He preened, he hugged, he shook hands and hobnobbed with legends and politicians. Los Angeles City Councilmember Kevin de León was in full campaign mode two days before Tuesday’s election, when voters would decide whether he deserved a second term.
The setting wasn’t a restaurant or a neighborhood street: It was the VIP section of a dedication ceremony in Boyle Heights for a towering set of murals featuring the late Dodgers ace Fernando Valenzuela.
Wearing a satin Blue Crew jacket, De León emceed the one-hour-plus program attended by hundreds of baseball fans. Outside the fenced-off area where he held court, workers in neon yellow vests emblazoned with “Kevin de León Cleanup Crew” handed out bottles of water. Nearby, an electric truck bore in Spanish the legend “Courtesy of: Councilmember Kevin de León.”
He led chants and cracked jokes and introduced a parade of speakers — among them Councilmember Monica Rodriguez, actor Edward James Olmos and East LA Community Corporation president Monica Mejia — who thanked him for helping spearhead the mural, along with playwright Josefina Lopez and artist Robert Vargas.
That wasn’t enough credit for De León. Just before a giant tarp dropped to reveal one of the murals, he told the crowd that what they were about to see was “my gift to all of you, to all of Boyle Heights and to all of L.A.”
From a distance, I stared with a mix of pity and disgust. It wasn’t surprising that De León was there, because his Eastside district includes Boyle Heights. But I figured he had enough sense to offer a few words and sit down like all the other dignitaries, not squeeze a pseudo-rally out of a ceremony meant to honor a recently deceased icon.
Hubris was the engine of De León’s 18-year political career. It propelled the child of Guatemalan immigrants from an impoverished upbringing in San Diego to community activism in L.A. to stints in Sacramento as an assembly member and state senator before he landed at City Hall in 2020. He gained enemies along the way but also followers who cast him as a Dickensian hero willing to fight for the neediest.
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Hubris was also his downfall. On Friday, De León conceded to his opponent, tenant’s rights attorney Ysabel Jurado, in a historic defeat that will be felt for years in L.A. politics.
“While the results of this election did not go our way, I respect the decision of the voters and our democratic process,” De León said in a statement on Instagram. He congratulated Jurado “on a well-fought campaign” and wished her “success in leading our district forward” — a stark contrast to the campaign, when he and his surrogates painted her as a dangerous socialist unfit for office.
De León never recovered from his role in the 2022 City Hall audio leak that captured him laughing as others mocked Oaxacans, trashed political opponents and schemed on how to check Black political power in L.A. to ensure the spread of Latino power.
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De León continued on the council despite repeated calls to resign and ran for reelection despite warnings he wouldn’t be able to win.
His loss will cause further teeth-gnashing among the region’s Latino political class, who had already cast Jurado’s rise as little better than a civil rights violation. The political novice will be the first Filipino American on the council.
Latinos make up nearly half of L.A.’s population but will hold only four seats on the 15-member council after De León’s departure. That a non-Latino will represent the Eastside, the cradle of Latino politics in the city, for the first time in nearly 40 years, is particularly galling to some Eastside residents and especially politicos.
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Even before Jurado’s win, California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta’s legal team had questioned whether the council’s district maps provide sufficient representation for Latinos, singling out two districts on the Eastside, including De León’s, as potential areas of concern, sources told my colleagues Dave Zahniser and Dakota Smith.
But what De León’s supporters don’t get is that the Latino Power strategy that long fueled Eastside politics is over — and their guy’s campaign proved it. In the wake of the audio leak scandal, the incumbent wrapped himself in latinidad like a tamale snug inside a corn husk — and he still lost.
His office sponsored a World Cup final watch party at Pershing Square and consistently handed out free food to residents in Latino-majority neighborhoods. At a debate at Dolores Mission last month, De León talked almost exclusively in Spanish and kept referring to his constituents as nuestra gente — our people — to imply that Jurado could never understand Latinos and their needs.
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Spanish-language radio ads paid for by the Latino Victory Fund called the council member el mero mero — the big boss man. A series of mailers designed like comic books featured mariachi musicians holding a “Re-Elect Kevin De León” sign as the cartooned council member nabbed copper wire thieves, cleaned up graffiti and carried boxes for homeless people as they moved into apartments. In another mailer, De León posed with firefighters in front of the iconic Virgin of Guadalupe shrine at the Ramona Garden housing complex in Boyle Heights and talked to voters at Mariachi Plaza.
