It’s been nearly two years since a secretly recorded conversation featuring Los Angeles political heavyweights rocked City Hall — and really, what has changed?

Sure, then-City Council president Nury Martinez — who disparaged Oaxacans and described a young Black boy as a monkey — resigned and has stayed away from politics. But Gil Cedillo — who claimed on the recording that the three City Council districts held by Black representatives were actually “Latino seats” — served out the rest of his council term and now traipses from one Latino cultural event to another like a Chicano “Emily in Paris.”

Meanwhile, Councilmember Kevin de León — who said during the hour-long conversation that Black political power was as fake as the Wizard of Oz — is running for reelection. Ron Herrera — who quit as head of the L.A. County Federation of Labor after The Times broke the story — has returned to public life, donating money to De León’s campaign and showing up to his debates.

And now, one recurring theme in their vulgar, racist chat — that Latinos do not have sufficient voting power in Los Angeles — seemingly has a powerful champion in California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta.

As first reported by my colleagues David Zahniser and Dakota Smith, Bonta is pushing city officials to redraw council district boundaries before the 2026 primary election. California’s top lawman has voiced concerns that the map approved by the City Council three years ago doesn’t provide Latinos in some districts with “the opportunity to elect the candidate of their choice,” according to sources.

A spokesperson for Bonta’s office said he was “unable” to comment for this column. At a news conference Friday at the Central Library in downtown L.A. to discuss voting rights, Bonta would say only that an investigation was ongoing and that he looked “forward to that time” when he could say more.

Latinos are nearly half of L.A.’s population but occupy just a third of the council’s 15 seats. The lack of Latino representation has been a civic embarrassment since Ed Roybal became the first Latino on the City Council in modern times, way back in 1949.

Get-out-the-vote campaigns, political machines, voting rights lawsuits, protests — activists and politicians have tried to achieve equity at City Hall and just can’t seem to get there.

They have offered all sorts of reasons why. The one that’s getting the most play in this campaign season was repeated as a mantra on the leaked audio: that gentrification is messing with the voting rights of working-class Latinos.

The state attorney general has flagged Eastside districts 1 and 14 — traditionally Latino strongholds — as “areas of concern,” according to the sources who spoke to Zahniser and Smith. District 1, formerly held by Cedillo, and District 14, represented by De León, have seen an influx of white people and upwardly mobile Latinos over the past generation.

On the recording — which captured a conversation held in 2021 but leaked in the fall of 2022 — Cedillo basically begged Martinez to keep hipsters away from his district.

“Elysian Valley is a headache,” Cedillo said. “Eagle Rock’s a headache. Highland Park’s a headache. And Lincoln Heights. I don’t need those headaches. I have poor people. La Raza.”

“It’s not [for] us,” De León later added. “It’s for Latino strength for the foreseeable future.”

Indeed, Cedillo lost his seat to Eunisses Hernandez, a young Latina who got next to no support from the Eastside Latino political establishment and instead relied on a multicultural progressive coalition.

In his reelection campaign, De León is facing off against Ysabel Jurado, a Filipina American political novice who placed first in the March primary ahead of De León and two Latino Assembly members. Jurado is relying on the same coalition as Hernandez did, while picking up more Latino political support, including Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez, L.A. County Supervisor Hilda Solis, L.A. Unified School District trustee Rocio Rivas and Hernandez herself.

Ethnic communities in this country have voted for representatives that look like them since the 19th century. Latino politicians in L.A. have ridden this political horse since the Roybal days, and that’s what De León is banking on to take him to the proverbial finish line. But anyone who thinks that Latinos vote only for Latinos in today’s city is seriously mistaken — or a Chicanosaurus.

The council district with the highest percentage of eligible Latino voters is District 9 in South L.A., at nearly 65%. That’s more than double the percentage of eligible Black voters, which is just 24%. Yet incumbent Curren Price has won all three of his elections against Latino opponents, increasing his margin of victory each time.

District 15, which covers harbor communities and Watts, also has a voting-eligible population that is majority Latino. On the leaked audio, Cedillo said that homegrown “young Chicano union members, longshoremen” should represent the area.

