Kevin de León takes a page from Trump’s playbook at Boyle Heights debate

More than 200 people packed the pews at Dolores Mission Church in Boyle Heights on Wednesday, and they all had one question on their minds:

Where was Kevin de León?

It was 5 p.m., and the debate was about to start. His opponent, Ysabel Jurado, was in the parish hall, where she had talked to reporters from Boyle Heights Beat.

Where was he?

City Council member Kevin de León with constituents at Dolores Mission Church in Boyle Heights.

(Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times)

The L.A. City Council member was just pulling into the parking lot, as it turned out.

He stayed in his white electric SUV, chatting with a campaign consultant, while other staffers gathered nearby. After finally getting out of the car, he went inside a school building for a few minutes before ambling across the street to the historic church.

For the last two years, De León has insisted to anyone who’ll listen that he learned his lesson from the racist City Hall audio leak that upended L.A. politics and torpedoed — but didn’t sink — his career.

On the recording, he mocked Black political power and schemed with former council president Nury Martinez, former council member Gil Cedillo and ex-L.A. County Labor Federation head Ron Herrera to get back at their adversaries.

Attendees listen to Kevin de León and Ysabel Jurado debate at Dolores Mission Church.

(Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times)

The conversation, revealed by The Times exactly two years ago that Wednesday, captured the De León that political insiders have long known: a man with a huge chip on his shoulder eclipsed by an ego as large as the General Sherman tree.

Ever since, he has strained to remake himself as a municipal Daddy Warbucks, handing out Christmas gifts to kids and groceries to poor families.

Now, he was 10 minutes late.

As De León stopped to pose for photos on the church patio, I thought: same old Kevin. He sees himself as a picaresque hero in the novel that exists in his mind — and forces the rest of us to deal with it.

Supporters roared and yelled his name when he finally walked into the church. They booed Jurado — but her supporters countered with “Y-sa-bel!”

Father Brendan Busse welcomed everyone before letting church volunteer Delmira Gonzalez speak.

“It’s a church and sanctuary, and we want it to be respected,” she told the audience in Spanish before laying out the ground rules. No cheering, clapping or booing. Don’t talk while the candidates are talking.

Attendees give their approval during a debate between Kevin de León and Ysabel Jurado in Boyle Heights.

(Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times)

The two sat at tables on the altar. Next to De León was a statue of the church’s namesake, Our Lady of Sorrows, hands clasped and face frozen in misery. Jurado was near a painting of Maria del Camino — Our Lady of the Way, the patron saint of the Jesuits who run Dolores Mission.

They took gulps of water simultaneously, as the moderators began.

That would be the last time they agreed on anything.

Jurado, who wore a surgical mask because of a recent bout with COVID, used her one-minute opening remarks to say she was happy to return to Dolores Mission, where she had participated in two candidate forums during the primary.

“Unfortunately, some other people were absent,” she said, a playful dig at De León.

He wasn’t playing.

“There’s a clear difference in this campaign,” De León replied in Spanish. “I’ve dedicated my life to public service, for the well-being of our people. My opponent, to date, has never done a single thing for the good of our people.

“I’ve committed my errors,” he admitted a few seconds later. “But I don’t lie. And my opponent …”

He grinned. “She has lied a lot.”

City Council candidate Ysabel Jurado is challenging incumbent Kevin de León.

(Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times)

In the previous weeks, the candidates had barnstormed across District 14 in their own version of the Lincoln-Douglas debates — but even more bitter.

Jurado, a Highland Park native, has promised an Eastside free of corporate influence and the scandals that have cursed the area’s councilmembers for decades.

De León — who has raised more money, while Jurado has secured more prominent endorsements — focused on his accomplishments at City Hall during his first term and in the state Capitol last decade. He dismissed Jurado as a dilettante whose ties to the L.A. chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America make her dangerous to public safety.

Throughout his 18 years in elected office, De León has positioned himself as a progressive champion standing against conservatives. That night, he took a page from the Donald Trump playbook to blast Jurado.

