Column: Ysabel Jurado vanquished Kevin de León. Will winning change her?
Ysabel Jurado had every reason to gloat when I caught up with her earlier this week at the Highland Park home she shares with her father and teenage daughter.
By beating incumbent Kevin de León for a City Council seat that stretches from downtown through Boyle Heights and up to Eagle Rock, the 34-year-old sustained the political earthquake she first unleashed in March, when she finished ahead of him and two Latino Assembly members in the primary.
Outspent in the general election and subjected to an onslaught of negative ads and mailers and headlines in the weeks leading up to election day, she nevertheless trounced De León, a Latino political giant now reduced to a cautionary tale after his fall from grace for his role in a secretly recorded conversation that upended L.A. politics. A tenant rights attorney and political novice, Jurado also overcame a self-inflicted wound after being caught on a recording saying “F— the police.”
When she gets sworn in next month, she will become the first L.A. council member of Filipino heritage and District 14’s first female and first LGBTQ+ representative.
Her win is the biggest political upset on the Eastside since Chicano activist Raul Ruiz siphoned off enough votes from Richard Alatorre in a 1971 Assembly race to allow a Republican to win. She continues the march of politicians backed by the Democratic Socialists of America who have stormed City Hall over the past four years.
So, yeah, a lot to gloat about. But what Jurado kept returning to as we chatted for an hour on Monday was a request she heard from many voters:
For a year and a half, Kevin de León — “that old serpent,” as Revelations 12:9 would have called him — had stymied opponents who demanded his resignation for his role in a secretly recorded, racist conversation.
“I remember this older lady” in Boyle Heights, Jurado said. “She’s like, ‘Why should I even bother voting? Why should I vote for you? You know, I only see you [council candidates] every four years. You do nice things for us when it’s election time and you all come — and you go.’”
Jurado swirled around a Rooibos tea bag with a tag read, “Your Actions Prove Your Greatness.” She was wearing slippers, comfy pants, a Dodgers hat and a T-shirt that said “Hecho en Highland Park CA” — Made in Highland Park.
As Jurado recalled, the woman then said, “‘Look at this street. It’s dirty. The streetlight? They told me to call. I kept calling. Nothing happened. I’m doing all the right things here. I left the country I came from to escape from this kind of government. And this is what I get.’”
Jurado’s pitch to the señora: Born and raised in the district. Child of undocumented immigrants. Single mom. Was once on food stamps. Lives with her father because she can’t afford her own spot. Above all, committed to breaking what her campaign called the Curse of CD 14: over 50 years of council members who got caught up in corruption, used the seat as a stepping stone to higher office or just neglected neighborhoods altogether.
“And she’s like, ‘Well, you got to be careful that [winning] doesn’t change you.’”
The encounter was part of what Jurado described as her “listening tour,” which she credits for her victory and which she plans to continue after her swearing-in.
“People are a wealth of information,” she said. “They’re invested in their community. They’re creating solutions for themselves. If only they had a corresponding partner. And so for me, it’s like, that’s the strength of leveraging the collective. I’m not the expert on everything.”
Over the span of a year, I’ve seen Jurado’s remarkable journey from political long shot to surprise winner to history maker. I’ve seen her campaign transform from basically her and her communications director Naomi Villagomez Roochnik to everyone now wanting an audience with the Eastside’s newest power broker.
In her election night speech, she described her friendship with Roochnik as “two broke girls.”
“As a candidate, people are offering things to you and even more so as a council member in a very lucrative district,” she said. Jurado waved at a mound of mementos around her dining room table gifted by volunteers and voters — scrapbooks, posters, artwork, photo collages — mixed in among thank-you cards that need to be mailed out. She plans to give away almost everything.
“Those small things, if you add them up in the cumulative effect ... that would add up to like a whole attitudinal change for me. People are going to give you more or offer many, many things to you. And I think when you become accustomed to all of that, that’s where greed follows.”
