the alleged leakers don’t show their faces, their stories remain bottled up in court documents, almost entirely unreported. The office of District Attorney George Gascón did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the alleged pressure meeting in October 2022.

Simply put, the Los Angeles River is no Potomac River. As long as Kevin de León’s corrupt acts remain a private affair, including working to cover up the leak of the LA Fed Tapes, no one will suspect anything, and this publication will be treated like an oddity. George Gascón is in the process of getting crushed by challenger Nathan Hochman, with polls showing him trailing by an even greater distance. Gascón has been so widely reviled, you’d think he was De León. The criminal case, with Gascón having declined to file felony charges and issuing only an opaque Charge Evaluation Worksheet, were sent to City Attorney Hydee Feldstein-Soto, who has been accused by her own Chief of the Criminal Branch Michelle McGinnis of being politically corrupt. Today, the City Attorney’s office announced there would be no charges against Santos Leon and Karla Vasquez due to insufficient evidence.

McGinnis say’s only that “certain cases should not be prosecuted because it would adversely affect HFS’s political career.” McGinnis now has a court date set for February 5, 2025, at 8:30 am in the Stanley Mosk Courthouse, Department 52. McGinnis did not return a request for comment, nor did her lawyers return a phone message seeking comment on whose political interest she believed her boss was serving. Much sooner, Gil Cedillo will return to court in his separate lawsuit against Santos Leon, Karla Vasquez, as well as crazily the LA Fed on October 29, at 8:30 am, Department 45. That’s assuming Cedillo somehow doesn’t kick the can down the proverbial road, which is what happened in August. Funny how that works out?

Meanwhile, the national press remains preoccupied with the presidential election. One national high-ranking reporter who covered Trump heavily told me that this simply sounded like a “local story,” something for the Los Angeles Times to handle, nevermind that the paper has been gutted by owner Patrick Soon-Shiong. So it goes, everyone lawyers up, and hopes that their individual straw won’t get pulled. Self-preservation is the goal, and a smiling Kevin De León during Monday’s Zoom forum plaintively stated near end before the Downtown Los Angeles Neighborhood Council and the Little Tokyo/Arts District Neighborhood Council, that “green space is my cup of tea,” before the moderator quickly referenced back to money. At close, Kevin De León deflected to Ysabel Jurado, that she and her supporters were “putting someone down and calling them a career politician.” Jurado, left blank-faced, could only respond, “We can’t keep doing the same thing and expecting different results.”

Breaking the “CD-14 Curse,” as Ysabel Jurado’s campaign has called it, will undoubtedly take more than a good platform, more than canvassing, perhaps even more than money. So as Kevin de León rattles off his accomplishments in Sacramento and in Los Angeles, the best she could shoot back was that De León had in fact spent his latter youth in San Diego, despite being born in Los Angeles. Calling someone racist isn’t what it used to be in America, because in no small part, Donald Trump has made racism socially acceptable in a way that the Los Angeles elites could never dream of doing so. The elephants in the room, of course, are the Los Angeles Police Department, whose union, the LAPPL, heavily spent on backing Rick Caruso for mayor. Caruso, who converted from Republican to Independent to Democrat, a firm embrasure on Catholicism that Kevin de León could never dream of in disgracing himself before the eyes of the Lord. Lately, Caruso, who many had speculated would run for U.S. Senate, even Governor, has been busy making sure people know he might as well be Jewish, posting on X, formerly known as Twitter, on October 7, and again on October 11 to celebrate Yom Kippur, writing, “May this sacred day bring peace and a sense of deep connection to your faith and culture.”

CalMatters journalist Jim Newton wrote last June, after speaking with a contact close to Caruso in reference to the increasingly crowded field for governor in 2026, “It is clear that there’s a strong need for leadership...He is clearly examining that race.” Caruso’s real estate portfolio has never extended out of Southern California, and he had yielded leadership of his eponymous firm Caruso to Corrine Vedery, who recently told The Real Deal that “the company would expand beyond greater L.A., including opportunities outside of California — in particular coastal cities and warm-weather locations.” Somehow I don’t think Kevin de León, who finished third behind Karen Bass and Rick Caruso in the June 2022 Mayor’s primary, is getting an invitation. All of which raises the question, if Santos Leon and Karla Vasquez aren’t the leakers of the LA Fed Tapes, and why? Leon’s attorneys seemed to be looking for some other explanation other than politics, even as KDL and Gil Cedillo have cast the leak as an ultimate “October Surprise.”

Somehow I don’t think this October we’re going to get a repeat. Rather, like the March primary, things now are simply going to go to plan. The realignment that occurred with Nury Martinez’s resignation being a done deal; signed, sealed, and delivered. Even Martinez is now lining up in De León and Cedillo’s corner, insisting that she too has knowledge of the leak. I’m not sure what Nury is thinking, having been targeted by the LAPPL in 2020 for ever even having suggested defunding the LAPD. LAPPL director Jamie McBride said at the time about her LAPD detail for home protection, "If she was really feeling threatened, then that security detail should [still] be in place."

Well, Nury’s at home now, and the Tapes are what they are, and right at 13:44, Caruso’s longtime right-hand man Sam Garrison and his father Jim scare Martinez because Kevin de León discloses he’s been talking with Sam. “That what they’re doing has legs, just keep it going, just keep it going, just keep it going,” Kevin de León croons like Ritchie Valens. One thing is for sure: the Trump supporters abandoned outside of his Coachella, were among the most faithful of the faithful, and it wasn’t even the first time such a thing has happened. If Kevin de León gets re-elected, liberals in Los Angeles will have no one to blame but themselves; they got owned.

UPDATE: Rick Caruso has declined to endorse Kevin de León directly, noting in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, that’s he’s only endorse Nathan Hochman and Proposition 36, which would strengthen penalties for retail theft. Caruso backed Thrive Los Angeles PAC, which simply states “NO on Ysabel Jurado.”

Link: José Huizar begins 13-year prison sentence in corruption case

Link: Column: Kevin de León takes a page from Trump’s playbook at Boyle Heights debate

Link: Column: May Jose Huizar’s fall be the end of the ‘Eastside politico’

Link: 'Dead heat': Trump pulls even with Harris in NBC News poll

Link: On Rancho Libertarianism

Link: UnrigLA

Link: L.A. City Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson takes heat over committee picks

Link: Inside the room: The entire L.A. City Council racist audio leak, annotated by our experts

Link: LA County Federation of Labor Scam

Link: Kevin de León issued a failing grade by Los Angeles area NAACP branches

Link: Ysabel Jurado - Public Safety

Link: LA Forward - Fair Maps Now