Voters had a chance to make that happen in 2021, when Danielle Sandoval, a former International Longshore & Warehouse Union district delegate and member of the San Pedro and Harbor City neighborhood councils, made it to the general election against Tim McOsker.

McOsker easily won, after The Times revealed that a restaurant that Sandoval was associated with owed tens of thousands of dollars in back wages to former employees. What really hampered Sandoval, however, was a lack of endorsements from prominent Latino politicians, who dropped their usual cant of Latino power to back the white guy over the Latina.

That’s the realpolitik that Bonta shouldn’t ignore, because it’s long happened in L.A. and is playing out this November in the San Fernando Valley.

According to Zahniser and Smith’s reporting, Bonta’s team has discussed the possibility of creating a third “Latino” district in the San Fernando Valley — one with a significant concentration of Latino voters. That’s something Latino residents have long pined for, to join the seats held by Imelda Padilla and Monica Rodriguez.

The easiest fix would be redrawing District 2, which covers the southeast portion of the Valley, borders Padilla and Rodriguez’s districts, has a 33% voter-eligible Latino population and is represented by termed-out Paul Krekorian.

Voters there have a chance to elect a Latina in November: Jillian Burgos, who’s running against former Assemblymember Adrin Nazarian.

Yet the only prominent Latino elected official to endorse Burgos is L.A. Unified trustee Kelly Gonez, who’s not part of the Latino political machine that has run the northeast Valley for the past quarter-century.

Instead, Latino politicians across the city are standing behind Nazarian, who once served as Krekorian’s chief of staff.

On the leaked audio that brought down her career, Martinez — long the field general for that Valley Latino machine — dismissed calls by Cedillo, De León and Herrera to redraw Krekorian’s district to favor a future Latino candidate.

“Don’t mess up the Valley, ’cause we’re cool in the Valley,” she told them. “Nobody wants a little Armenian love? I mean, they haven’t done anything to us.”

Hey, Rob Bonta: Maybe you should investigate Latino politicians who don’t support Latinos running against non-Latinos? On second thought, no: that would be like trying to count every pine needle in Yosemite.

Former President Trump on Friday said that Israel should attack Iran’s nuclear facilities while mocking President Biden’s answer earlier this week on the subject.  

While speaking at a campaign event in Fayetteville, North Carolina, he said when Biden was asked about Israel attacking Iran, the president answered, “’As long as they don’t hit the nuclear stuff.’ That’s the thing you wanna hit, right? I said, ‘I think he’s got that one wrong. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to hit?’” 

Trump went on to say that nuclear proliferation is the “biggest risk we have.” 

TRUMP SLAMS THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION’S RESPONSE TO HURRICANE HELENE

The former president said he rebuilt the “entire military, jets everything, I built it, including nuclear” while he was president. “I hated to build the nuclear, but I got to know firsthand the power of that stuff, and I’ll tell you what: we have to be totally prepared. We have to be absolutely prepared.”

He said when Biden was asked about Israel and Iran: “His answer should have been “‘Hit the nuclear first, worry about the rest later.’”

Trump made similar comments in an interview with Fox News on Thursday, telling correspondent Bill Melugin Biden’s response on Israel attacking Iran was the “craziest thing I’ve ever heard. That’s the biggest risk we have. The biggest risk we have is nuclear.” 

TRUMP NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISORS MOCK BIDEN’S WARNINGS TO ISRAEL TO STICK TO ‘PROPORTIONAL’ IRAN RESPONSE

Many rockets, fired from Iran, are seen over Jerusalem from Hebron, West Bank, Tuesday. The Israeli army announced that missiles were fired from Iran towards Israel and sirens were heard across the country, especially in Tel Aviv.  (Wisam Hashlamoun/Anadolu via Getty Images)

He continued, “I mean, to make the statement, ‘Please leave their nuclear alone.’ I would tell you that that’s not the right answer. That was the craziest answer because, you know what? Soon, they’re going to have nuclear weapons. And then you’re going to have problems.” 

Former deputy director of national intelligence Kash Patel, who served under Trump, said this week: “Iran launched a war into Israel, so to say that the Israelis who are defending themselves and our hostages shouldn’t attack sites in Iran that could kill them – especially when you’re the one who gave Iran $7 billion as a commander in chief and then allowed them to acquire nuclear materials – is wildly political.”