Other mailers funded by political action committees touted De León as someone who wanted to “preserve Latino culture,” who was “a champion for our community” and “a symbol of this great generation of strong Latino leaders.” A text message from De León’s campaign included a grainy photo of Jurado and warned that “Forty years of Latino representation is threatened.”
De León even earned an endorsement from beyond the grave from his council predecessor, Eastside political titan Richard Alatorre. A mailer featured a letter in Spanish from Alatorre’s widow, Angie, disclosing that Richard had supported De León’s campaign and stating, “We should ensure that Latino leadership continues being important.”
None of this Hispandering worked. While De León doubled down on ethnic solidarity, Jurado and her team focused on a ground game that tied the Highland Park native’s story — daughter of immigrants who lacked legal status, teenage mom who went on food stamps, adult who had to move back in with her father — to that of Eastside residents. She easily won, with the latest vote count showing her at 56% to De León’s 44%.
It didn’t have to end this way. If De León had resigned in the wake of the audio leak, or decided to not seek reelection, he could have left with egg on his face but nevertheless walking tall after an impressive career of service to Latinos.
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He was an architect of the massive marches against Proposition 187 in 1994 — protests that birthed a generation of Latino activists and politicians. He was the first Latino leader of the state Senate in 130 years, with enough political cachet to stage serious runs for U.S. Senator and L.A. Mayor. He sponsored the bill that turned California into a sanctuary state and helped pass important legislation on climate change and clean energy.
Those achievements will rightfully fill up the majority of De León’s biography. But history will now also remember him as the Joe Biden of the Eastside — someone who stayed way past his expiration date, ended his political career with a whimper and cost his base their political power because he refused to leave.
That was the De León on display at the Valenzuela mural unveiling. He remained on stage in the VIP section long after the ceremony ended, chatting up Dodgers broadcasting legend Jaime Jarrín and others, instead of trying to mix with the crowd.
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Some supporters went up to him to take photos, but the council member posed from his side of the barricades. It was as if he knew his time in power would soon be over, and he wanted to bask in the moment as long as possible.
I lingered to see if we might chat. After about half an hour, I realized it wasn’t going to happen.
As I walked back to my car, I turned back for one last look at De León. His cleaning crew was sweeping up litter from the street while their boss talked and talked and talked.
Americans are turning the page on the woke left’s approach to crime, if this week’s district attorney elections are anything to go by.
A majority of the 25 George Soros-linked district attorneys on the ballot this week were defeated, signaling a backlash against progressive policies that critics say are to blame for a surge in crime across the country in recent years.
Many of the losing Soros candidates were running for office in deep blue jurisdictions and suffered heavy losses despite Vice President Harris clocking up comfortable majorities in those same areas – indicating that a large portion of Democrats are also done with the progressive Left’s soft on crime experiment, according to the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund, a pro-police non-profit that tracked the 25 races.
Comedian Brent Terhune has for years satirized the angry, working-class white man who rails against libtards and expresses unyielding devotion to Donald Trump. His monologues resound with right-wing rants and epitomize toxic masculinity in a character he calls Alpha Male. But the aggrieved American man now rides on a sense of vindication in celebrating Trump’s return to the White House. And Terhune wonders what that means for his character and the nation.
“I think he’ll go from being a sore loser to a sore winner,” said Terhune, who lives outside Indianapolis in a blue-collar neighborhood. “Alpha Male will always exist. He was there before Trump. He doesn’t go away. He’s your dad, your cousin. We all feel misunderstood and betrayed at times. But he’s got to find a way to justify everything Trump and MAGA do. It’s a weird hurdle, and a way for me to get out my frustrations.”
Terhune — a former Boy Scout and a Catholic-school-raised liberal — abhors Trump and is nothing like his alter ego. Alpha Male, who wears a russet beard, wraparound sunglasses and a backward ball cap, is enamored with the likes of Tucker Carlson and has no tolerance for gender studies, critical race theory or what he sees as the liberal radicalization of a country that has succumbed to snowflakes and bibliophiles.
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The character is at once emblematic and a caricature of the Joe Rogan demographic, bros and aging bros, mostly white but with a growing number of Latinos, who revere Elon Musk and march to Trump’s crass, weaving rhetoric.
“His people will be encouraged,” Terhune said of the president-elect, suggesting that the most extreme of Trump’s followers will become more of a threat to democracy, civil rights and gender equality than during his first term.
