Leaked Recording Exposes LA councilmember’s Racially Charged Comments About a Black Child [Video]

The audio from a political strategy meeting attended by a handful of Latino Democrats on the council was first reported Sunday by the Los Angeles Times. It had surfaced on a Reddit discussion board this month but was deleted. The source of the recording is unknown, and NBC News hasn’t determined whether it has been edited.

The meeting, apparently about political strategy and redistricting, was attended by Martinez and council members Gil Cedillo and Kevin de León, as well as Ron Herrera, the president of the powerful Los Angeles County Federation of Labor. All are Latino Democrats.

The remarks about the child, the son of departing council member Mike Bonin, concerned his behavior at a parade in 2017, when he was 2. Martinez used a Spanish term to refer to the boy as an animal.

Martinez also dismissed Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón, a justice reform advocate who is reviled by law-and-order politicians and has survived two Republican-led recall attempts, as unworthy of the support of the people in the room.

“F— that guy. He’s with the Blacks,” she said.

De León, a San Diego-raised politician who rose to statewide prominence as a legislator and then unsuccessfully ran for mayor of Los Angeles, weighed in on Bonin, who is gay, by suggesting he treated his son like a fashion accessory — a handbag.

Martinez asked why Bonin allegedly thinks he’s Black, and De León responded, “His kid is.”

De León called Bonin, who is white, the 15-seat council’s “fourth Black member.” De León said Bonin doesn’t support Latinos — that he has never said “a peep” about them.

In the audio, Cedillo participated in the conversation when it turned to finding a supporter of the group to appoint to a council seat that opened up after council member Mark Ridley-Thomas was suspended following a federal indictment alleging corruption. He has pleaded not guilty, and his trial is scheduled to begin Nov. 15.

During the meeting, the group settled on Heather Hutt, one of the council’s three Black members, who subsequently was appointed by the full council.

Herrera didn’t appear to utter any racist remarks. He did say the group’s support for a leader to take over the seat for a traditionally Black district should be someone who would be an ally on Latino interests.

Alex Alonso, a Chicano and Latino studies scholar at California State University, Los Angeles, said he agreed with Bonin’s call for Martinez, De León and Herrera to resign and said the episode points to deep fissures in the city’s population.

“This is very emblematic of how difficult it is to improve Black-brown relations in our city,” said Alonso, who is Black and Latino.

A statement attributed to Bonin and his partner, Sean Arian, called on Martinez to resign and, at the same time, urged the council to remove her as president.

The statement characterized Martinez’s comments about the son as “dehumanizing” and said, “It is painful to know he will someday read these comments.”

The Bonin family statement said only Cedillo couldn’t be implicated in making or supporting racist views, but it expressed disappointment, saying his apparent silence was “tacit acceptance of those remarks.”