Nury Martinez resigns her seat on Los Angeles City Council following release of racist comments

Nury Martinez, the former president of the Los Angeles City Council, who stepped down this week from that role after the publication of a 2021 recording that captured her making racist remarks, resigned from the council Wednesday.

"It is with a broken heart that I resign my seat for Council District 6, the community I grew up in and my home," Martinez wrote in a statement released Wednesday afternoon.

On a leaked recording published Sunday by the Los Angeles Times, Martinez, a Latina, is heard referring to the Black son of white councilman Mike Bonin as a “changuito,” a Spanish term meaning little monkey, and telling council members Gil Cedillo and Kevin de León, and Ron Herrera, president of the L.A. County Federation of Labor, all of whom are Latino, that he “needs a beatdown.”

Just hours after the recording was published by the Times, Martinez swiftly issued an apology and resigned as president, but she resisted calls to step down from the council altogether, even as pressure swiftly mounted from all corners of the political world to force her out.

Cedillo and de León, who were present during the conversation, have not indicated that they plan to give up their seats on the council.

On Tuesday, President Biden let it be known that he hoped the council members would step down.

“He believes they should all resign,” Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, said. “The language that was used and tolerated in that conversation was unacceptable, and it was appalling.”

Council meetings held Tuesday and Wednesday were disrupted by protesters who flooded the gallery and vented their anger about the revelations.

“What do we want? Investigations. When do we want it? Now,” the crowd was heard chanting during a live feed of Wednesday’s meeting.

The raucous protest continued, despite assurances by President Pro Tempore Mitch O'Farrell that Martinez, Cedillo and de León would not be present at the meeting and were not in the chambers.

Amid boos and jeers, the meeting was eventually adjourned, with O'Farrell announcing that all items on the agenda would be postponed until Friday.

On the leaked recording, Martinez also made disparaging comments about immigrants in Koreatown from Oaxaca in Mexico, calling them "little short dark people," according to the audio, which was first reported by the Times.

Martinez, who was elected to the council in 2013 and became president in January 2020, also described Bonin on the recording as a “little bitch,” and disparaged L.A. County District Attorney George Gascón.

“F*** that guy,” Martinez said of Gascón, “He’s with the Blacks.”

On Tuesday, Bonin spoke about the recording during the council meeting.

“I am reeling from the revelations from what these people said. Trusted servants who voiced hate and bile,” he said. “Public officials are supposed to call us to our highest selves, and these people stabbed us and shot us and cut the spirit of Los Angeles.”

The secretly recorded 2021 meeting centered around the city redistricting efforts. The conversation remained private for a year until the Times published it Sunday, setting off a political earthquake.

“I do not believe we can have the healing that is necessary or govern as we need to, while council members Martinez, de León and Cedillo remain as members of this council,” O’Farrell said Tuesday. “I say those words with a heavy heart, but this is a heavy and a deeply tragic moment for this city.”

The controversy has engulfed the entire political world in Los Angeles.

“There needs to be an investigation, and those officials must resign, but that's not enough,” Rep. Karen Bass, D-Calif., a candidate for mayor in Los Angeles, said during Tuesday night’s final debate, hosted by NBC Los Angeles. “We need a new direction in L.A. and new leadership.”

“Council members need to be free of corruption, I mean that is like the basic minimum standard. You wouldn’t accept it in any other industry than maybe in politics,” businessman Rick Caruso, Bass’s only mayoral opponent, said at Tuesday’s debate.

Before the scandal, Martinez had endorsed Bass, who, should she be elected, would become the city’s first Black woman mayor.

For his part, de León on Sunday characterized his comments as “wholly inappropriate” and said he regretted “appearing to condone and even contribute to certain insensitive comments made about a colleague and his family in private.”

The Times reached out to Cedillo on Saturday night for comment before publishing audio of the conversation.

“I don’t have a recollection of this conversation,” he told the newspaper.

Herrera resigned Monday night as head of the Labor Federation. He also apologized, saying there was “no justification and no excuse for the vile remarks made in that room.”

“And I didn’t step up to stop them, and I will have to bear the burden of that cross moving forward,” he added.

The three Black members of the council, Curren Price, Heather Hutt and Marqueece Harris-Dawson, released a joint statement responding to the tape, calling it “a very dark day in LA politics for African-Americans, the LGBTQ + community, Indigenous people and Angelenos who have put their faith and trust in their local government.”