Los Angeles council member Nury Martinez resigns after racist tape surfaces.

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The Los Angeles City Council member at the center of the scandal over a taped conversation in which she made racist comments about colleagues and constituents resigned Wednesday amid mounting calls for her to do so.

Nury Martinez, who served for nearly a decade on the council, said in a statement that she was stepping down with a broken heart, three days after the Los Angeles Times published a story detailing a secretly recorded conversation from last year. She earlier had given up her appointed position as council president and said she was taking a leave from her elective job.

On the tape, which involved two other council members and a powerful labor leader, Martinez called the young Black son of council member Mike Bonin a little monkey and said that he needs a beatdown for behavior she found disruptive on a parade float.

Martinez also disparaged Indigenous immigrants from the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca and called Bonin, who is gay, a little b—-. Although council members Kevin de Len and Gil Cedillo did not make similarly racist remarks on the tape, neither spoke out against them in the phone call.

Both, like Martinez, had faced demands that they resign from across the city and nation, including from President Biden on Tuesday through his press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre.

The language that was used and tolerated during that conversation was unacceptable and it was appalling, she said. Ron Herrera, the fourth participant in the call, resigned late Monday as head of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, a Latino-dominated political force in the city.

In an extensive resignation statement, Martinez thanked her colleagues, staff, constituents and family for her time on the council, which began in 2013 following her tenure as a member of the Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education.

While I take the time to look inwards and reflect, she concludes, I ask that you give me space and privacy.

The recorded conversation involving some of the citys most powerful Latino officials has shaken a Latino-Black political alliance built over decades as Los Angeles has grown more ethnically and racially diverse.

It has also underscored tensions that have arisen in recent years between Latinos, who account for nearly half the citys population but fewer than a third of its seats on the 15-member council, and Black Americans, whose numbers and political clout have been on the decline.

The recorded conversation concerned the drawing of new council district lines, and efforts to boost the representation of Latinos, largely to the detriment of Black voters.

On Wednesday, Californias attorney general, Rob Bonta (D), said that, in light of the taped conversations contents, he will begin an investigation into the citys redistricting process, which took place late last year.

De Len, a former US Senate candidate who ran for mayor unsuccessfully earlier this year, and Cedillo, a former labor leader and immigrant advocate, have apologized for their roles in the conversation.

But both continue to resist calls for their resignations, which have come from across the city and among the states political leadership in Sacramento.

Govt. Gavin Newsom (D) had not specifically called on the participants to resign, but in a statement issued after Martinezs announced departure said that this is the right move.

Again, these comments have no place in our state, or in our politics, and we must all model better behavior to live the values ​​that so many of us fight every day to protect, Newsom said.

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