Who is Ysabel Jurado? A progressive candidate is vying for an incumbent East LA council seat

Ysabel Jurado, a first-time candidate for Los Angeles City Council, admits she’s had a steep learning curve in her pursuit of public office.

“This has required me to call people relentlessly and be okay with awkward conversations … and a lot of people tell me personally that they don’t believe in me,” she told LAist.

But it turns out that a lot of people believe Jurado. In the closely watched race for Council District 14, she finished first in the March primary, with 25% of the vote in a field full of candidates.

Incumbent Kevin de León came in second with 24% after a scandal involving him taking part in a secretly recorded conversation that included racist and derogatory comments.

“We have to do better,” Jurado said of De León. “My lived and professional experiences can meet this moment.”

Jurado spoke to LAist while sitting at the dining room table in Highland Park, an informal campaign headquarters of sorts, and wearing sweatpants and her own campaign T-shirt. Because he was recovering from COVID-19, he was wearing a mask.

Jurado is the latest progressive seeking to unseat an LA City Council incumbent, largely using grassroots activists who go door-to-door. He has excited LA’s growing progressive movement, and supporters say he would be a valuable voice on rent control, police spending and homelessness.

De León says his opponent is too far left politically and that voters should stick with him as a reliable elected leader who has brought more city services to the district.

Both are Democrats running in the nonpartisan race, though Jurado has the party’s endorsement.

Who is Jurado?

Jurado, 34, was born and raised in Highland Park and lives with his father in the same house where he grew up. She got pregnant at 18, but that didn’t stop her from graduating from UCLA in 2012 and earning money. a BA in UCLA’s Public Interest and Policy and Critical Race Studies programs in 2019.

Now a tenants’ rights attorney, she’s a single, queer mom who describes herself as “very Catholic.”

“I was trained in a Jesuit education at Immaculate Heart (High School), so service is so key to our faith,” he said.

Jurado said she was inspired to run for office by the election of three progressives to the council over the past few years. She wants to become the fourth and first person of Filipino descent to hold this position.

“I saw my values ​​reflected,” he said.

He said he was also prompted to run because of the scandal that erupted around De León two years ago. The councilor was captured on a secret audio recording, engaging in a conversation that included racist and derogatory comments from colleagues.

In 2022, when the tapes surfaced, there were calls from a wide range of political and community leaders for De León to resign, including President Joe Biden. But De León refused.

He said he has apologized.

In an interview with LAist earlier this year, he said he was deeply sorry and deeply sorry for those I hurt. He also said he should have stopped the conversation when his colleague, former Council President Nury Martínez, made racist comments, who did resign.

“We’ve been very careful over the last two years,” he said at a forum last week. “People may not have seen it, but I’ve worked very closely with City Hall Speaker Harris Dawson.”

Harris-Dawson is black.

De León accused Jurado of trying to “scratch” old wounds “for political purposes.”

“Let’s go ahead,” he said.

Jurado called De Leon’s apology “politically convenient.”

De León, 57, is of Mexican, Guatemalan and Chinese descent. He was raised by a single mother in San Diego and earned his bachelor’s degree from Pitzer College in Claremont.

He was an immigrant rights activist and labor organizer before being elected to the state assembly in 2006. De León served in the state Senate from 2010 to 2018, where he rose to become Senate leader pro tempore .

He ran unsuccessfully for the US Senate and for mayor of LA before being elected to the City Council in 2020.

Different points of view on issues

The two candidates differ sharply on several key issues.

De León has accused Jurado of wanting to abolish the police, pointing out that he has the support of the Democratic Socialists of America, which has called for defunding the Los Angeles Police Department.

Jurado denies that, but said he favors moving some money from the Police Department to city services like youth development and street lighting.

“America’s safest cities invest in our youth, our recreation, our city services,” he said, criticizing the fact that a quarter of LA’s budget goes to the LAPD.

Jurado said he would have voted against Mayor Karen Bass’ budget for this fiscal year that funded an increase in the size of the LAPD. The candidate also said she would have voted against a labor contract that would have provided raises for police officers.

De León supported these two measures.

“We are at a dangerously low number of police officers,” De León said at another recent forum. The LAPD has about 8,800 officers, down from a peak of 10,000 about five years ago.

The two also differ on how to address the city’s homelessness crisis, particularly over the use of a city ordinance that allows police to clear encampments away from schools, daycare centers, parks and other areas .

“What it does is it just allows everyday people to walk our streets … free of homeless encampments, of syringes on the sidewalks, of buckets of feces,” said De Leon, who supports the law city

Jurado said it “criminalizes homelessness” and “just moves homeless people from one street to another.”

Another important point is rent control. Last year, De León supported a measure to allow a 4 percent rent increase in rent-stabilized apartment buildings, noting that “mom-and-pop” landlords had been unable to raise rents for more than of three years due to the COVID pandemic.

Jurado said working families are struggling too much in this economy to afford rent increases.

The race has turned nasty during recent debates, which have been marked by shouting matches between the candidates’ supporters.

In one of his most colorful attacks, De León said in a debate last week that because of Jurado’s association with the Democratic Socialists of America, he would have to get the approval of a “central committee of the socialist politburo” before making any decisions as a member of the council. .

Jurado called the accusation “absurd.”

“Let me be clear: my decisions will not be dictated by any ‘central committee’ and I do not take orders from any organization or political party,” he said.

Polarized community

In some ways, the race has generated generational divides around the race in the 14th District.

“It’s very sad to see the polarization that’s happening in my community right now,” said Jennifer Maldonado, who volunteered for De León during his first City Council run four years ago.

She no longer supports him because of his participation in the taped racist conversation. She said she is surprised by the continued support for him.

“There are a lot of older Latino people who obviously support him regardless of his racist comments,” Maldonado said after a recent debate. “They’re just misinformed and miseducated about what it means to be an anti-racist in this day and age.”

But Boyle Heights resident Areceli Caiuech, who attended one of the debates, said De León deserves another chance.

“Everybody makes a mistake,” he said, adding that he likes the councilman’s support for police and efforts to house the homeless.

“The work he’s doing is what matters now,” he said.

For others, Jurado is a terrifying figure.

“When you say progressive, at my age, that’s scary,” said Rosa Rivas, 69, of the Garvanza area of ​​Highland Park. Rivas is particularly concerned about Jurado’s desire to extort money from the police.

Emergence of the progressive left

On a recent Sunday morning, a group of about 75 people gathered outside the Highland Park Recreation Center to show their support for Jurado. The crowd included an all-star list of the city’s progressive leaders: City Controller Kenneth Mejia, as well as Councilmen Nithya Raman, Eunisses Hernandez and Hugo Soto-Martinez.

They were joined by union and Democratic Party leaders and a cadre of young volunteers ready to walk door to door campaigning for Jurado.

Jurado later said she is a “tried and true Democrat” and has “built a big tent, a big coalition of supporters.” The Democratic Socialists of America are just “a taste” of his support, he said.

She is endorsed by traditional Democratic groups, including the county Democratic Party and the LA County Federation of Labor.

De León has the support of the police and fire unions.

But for progressives, Jurado is part of their own growing power.

“You see the emergence of the progressive left,” said Fernando Guerra, director of Loyola Marymount University’s Center for Los Angeles Studies. “If you poll for the last 10 years, you’ll see that every LA resident is moving in that direction, the voters are moving in that direction, and now the candidates are catching up.”

Raman, the counselor, called the battle for District 14 “a very, very important race.”