Austin at Large: A Quick Trip to Los Angeles

Kim Kardashian (left) tours a homeless encampment cleanup with L.A. City Council President Nury Martinez, whose racist thoughts on Armenians (among others) were caught on tape and exposed this week (Image via Twitter)

More than one journalist has told me they decided to leave town for another market because Austin's local politics are boring. "It's all statements and process shit and unanimous votes," I remember one telling me. "And no scandals."

My reply is usually that Aus­tin­ites like it this way, because it's a government town and a lot of voters work or have worked in and around state agencies and the Lege. So endless public dialogue and dealmaking on the dais are just norms, and anyone can find a way to engage if they really want to, the exclusionary running of the public-meeting gauntlet notwithstanding. Most people don't.

Getting deeper, broader engagement in local politics – a mission that most of those involved, including journalists, claim to embrace – would require making things more entertaining and emotionally fulfilling and raising their stakes, which inherently means making them more divided and polarized and scandalized, and nobody who's lived here for a while really wants to go there. But in this week's news feature, we've got at least one, and maybe all, of the front-running mayoral candidates saying that maybe we should go there. Celia Israel is leaning into a people­-powered message of "bold urgency," as in the kind of mass politics that people supporting her now used to bend Austin's public safety curve in 2020. Kirk Watson is leaning into the results of his past performance as a highly skilled dealmaker and consensus-builder, but he also wants to empower council districts to compete with each other. And Jennifer Virden, who would be a genuine outsider to Austin's political culture, is primarily backed by a local GOP with at least one foot in the MAGAverse, so there'd be plenty of fireworks in that future. Keep all this in mind as I tell you this story out of Los Angeles.

FACT: Nobody Is a Monkey

The Los Angeles City Council has 15 members, the most important of whom is, or was, Nury Martinez, the council president. She may be more powerful than the mayor, Eric Garcetti, who is termed out and will be replaced next month, whereas she got reelected in 2020. She's one of four Latinx members of the L.A. council; three are Black, two are Asian, and the rest are white guys of various flavors, including LGBTQ, Jewish, and Armenian. We now know that she hates all these people and their constituents also, after she got caught on tape going off in a "wide-ranging" conversation a year ago with her colleagues Kevin de León (who's run statewide) and Gil Cedillo and the head of the L.A. Feder­a­tion of Labor (who has since resigned), in whose offices they were gathered, which were apparently bugged (nobody knows who made the recording, which turned up on Reddit, but L.A. Fed says there are more where it came from). Could you imagine if the Texas AFL-CIO – or, for that matter, the Texas Public Policy Foundation – announced their spot had been bugged and all the convos held there were headed to Reddit?

This all broke on Monday, and by Wed­nes­day even Joe Biden had weighed in to say, "Girl, resign," which she did, as we went to press. She has stepped down from her $308,000-a-year council post representing the poorest parts of the San Fernando Valley, which are about as poor as the poorest ones in Austin (but not the very poorest in Los Angeles). She did not apologize for the slurs she used. The anger, with hundreds of protesters shutting down business at City Hall as cops stood by in riot gear, makes sense once you hear the tape, in which she says her (white, gay) colleague carries his (Black) son – whom she refers to as a "negrito" and "changuito" ("little darkie," "little monkey") – like a handbag, and bitches about the "Judíos" – her Jewish colleagues, including the guy from the district next to hers – who "cut a deal with South L.A." (meaning "the Blacks") and "are gonna screw everybody else." And on and on for an hour-plus. Even the Armenians get dragged.

It Can’t Happen Here, Eh?

This was all prompted by the initial redistricting maps for the city council, which are drawn as ours are by an independent commission. As did ours, while that body preserved the rights of nonwhite voters to elect candidates of their choice, it also saw L.A. as a place with incredible granular diversity where districts are going to be mixed, and people have to build coalitions across communities to get support and not operate from ethnic silos. That's clearly not the mindset Martinez – again, perhaps the most powerful politician in Southern California – and her colleagues brought to the table (check out my LA Times comrade Gustavo Arellano's take on what this says about Latino political power).

This wouldn't happen just this way in Austin, of course, but it likely won't happen at all while our local political norms reward gestures of solidarity and prioritize not making anyone unnecessarily mad. It makes for longer meetings and potentially more boring outcomes, but it also makes nasty and awkward intra-urban rivalries less likely and less attractive, whether along ethnic lines or otherwise. Choosing to inject mass-action urgency or healthy competition or nationalized issues into those conversations is a choice to change Austin's political culture – which may be what we need to respond to our challenges, but which we shouldn't value just for the sake of change.