The Fall Of José Huízar: How An Eastside Hero Rose To The Top And How It All Came Crashing Down

It’s not unusual to see the word “disgraced” prefacing the former City Councilman José Huízar’s name in news headlines, blog posts, or op-eds.

After a lengthy FBI investigation, arrest, and an eventual 2023 guilty plea, Huízar, 55, will face a judge and a long prison sentence on Friday in regards to his historic city corruption trial that involved bribes from Chinese developers, tax evasion, extortion, and conspiracy.

Angelenos protested outside of his Boyle Heights home when he was arrested in 2020, calling him an enemy of the people, a sellout. But, things weren’t always this way.

Before the bribes, back-room deals, affairs, sexual harassment lawsuits, and before the FBI raid of his Eastside home and district office, his constituents considered the Mexican-born immigrant to embody the true values of the community.

Humble beginnings

Born in 1968 in a rural town in Zacatecas, a mountainous state in central Mexico, José Huízar was the son of working-class parents. His mother, Isidra, worked at a meat packing plant, and his father, Simón, was a bracero, a farmworker who would work temporarily in the United States from Mexico.

Huízar’s paternal grandfather even had ties to Los Angeles; he, and many other temporary laborers from Mexico, were brought into the United States to help build the foundation of City Hall in the 1920s.

Huízar’s family brought him to the Eastside as a toddler to achieve their vision of the American dream, he said during a graduation speech at Princeton, his alma mater.

His coming of age in Boyle Heights wasn’t an uncommon one. He played baseball, got into fights in middle school, was a newspaper delivery boy while attending Salesian High School, and eventually turned his life around through the guidance of a mentor.

Huízar was accepted into the University of California Berkeley and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree 1991. His education then continued at Princeton, where he earned a masters degree in Public Affairs and Urban Planning in 1994, then at UCLA where the kid from the barrio attained a law doctorate in 1997.

Political strategy and a little bit of luck

Shortly after finishing law school, Huízar began to make political moves in Los Angeles. He was elected onto the Los Angeles Unified School District’s school board in 2001 and soon became president. His role had him expanding college preparatory courses district-wide and implementing a plan to construct over 130 schools in the city.

When sitting District 14 Councilmember Antonio Villariagosa was elected Los Angeles mayor and left an empty seat in his wake in 2005, Huízar saw an opportunity to make a bigger imprint on his city: to represent the neighborhoods on the Eastside and Downtown LA, the way he wanted to.

Huízar made history that special election year by defeating Nick Pacheco, the first Mexican-born politician to sit on the Los Angeles City Council, who was vying for his seat back after Villaraigosa trumped him at the polls in 2003.

His work in the communities he represented, and yes, even his appearances riding a horse in charro gear, caught the eye of his people. He would go out to events that mattered to his community. Huízar even had a statue erected near Olvera St. to honor the sacrifice and history of the braceros in 2019, a group that encapsulated his father’s identity. Huízar really seemed to care about his people in his district.

Councilman José Huizar and artist Dan Medina at unveiling ceremony of a bracero monument in downtown Los Angeles.

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His unapologetic Mexicanism was appreciated, especially by his constituents on the Eastside. So much so that when Huízar ran again in 2007, he was re-elected. He was re-elected again in 2011, and once more in 2015, that time in a landslide victory.

During his term, Huízar spearheaded plastic bag bans, fought for more pedestrian and cyclist representation, led solutions to address homelessness, and argued for more Metro service.

The recently enacted LA City Council term limit laws had benefited Huízar and allowed him to stay in office for fifteen years, giving him ample time to work towards passing legislation that benefited working-class neighborhoods, the unhoused, immigrant families, and to support education for all. Instead, shady business dealings were brewing behind closed doors and even in private bathrooms.

Bribery, scandals, and Huízar’s true colors

Downtown Los Angeles’ economy proved a challenge to any council member who was elected to oversee it. Huízar had his sights set on the historic neighborhood. Where many saw rundown theaters on Broadway, he saw potential to revitalize the historic stretch of downtown with high-end shops and countless Umami Burgers.

To better flesh out his vision, Huízar felt that development in downtown needed to accelerate. So when developers came knocking on his office door asking to “grease the wheels” of development in exchange for hundreds of thousands of dollars, Huízar quietly obliged. After all, his position on the Planning and Land Use Management Committee, situated him in the perfect place to make these shady deals a reality.

His secret dealings quickly became a criminal enterprise, where developers could pay-to-play to get their downtown real estate projects in motion, as long as he and his people were taken care of. Evidence of hundreds of thousands of dollars in casino chips, fancy hotel stays, private flights, and escort services were all detailed in the FBI’s investigation into Huízar beginning in 2018.

His longtime assistant and partner in crime, George Esparza, played the middleman in his developer bribe scheme. Esparza delivered hundreds of thousands of dollars in developer bribe money, tucked away in liquor boxes, to Huízar’s Boyle Heights home, in exchange for breaks in the development legal process that Huízar oversaw.

Huízar’s family was also caught up in the webs he had been spinning for so long. His mother and brother both laundered bribe money for the pol, exchanging blank checks for cash between 2014 and 2017, the investigation showed.

The family man image that Huízar peddled to Angelenos faded fast. Allegations of misconduct, including sexual harassment and extramarital affairs became public. And in 2022, an L.A. Taco investigation showed Eastside youth he granted college scholarships to weren’t getting the funds they were promised.

Amidst the misconduct, the fraud, and schemes, his constituents in working class communities like Boyle Heights were fighting tooth and nail for more affordable housing, for better representation, and for the leader they thought they knew.

The cumulative history of his upbringing, his political squandering, his deceit and unwillingness to serve those most in need of an honest leader, have led Angelenos to this point.

The story is as tragic as it is appalling. To consider the potential of an immigrant leader in LA politics who fell flat, didn’t just disappoint people, it infuriated them, too.

It seems fair to say the slow-descent from grace, that Huízar was himself responsible for, eroded trust in local government and further widened the gap between political leaders and the people they were elected to serve.

“Huízar was a powerful career politician who swore an oath to defend the Constitution, faithfully discharge the duties of his office, and serve the interests of his constituents,” prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memorandum. “Instead, time and time again, [the] defendant violated that oath and duty, choosing instead to place his own lust for money and power above the rights and interests of the people he was elected to serve.”

Several CD 14 candidates who are primed to take over Kevin de León’s City Council seat in November acknowledge that a lot of work needs to be done to fix the climate that Huízar set while in office. Nadine Diaz, a local activist, doctor, and CD 14 candidate, said that when she ran against him in 2015, she ran for equality and transparency. But now, she runs to address the corruption that Huízar embodied.

“I’m running again because the corruption hasn’t stopped,” Diaz said. “It’s gotten bigger.”

Huízar’s sentence hearing will take place on Friday, January 26, at the United States Courthouse on 1st St.. Along with a prison term, the court seeks more than $1.3 million in fines and restitution.

The man who used to be a young, dimple-faced kid from Boyle Heights, and who used to make the Eastside proud, is facing a nine to 13-year sentence in federal prison.