Nury Martinez, a member of the Los Angeles city council, resigned as the body’s president on Monday after she was heard making racist remarks in a leaked audio clip accessed by the Los Angeles Times. Martinez is a Democrat who was serving as the Los Angeles city council’s president since 2019 after a brief stint there as the president pro tempore. 

The audio clips were leaked on Reddit first by an anonymous user after which they were picked up by the Times. Martinez chose to resign voluntarily and issued a statement saying that it is effective immediately. 

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“I’m so sorry,” she said in the statement. “I take responsibility for what I said and there are no excuses for those comments”.

Who is Nury Martinez?

Nury Martinez was born on July 9, 1973, in San Fernando Valley, Los Angeles, California and is currently 49 years old. She is of South American origin and in 2019 became the first Latina woman to become the president of the City Council of Los Angeles.

Martinez studied at the California State University, Northridge, and graduated from there in 1996. Before joining politics, she was into social work and ran a support group of women with AIDS at the Northeast Valley Health Corp. She also worked as a special assistant to then-Senator Alex Padilla.

Martinez first role as a state official came in 2003 when she was elected to the city council of her hometown San Fernando. She also served as the president of the council and got re-elected in 2007.

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She first entered the Los Angeles City Council in 2013 in a special election to decide the successor of Tony Cárdenas, who got elected to the Congress that year. She got her first full term in the council after being reelected in 2015. Notably, in both elections, she faced former Assemblywoman Cindy Montañez. 

The focus of her political work lies in increasing minimum wages, preventing human trafficking, addressing homelessness, and environmental justice.