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At a recent 14th Council District candidate debate in Lincoln Heights, a row of rowdy señores in the back of the auditorium chanted his name.
“Ke-vin! Ke-vin! Ke-vin!”
Across the room, Silvia Chamo, another Kevin de León superfan, smiled and held a homemade sign with pictures of the politician.
“I’ll always support Kevin,” the El Sereno resident proudly said.
People swarmed De León for selfies after the debate, championing him as their leader.
Photo by Andrew Lopez.
These are common scenes across the Eastside as De León fights to keep his City Council seat ahead of November’s runoff election. He visits Lou Costello Senior Center and smiles with the regulars. Señoras leave his Boyle Heights food giveaways with blue and red totes emblazoned with his name.
The incumbent’s focus on energizing voters in his district is clear. It’s also paying off, he said in a recent interview with Boyle Heights Beat. “They’ve invited me into their homes and to their living rooms,” De León said, of a recent day spent canvassing. “They’ve shared their hopes, and at the same time, their anxieties with me. It’s been a very empowering experience.”
But two years after his involvement in an L.A. City Council scandal that rocked city politics in 2022, some community members aren’t letting the 57-year-old politician off easy.
At the same debates where praises and cheers greet him, protesters attempt to rattle the city leader, calling for his removal. Bright yellow billboards across the Eastside share a simple call to action: “Kevin de León must go!”
De León has repeatedly pointed to the harassment and death threats he’s endured following a secretly recorded conversation featuring racist and homophobic remarks where he and other city leaders suggested redistricting to give more power to Latino voters and less to Black ones.
In the wake of the controversy, President Joe Biden reportedly urged those involved in the meeting to resign. Mayor Karen Bass said she was heartbroken after hearing the audio from the meeting and said De León was misguided to think he could ride it out.
But was he?
Alma Miranda, a regular at the Boyle Heights Senior Center, has taken notice of De León’s direct aid to seniors in her community. The 77-year-old said she’s not afraid to critique the councilman when he visits the center. She said the audio leak scandal shocked her.
“I like Kevin, but he made a stupid comment. I understand he was wrong, but he’s always been here for us,” she said, pointing around the room of seniors. “He brings us things for our raffles. On Mother’s Day, he brings us lunch.”
Still, Miranda said, De León is the one getting her vote because she’s unfamiliar with Jurado. “I’m not going to vote for someone I don’t know.”
READ MORE: Get to know the candidates for L.A. City Council District 14
Despite the potentially career-ending fallout, the politician of Guatemalan and Chinese descent with nearly two decades of experience under his belt is aiming for a comeback and another term as the district’s leader. The incumbent is arming himself with a war chest of strategies – some used by previous politicians – and proclaiming that he has moved past the scandal.
He faces a fierce competitor, Ysabel Jurado, who beat De León in the primary election by nearly 400 votes. Jurado, a new player in city politics, comes with a background in advocacy and supporting renters as a tenant rights attorney. If elected, Jurado – who is queer and was raised in Highland Park – will be the first person of Filipino descent on the council, as well as the first woman to represent the Eastside district.
At a debate at Dolores Mission Catholic Church in Boyle Heights this month, De León dubbed himself as the less risky choice after painting his opponent as a “socialist” who wants to “defund the police.” He also tried to appeal to the largely Latino audience by answering questions almost entirely in Spanish.
The differences between the candidates were stark. While one promised a new future for the district, the other preferred to move away from his past.
Photo by Andrew Lopez.
One thing De León would change about his political career?
“I would have stood up and shut that conversation down,” he said, referencing his role in the controversial, secretly recorded meeting in 2021.
De León said he was inspired by his constituents’ support to fight calls to resign.
“We didn’t crawl into a fetal position and become paralyzed by those who wished to unseat us or pressure us,” he said. “We did the opposite. We doubled down, rolled up our sleeves. We got to work.”
Jaime Regalado, a professor emeritus of political science at Cal State Los Angeles, said because De León resisted stepping down after the scandal broke, enough time may have passed for some of his constituents to move on from the controversy.
Still, Regalado said, a reelected De León would have to work to regain the trust of communities like Boyle Heights and suggested a form of action former CD 14 representative-turned-mayor Antonio Villaraigosa was exceptionally fond of while in office: community cleanups.
“If he wants to stay in office or have a good second term and get out of that with a relatively robust tenure looking forward, he should do some of that as well,” Regalado said. “But he has to be careful as well on meeting the primary needs of the constituents in his district.”
That seems to be exactly what De León is doing. While initially laying low after the scandal, he’s spent the last year being more present in the community – something his opponent has called out as a ploy to win votes. He’s organized food giveaways, built tiny home villages for the unhoused in Boyle Heights and committed millions of dollars to expand green space across the district, including a $25 million renovation plan for Hollenbeck Park.
Pete Brown, a representative from his office, concluded that since Oct. 2022, De León brought more than $200 million in external funding to support projects and improvements across CD 14. Boyle Heights Beat did not independently confirm the entirety of the figures.
He’s deployed a fleet of community clean-up trucks with his image on them. He committed his district’s discretionary funds to launch a heavy metal task force, set on prosecuting and charging those guilty of stealing copper wire from city infrastructure.
In May, De León resumed serving on council committees that he had previously been stripped of following the scandal. He now serves on committees representing housing and homelessness, energy and the environment, trade and tourism and transportation.
Sebastian Castillo-Meza, an assembly line worker and longtime Boyle Heights resident, said that he’s noticed more trucks emblazoned with De León’s face or name leading more trash cleanups around Boyle Heights in the last year but considers it pandering to new or uninformed voters.
“He knows that the community is not happy with him, and he knows that the only way he could win is to get the uninformed voters that don’t know of his racist remarks or his racist actions as a council member,” Castillo-Meza said.
Castillo-Meza said Jurado has his support come November because of her willingness to be an effective leader and not be a “flaky politician.”
“Even if I might not agree with her on all policies, I prefer someone willing to work with their community than having somebody there just to use our community as a stepping stone,” Castillo-Meza said.
As an organizer with Black Lives Matter Los Angeles, Michael Williams has led several community walks through the district’s neighborhoods, including El Sereno and Boyle Heights, to engage voters and explain why De León is unfit for the City Council.
The 31-year-old Pasadena resident said the audio leak rattled residents beyond the 14th District. Williams argued the secretly recorded backroom meeting between De León and former City Councilmembers Gil Cedillo and Nury Martinez was to limit Black voting power and should bar De León from city government.
“When you have a council member that plotted to take away that power, then there is no other option for that council member to be removed from his seat,” Williams said.
Photo by Andrew Lopez.
Raymond Rios, a former LAUSD educator and El Sereno resident, has been advocating for the betterment of his a community for years and holds his district office to a high standard.
“We’ve seen all our elected officials make mistakes. Art Snyder, José Huizar, now Kevin De León’s in line,” Rios said, pointing to the long history of scandals that have plagued the 14th District. Rios argues that older residents and some community leaders may be willing to give De León a second chance because of his ability to advance projects in his district despite his baggage.
Up until the Lincoln Heights debate in September, the 65-year-old wasn’t sure who was getting his vote. But after coupling De León’s political experience with his stance on further supporting law enforcement, he said his choice was clear.
“We really need someone that knows how to navigate the system,” Rios said.
Rios recalls a tense meeting that De León held with other local community leaders shortly after the audio leak two years ago, where they told the councilmember that if he stayed, they’d support his office.
“We need this office running and functioning, and we need our constituents to be served every day,” Rios remembered thinking at the time. “And he’s been in redemption mode since then.”