He accused her of lying six times, while offering few concrete examples. He mentioned socialism four times. He spoke almost entirely in Spanish and said “nuestra gente” — our people — at least 29 times to imply that his opponent, the daughter of Filipino immigrants, couldn’t possibly care for the mostly Latino audience.

He ridiculed people who keep bringing up the audio leak scandal, proclaiming that he has moved forward while they “see the scab” from the wound it caused and “continue to scratch and scratch and scratch.”

He claimed that Jurado faked her recent COVID diagnosis, citing “community members” who supposedly saw her at the Glendale Galleria. He even brought up the fact that Jurado — who was eight months pregnant at the time — didn’t vote in the 2008 presidential election and thus didn’t get to pick “the first African American in the history of the United States of America, Barack Obama.”

His face got sweatier and sweatier until he looked like a sinner in the confession booth.

“To this date, you haven’t lifted a single finger to help nuestra gente,” De León later said in Spanish as the moderator kept ringing a bell to let him know his time was up. “You just come with quejas [complaints] y quejas y quejas y quejas y quejas.”

The slightest of silences passed. “Quejona,” he finally muttered. Complainer.

The scene outside Dolores Mission Church in Boyle Heights, where Kevin de León and Ysabel Jurado held their debate.

(Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times)

His supporters — many of them men who had hopped from debate to debate like Deadheads — laughed and whooped it up, despite the admonishments of Father Busse and church volunteers. De León never once tried to calm them down.

The barrage shook Jurado. She frequently went over her time limit. She kept delivering lines — quoting St. Oscar Romero, yelling, “Go Dodgers!” while pumping her fist and bringing up De León’s San Diego roots — that fell flat because her supporters followed the rules and largely stayed quiet. She spoke of a school-to-union job pipeline to combat youth violence and of having city staff keep better tabs on broken street lights and parking meters — plans that sounded good but couldn’t get traction against De León’s blitzkrieg.

When the councilmember wasn’t insulting his opponent, he rattled off accomplishments — investments in parks, tiny homes for unhoused people, affordable housing projects — that were an effective counter against Jurado’s critique that he had done nothing for constituents. His quip that he was about “results, not ideology“ was clever.

If he had stuck to his record, De León might have convinced me that he truly was a changed politico. Instead, he sounded like the man the world heard on the leaked audio: someone infuriated that people don’t think he’s “incredible,” a word he used to describe his first term.

Here was a man who had once showed enough promise and ambition to mount a campaign against U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein and to run for mayor in 2022. Now, he was reduced to questioning whether someone faked her COVID diagnosis.

Jurado and De León shook hands at the end of the 55-minute debate. She stepped outside to talk with supporters. He finally had the altar to himself.

De León hugged tearful acolytes and took photos with them, letting his million-watt smile flash. I waited my turn in line to see if De León — whose staff had blocked me from entering his primary night party in March — would take some questions.

“It was a spirited debate,” he said when I commented on the barbed tone.

When I asked how he thought he did, he responded, “I think I spoke to the issues that were important to the community here in Boyle Heights. I think we demonstrated our real body of work.”

What about all the times he called Jurado a liar?

De León smiled even wider.

“Oh, we can sit down, we can go through all of things, if you want. Trust me.”

His followers formed a blockade around him as their man walked to the patio to bask in their love a bit longer.

“It was more decent than before,” South Pasadena resident Jorge H. Rodriguez said of the debate as someone whispered, “He’s the enemy,” while pointing at me. “Both of them got their points across, but Kevin has more experience.”

De León talked to reporters as supporters chanted his name from afar. Suddenly, 34-year-old Stephanie Luna confronted him.

“Why won’t you make a real apology about the tapes?” the lifelong Boyle Heights resident asked. He ignored her as his handlers ushered him to the parish hall. Luna followed until they shut the door.

She then went to the front of the church, where Black Lives Matter Los Angeles members were protesting and waiting for De León to return to his car.

His fanboys cussed them out or went up to their faces and shouted, “Kevin!”

“It’s symbolic of who Kevin is,” said Luna when I asked about her encounter with him. “How can you ask your constituents to vote for you when you run away from them?”

That’s when I looked at the parking lot. De León’s car was gone. The Eastside’s Artful Dodger had sneaked off into the night.