The first-time elected official — she prefers that title over “politician” because it “impresses on people that this is not something you’re given” — plans to focus on “bread and butter issues” the moment she enters office. Repair sidewalks. Refurbish parks. Fix streetlights. Push to have Los Angeles declare itself a sanctuary city. She’s also ready to win over residents who didn’t vote for her.
“I went into this with my values and my ideals,” she said. “But part of what a leader should be doing, especially in this relationship of being a person governing and the people being governed, is, you know, listening.”
Political newcomer Jurado is in first place in the primary over De León and a well-funded Assembly member, Miguel Santiago, with only a few votes left to be counted.
She brought up policing. In October, a Cal State L.A. student who turned out to be a De León staffer asked at a meet-and-greet how she felt about police abolitionism, a plank of the DSA. Her response: “What’s the rap verse? ‘F— the police, that’s how I see ‘em,’” which she told me was a garbling of lyrics by N.W.A, Kanye West and Rage Against the Machine.
The quote led to a rare public rebuke of a political candidate by a police chief and calls for Jurado to quit the race or apologize. Jurado did neither. So will she talk to her critics?
She nodded. When I asked if she would meet with the new police chief, Jim McDonnell, or the Los Angeles Police Protective League — which spent over a quarter-million dollars in independent expenditures after the audio of Jurado’s remarks was made public — she nodded yes again.
“I recognize that some of my constituents feel safer with more police around,” she said. “But in the same breath, they do say that they don’t want to be overpoliced. They are hesitant to call the police for help because they don’t show up on time.”
Jurado sipped on her tea.
“So there’s a balance between safety and accountability that I think we can have. We all can have that conversation and hold those two thoughts at the same time.”
The other big challenge I brought up involves something she can’t change: She’s not Latina.
District 14, which is 61% Latino, includes Boyle Heights, the cradle of Latino politics in Los Angeles. Until Jurado won, a Latino had represented the district for 39 years.
With Jurado’s victory, Latinos will hold just four of the 15 council seats in a city that’s nearly half Latino.
How will she reconcile with Latinos sore that they aren’t represented by one of their own?
“When we talked to voters, we asked, ‘What has your leadership gotten you thus far?’” she responded. “And that’s why they voted for something different. … For me, it’s equity. In the neighborhoods that are primarily Latino, why are they the most underserved with city services — a.k.a. Boyle Heights? The lights are all out on First Street. There’s no street cleaning. No parking.”
Jurado said she wants to help Latino residents fight the gentrification that radically transformed her native Highland Park and has crept into Boyle Heights over the past decade.
“How do we actually have a neighborhood that’s well-resourced and thrives?” she said. “That’s not about being Latino or Asian. It’s about not just symbolic representation but material representation. So that Boyle Heights doesn’t just become a historically Latino community — that it stays one.”
As our hour wrapped up, I told Jurado I wanted to show her something. “Oh my God!” she gasped as I handed her a vial of holy dirt with an image of the Santo Niño de Atocha.
The depiction of the infant Jesus is part of the Southern California landscape and especially venerated by both Mexican Americans and Filipinos.
The Santo Niño entered Eastside infamy in 2020, when José Huizar, who then represented District 14, posted an image of the Catholic icon on social media hours before FBI agents raided the politico’s home. Huizar eventually pleaded guilty to multiple corruption charges and is serving a 13-year prison sentence.
So before the Santo Niño, I asked, what could Jurado promise her new constituents?
“He definitely doesn’t have as much curly hair as the Filipino one,” she joked while trying to gather her thoughts. It’s one thing to spout platitudes to a reporter, quite another to do the same in front of Baby Jesus.
“I definitely vow to do the hard work,” Jurado finally said, looking down at the Santo Niño in her palm. “And to have those conversations, as difficult as they may be ... And that’s what it’s about. Always. Not about the pomp and circumstance and prestige, but it’s about the work.”
She looked at me again.
“What is it the Jesuits say? Service is love in action. I know it’s corny. But I’m going to love this community by being of service to it. So that’s my commitment.”
Let’s see how the Santo Niño, and voters, feel in four years.
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