I heard the crowd inside Hecho En México roar shortly after 11 p.m. when Los Angeles City Councilman Kevin de León's face appeared on the televisions inside the El Sereno restaurant. It was his Super Tuesday viewing party and fans cheered the return of his man of the ages.
Discarded as political dead meat nearly 18 months ago when a secretly recorded conversation was released in which he and three other Los Angeles political bigwigs engaged in bigoted and conspiratorial rants, De León was in first place in his race for re-election. , according to the first results. The former state Senate leader and failed candidate for the U.S. Senate and Los Angeles mayor had survived impeachment attempts, calls for his resignation from the streets of Los Angeles to the White House, a physical altercation with a community activist in a Christmas tree lighting ceremony and a nude. of committee assignments by colleagues who were trying to force him to resign.
No union, elected official or major community leader publicly endorsed De León. I do not care. Opponents had underestimated the courage and cunning of someone who grew up poor, trained in the labor and immigrant rights movements, and was unwilling to give up the good life of politics just because a group of wokoso shouted him. De León has spent the last year finally focusing on meat-and-potatoes issues (cleaning streets, organizing food drives, finding shelter for the homeless) rather than the blind ambition to achieve higher office that had characterized much of of his career. He pounded the proverbial pavement and sent out so many city-funded De León-branded mailers highlighting community resources and events (six times the amount of all other council members combined, according to LA Public Press) that the Service US postcard should give. him a medal.
I heard the cheers for De León as he ran toward Hecho En México. I've arrived late. He had spent the night hanging around the Eastside, visiting the parties of his three main rivals.
In Eagle Rock, Assemblywoman Wendy Carrillo and volunteers danced in her small campaign headquarters to upbeat tunes like “Despacito” and Selena’s “Bidi Bidi Bom Bom” even though she was in fourth place. Ysabel Jurado supporters sipped drinks at a Highland Park hipster bar while a small TV played Reese Witherspoon's cult classic “Election.” At Casa Fina in Boyle Heights, Assemblyman Miguel Santiago, who in early remarks had a lead of less than 300 votes over Jurado for second place, thanked the unions that had contributed more than half a million dollars in independent spending on your name. . He then made the audience laugh by saying, “If you drink, let them take you home,” a not-so-subtle reference to Carrillo's recent conviction for driving under the influence.
I left De León's party for last, in part because his campaign did not publicly reveal the location, as Carrillo, Jurado and Santiago did with theirs. Fact In Mexico was still full, even though the official program had ended half an hour earlier. I tried to enter when a burly guy with glasses and a sour face blocked me. It was De León's communications director, Pete Brown.
“This is a private event,” he blurted out. I showed my press credential, but Brown would not budge or give me a reason why the media was not allowed entry. That's when I noticed a lectern and table blocking easy access to the restaurant. Soon, two burly guys gathered around Brown. Then, a group of women lined up next to them. It was the most ridiculous crash since I last played “Battleship.”
I took a few steps back to the sidewalk to think about what to do next. Soon, two security guards stood next to me and laughed. One told me in Spanish: “They just told us: 'That guy with glasses?' Don't let him in.'”
Los Angeles City Councilman Kevin de León (center) greets people lining up for a food distribution outside his office in Eagle Rock in 2023.
(Christina House/Los Angeles Times)
For months, I had repeatedly asked Brown and De León's chief of staff, Jennifer Barraza, for an interview with De León to discuss the leak of the tape and my recent series on Latino political power in Los Angeles. I was rejected even though his boss speaks freely with my Times colleagues and other journalists. From what I hear, De León and his team are angry with me because I have repeatedly said that he should have resigned after the leaked tape and have also criticized his propensity to win a seat and then run for something more powerful.
It's bad for a politician to refuse to talk to the press, but it happens. It's pathetic when you do it on election night, which is supposed to showcase our prosperous democracy, with the free press as a cog in that engine.
If De León won't let the press into his party and calls me out on a bunch of wannabe thugs just because I've written bad things about him, it shows he hasn't learned anything from the last year and a half except pettiness. . Even former Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva, who I attacked throughout 2022 as his career imploded, always answered my questions and never banned me from any appearances, not even in his debacle on primary night. this year. When a supposed progressive like De León makes Villanueva look good anythingYou should take a deep breath and ask yourself where it all went wrong.
Such a fragile and sensitive politician does not deserve to be on the City Council. Given that in the first election 73% of voters in his district chose anyone but him, and that Santiago is eager to criticize his former ally, De León had better toughen up.
I decided to stay out of Hecho En México and talk to De León's followers. They walked past me as if I had lice, or looked at me with disdain from inside the restaurant as if I were a Chupacabra. The only one who spoke at length with me was a boy named Arturo. I didn't get his last name because he called me worm (literally “worm,” but also understood as an insult in Cuban Spanish meaning “traitor”) and a “f— a—,” complained about a De León column I wrote in 2018, claiming The Times was anti-Latino and He hired me only to I could criticize the Latinos and I stated that I was not allowed in because I was a “killjoy.”
Otherwise, we had a nice chat.
The party continued when I saw Fox 11 reporter Cristy Fajardo getting ready to go on camera. Fajardo — a National Association. member of the board of directors of Periodistas Hispanos, I thought I had probably misunderstood what Brown told me. She approached him and asked if she could come in.
No. Thanks for trying, Cristy! And thank you for telling me to stay when you were about to go live with De León.
The man of the night finally emerged wearing a dark blue suit, a shirt of the same tone unbuttoned at the top of his chest, and a giddy smile. Brown joined him, along with another man standing next to the older security guard, and stared at me. I had started taking pictures when the younger security guard approached me.
“You I can't “Come closer to him,” he said sharply, motioning for me to get off the sidewalk. I reminded him that sidewalks are public property and reiterated what he had said. I was there to do my job, not to make a scene (that was what De León's people were doing) and I understood that he was just following orders.
The security guard pulled down his balaclava. A look of pain and guilt took over his face. “Just stay away, okay?” she finally sputtered.
De León did his interview, smiling and gesticulating without a care in the world. When he turned to go back in, I yelled, “How do you feel?”
He winked at her and didn't say a word.