Biden told reporters this week that he and the other members of the G-7 were in agreement that Israel should have a “measured” response to Iran.  (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

Following Tuesday’s attack by Iran on Israel, Biden told reporters at Joint Base Andrews, “the answer is no,” of Israel potentially targeting the country’s nuclear program. 

He added that he and the other members of the G-7 all “agree that [Israel has] a right to respond, but they should respond proportionally,”

On Friday, we learned that the U.S. added 254,000 jobs in September, bringing the unemployment rate down to 4.1%. When President Obama was elected, the Great Recession had pushed the rate to 7.8%. President Trump inherited a rate of 3.6%, and he gave President Biden a mishandled pandemic and 6.4% unemployment.

The next president is likely going to inherit an economy that is strong, even if many Americans aren’t feeling that way. The next president will also bring with them a narrative about the economy. In the case of Trump, it’s a story we’ve heard far too many times: Blame the minorities.

Over the eight years of the Obama administration, wages went up and unemployment reached historic lows, but the subprime mortgage crisis that began in 2007 left a lasting mark on housing. How could it not, when home ownership fell to its lowest point since 1965? Construction slowed, but demand for housing did not, and that’s how we ended up with the affordability crisis we have now.

Trump wants voters to blame desperate migrants for the shortage of affordable housing, but it was his friends on Wall Street who began this cycle.

Just as it was his intentional downplaying of the pandemic during the first few months — something he said he did to prevent panic — that left Americans misinformed and sent the economy into a tailspin. Instead of preparing us, Trump told us to blame China. That rhetoric sparked a wave of anti-Asian hate crimes.

During the Obama administration, more than 2.5 million immigrants were deported. That’s more than any other administration had forced out before, and Americans were still losing their homes — because that housing crisis was caused by corporate greed, not by illegal immigration.

Trump fared well in 2016 by blaming desperate Black and brown people as the root cause of housing problems and any other economic issue, neatly avoiding any context about Wall Street’s role. And because this helped get him to the White House the first time, I understand why there’s a temptation for his campaign now to couch this rhetoric as policy — to claim, for instance, that deporting people will ease the housing shortage or that disaster relief money for victims of Hurricane Helene was diverted to migrants at the border.

But it’s not policy.

It’s just racist.

And we need to just call it out for what it is.

This week, the Trump campaign sent out a press release that read “Kamala’s Open Border Jeopardizes FEMA’s Hurricane Response.” It was in response to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas reiterating that the Federal Emergency Management Agency may not have enough funds to make it to the end of hurricane season in November. The agency initially raised concerns at the beginning of the season in June, and the Biden administration overhauled aspects of FEMA relief to get funds out quicker. From Hurricane Katrina in 2005 through 2021, FEMA has spent more than $12 billion a year. From 1992 to 2004, it was $5 billion.

It was weather, not immigrants, that forced more than 3.3 million Americans out of their homes in 2022, nearly half that number for more than a month. However, the Trump campaign didn’t mention climate change, perhaps because the former president still thinks it’s a hoax. But the data show more funds were needed in response to the sweeping damage caused by natural disasters, not because of any trend in immigration.

And yet, the Trump campaign’s press secretary said: “FEMA has run out of money for the rest of hurricane season because Kamala Harris used the funds for free giveaways to illegal immigrants.”

That’s not true.

During the vice presidential debate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) took every opportunity he could to fault migrants and immigration for economic issues, echoing his boss. For his part, Trump’s comments about immigrants “poisoning the blood of our country” echoed Adolph Hitler. No wonder Vance compared Trump to Hitler in 2016 before switching allegiances.

Now the two of them are floating “mass deportation” as a solution … to problems caused by corporate greed. Never mind that deportations would aggravate many problems, including food costs and housing shortages.

In 2019, more than half the farmworkers in the country — 450,000 — were immigrants. In addition to the billions it would cost for the Trump-Vance deportation plan, what do you think would happen to food prices if they had their way? And to housing availability if a huge percentage of construction workers were deported? In Texas, half of the industry’s laborers undocumented.

Blaming Black and brown people might be red meat on the campaign trail, but it just isn’t sound economic policy.

It’s just racism.

@LZGranderson