“He’s an embodiment of who they are,” he said. “They believe he hates the same things they do. They’re willing to excuse anything and everything for their guy. There’ll be no repercussions.”
Trump and his allies ran a high-testosterone, anti-immigrant, protect-the-economy campaign that appealed to ranchers, mechanics, pastors, billionaires, college students and the radical Proud Boys. Musk — who has 204 million followers on X — urged men to turn out and vote, posting a militant reference on the day of the election: “The cavalry has arrived. Men are voting in record numbers. They now realize everything is at stake.”
Musk reposted an artist’s depiction in which he, muscle-bound and stripped to the waist, resembles the Hulk carrying an American flag. Rogan sits atop Musk’s shoulders lifting Trump toward the sky in a trinity that evokes both a savior complex and hyper-masculinity.
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Such imagery suits Alpha Male. Terhune’s character does not apologize. He does not equivocate. He represents, said Terhune, who was profiled in The Times last year, men who feel empowered by Trump’s showman brashness and the belief that he shares their rage and bewilderment at a left-wing, woke society that conspires to leave them behind.
Alpha Male was born out of what Terhune saw as the hypocrisy of conservatives who espouse American ideals, such as freedom of speech and religion, but attack anyone opposed their prescribed views. The character’s first appearance came when Terhune posted “Redneck Burns Nikes” in reaction to then-San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick taking a knee in 2016 during the national anthem to protest racism. That was followed by Alpha Male diatribes on book banning, the Black “Little Mermaid,” Trump’s mug shot, ruminations on Hunter Biden’s laptop and swipes at President Biden, whom he calls “Papa Long Hugs.”
Alpha Male, whose videos have had millions of views on social media, has become a way for Terhune to understand and navigate the nation’s divisions. The character is a funny, if unsettling, mirror who at times — like Archie Bunker before him — earns a degree of empathy. Terhune’s irony and satire can be so sly that some people don’t get the joke, thinking that Alpha Male is not an act but the comic’s true self.
“Is this satire or is this guy really as deranged as he sounds?” one man posted on Facebook.
Like many liberals, Terhune, who spoke by phone from his home on the day after the election, was finding it difficult to reconcile the many ruptures and recriminations that have jolted the country since Trump’s first campaign eight years ago.
Trump’s recent victory is “a shocking but not so shocking revelation of where we are as a country,” said Terhune, the son of a lunch lady and a father who trucked fuel to construction sites. “A lot of people were fed up with the last four years, but this says that people don’t think past themselves. It is their need to put party over country for perceived patriotism. I’m a straight white guy. I’ll probably be fine. But what about people who aren’t straight and white?”
Through it all, though, the focus of Terhune’s Alpha Male bits will stay on Trump and what he has shaped. In a recent video about Trump working at McDonald’s, Alpha Male says, “Mr. Trump doesn’t need to work there. He was just sticking it to lying Kamala Harris. … There’s no proof she even worked there. Hell, are we even sure she was the attorney general of Commie-fornia? No. Are we even sure she was vice president? No. Nobody knows. There’s no proof.”
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In another skit, Alpha Male is the driver in the garbage truck Trump rode in after Biden’s verbal gaffe suggesting that Trump’s supporters were garbage: “You done pissed me off, Joe, and if being a patriot is what they’re calling garbage these days, then, yeah, I am garbage cause I’m going to show up to the polls wearing a garbage bag to show you what us white trash can do.”
Alpha Male, sometimes tearing up when he recounts his many grievances, mythologizes Trump, a leader who survived an assassin’s bullet, an army of prosecutors, 34 felony counts and endless scandal.
After what authorities said would have been a second assassination attempt against Trump at his golf course in Florida, Terhune reimagines the incident in a video in which Trump grabs a golf club to deflect bullets: “The first one he sent flying went back to the shooter, knocked his Bud Light clean out of his hand and he took off scared. And he was running away and there was an envelope of cash that fell out of his pocket. You could see on it, it said, ‘Pay off from the Dumb-ocrats.’ It was then that the Secret Service finally got off their lazy asses and did something.”
That is the kind of fervor — James Brown’s “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World” played at the Republican National Convention in July — that has surrounded Trump since he swaggered onto the nation’s political stage.
“He can do no wrong,” said Terhune, mimicking his alter ego. “If you don’t like it, deal with it.”
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For Tehrune, the only way to deal with it is to keep channeling Alpha Male’s deep well of suspicion and anger.