Column: Bravos for Mark Ridley-Thomas, boos for Kevin de León. A double standard?
On Tuesday, I did something I hadn't done in a while: I went party hopping.
The occasion: primary night in the San Fernando Valley, with seven first-time candidates facing off in a special election to replace Nury Martinez. She's the former L.A. City Council president who resigned in October after the release of a recording that caught her and other Latino politicos spewing racist things, trashing enemies and plotting to increase Latino power at the expense of Black power.
I heard all sorts of chisme about Martinez and other Valley Latino political players at La Corona Bar and Grill in Van Nuys, where supporters of Marco Santana had gathered to pound micheladas and snack on a good buffet while cheering on their man.
The gossip wasn't as scandalous at the more modest gathering for Imelda Padilla at the north end of Plaza del Valle, Panorama City's version of Olvera Street. Marisa Alcaraz's party at her campaign headquarters on the southern end of the plaza was ending by the time I got there — but that didn't stop supporters from joyfully dancing to punta music.
The latest returns have Padilla and Alcaraz in the top two spots, which means they'll likely move on to the June general election. But that wasn't the only City Hall story people wanted to talk about that night.
Whether in person, via text, phone or social media, I got more than a few gripes about the supposed raw deal City Councilmember Kevin de León is getting compared to Mark Ridley-Thomas.
A federal jury convicted Ridley-Thomas on bribery and mail fraud charges last month for votes he cast as an L.A. County supervisor in favor of USC to ensure that his son get a position at the school as a student and a professor.
De León, meanwhile, is still dealing with the fallout of that racist tape leak, although a recall effort against him recently failed. He, along with then-Councilmember Gil Cedillo and then-L.A. County Federation of Labor head Ron Herrera, offered no pushback to Martinez's ugly comments while laughing along and uttering some nasty thoughts of their own.
Ridley-Thomas and De León are so well-known that staffers and constituents alike call them by their initials — MRT and KDL. Both are longtime politicians who got their starts at legendary nonprofits and fashioned themselves champions of working-class constituents of color. They each served as totems for Black and Latino political power in Los Angeles, and weren't afraid to say so. Both joined the City Council in 2020 and must now deal with legacies stained by scandals of their own doing.
But the public reaction to their misdeeds diverges wildly.
Latino leaders trampled over themselves in the wake of the racist tape to demand that De León resign, even though his blatherings broke no laws. While a small group of supporters has stood by his decision to remain in office, KDL has turned into the political version of a fart — most officials stay as far away as possible, while his fellow council members hold their nose every time they take a vote alongside him.
Ridley-Thomas, on the other hand, has drawn more plaudits than punches. After his conviction, Mayor Karen Bass told reporters that her longtime friend was “a policymaker who made a real impact” and that his downfall represented a “sad day for Los Angeles." Former Councilmember Mike Bonin — whose young Black son absorbed the worst barbs flung by Martinez and De León — released a statement that concluded, “The Mark Ridley-Thomas I know is the tireless champion, the relentless advocate, the unstoppable force," while mentioning nothing about MRT's crimes other than being “heartbroken.”
So the question that De León supporters and even some opponents posed to me on primary night: Isn’t it a double standard that De León was so quickly vilified, while Ridley-Thomas takes what amounts to a hero's farewell?
It's telling, they feel, that the court of public and political opinion has judged the Latino politician who hasn’t been charged with any crimes far harsher than the Black politician who was convicted of several.
“They" always get away with it, while we Latinos just can’t get a break — so goes the feeling.
That's a weak-salsa anti-Black conspiracy — and it ignores the state of Black and Latino political power in L.A., which explains why MRT and KDL's situations aren't apples to apples. Maybe Ridley-Thomas doesn't deserve a victory lap — but De León deserves one even less.
The support for Ridley-Thomas does grate after a while. Instead of hailing him for his past achievements, folks should be slamming him for helping his ne’er-do-well son, who resigned from the state Assembly while under investigation on claims of sexual harassment, at the expense of his constituents. That’s a betrayal of Black L.A. that I never thought MRT would commit.
But the adulation doesn’t originate from political tribalism, as critics may claim.
MRT isn't just another Black man cut down by the justice system — he repeatedly delivered over 30 years of representing South L.A. on the council, in the state Assembly and on the L.A. County Board of Supervisors.
That ability to deliver helped consolidate, and maintain, Black political power in a city where Black residents are about 9% of the population yet occupy three of the 15 seats — that’s 20% — on the City Council.
Latino political leaders in L.A. and beyond have tried to forge a similar solidarity for decades and have yet to achieve it — something De León loudly whined about in the leaked recording.
As a state Assembly member and state senator from the Eastside, De León shepherded groundbreaking bills in Sacramento that made California a "sanctuary state" for immigrants without documentation and promoted green energy. But those accomplishments won him little love in L.A. itself, in part because his naked ambition has made many residents think he's on the council solely to catapult himself to higher office. That skepticism, in turn, adds another stratum to the self-defeating chip on KDL's shoulder, especially when it comes to Black power.
Early in the one-hour recording, De León and Martinez discussed fellow Councilmember Ridley-Thomas' political fate. The City Council, then led by Martinez, was mulling whether to suspend him without pay.
Martinez brought up Jose Huizar, the Eastside council member who preceded De León. The council unanimously suspended Huizar and revoked his salary after he was charged with bribery in 2020. (Huizar pleaded guilty earlier this year and awaits sentencing).
De León anticipated blowback from Black community leaders if the council chose the same punishment for Ridley-Thomas.
"Now they’re trying to look like there’s a double standard," he said.
“They didn’t think twice before judging Jose,” Martinez grumbled.
“I know,” De León replied. “They went after him right away.”
The council ended up going with an unpaid suspension on an 11-3 vote.
Later in the tape, De León compared Black political power in L.A. to a mirage, a la the man behind the curtain in “The Wizard of Oz." Cedillo described it as “the 25 Blacks are shouting."
De León replied that they “shout like they’re 250, when there’s 100 of us and it sounds like it’s 10 of us.”
With a woe-is-us worldview like that, it's not surprising that the public and politicians don't forgive De León, Huizar and the many other Latinos who have befouled politics in Los Angeles and its suburbs over the last quarter-century.
Sadly, too many of those Latino pols talked a big game about people power. While they achieved some results, the only things they ultimately empowered were their cronies and their coffers.
That legacy, not any mythical double standard, makes Latinos eternal political underachievers in a city where they make up 50% of the population. De León, with his selfish insistence that he did nothing wrong, only perpetuates this.
So to all the people who whined to me that De León merits a hall pass the same way Ridley-Thomas does: Stop worrying about what "they" have and start worrying about what Latinos don’t have, and why.
It's all on us.
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
