The conviction of Mark Ridley-Thomas on federal corruption charges Thursday triggered his automatic removal from the L.A. City Council. Under the city charter, an “office becomes vacant” when the person who holds it “is convicted of a felony.”
Ridley-Thomas, one of L.A.’s most prominent politicians, plans to appeal his conviction, according to his defense team. The charter is silent on what will happen if his conviction is overturned.
Ridley-Thomas represented the tenth district, which stretches from Koreatown west to Mid-City along Wilshire Blvd. and south to West Adams and Leimert Park. Former Mayor Tom Bradley once represented the district.
First, some recent history:
In Oct. 2021, the city council suspended Ridley-Thomas following his indictment. It appointed his chief of staff to be a non-voting caretaker of the office. In Feb. 2022, it appointed Herb Wesson, a former councilmember for District 10, to temporarily replace Ridley-Thomas as a voting member.
After a court ruled Wesson had been termed out of office and could no longer serve, the council appointed Wesson’s chief of staff Heather Hutt as a non-voting caretaker and then later as a voting member of the council.
But her appointment was to replace a suspended member — Ridley-Thomas. Now that he’s been formally ousted, the seat is vacant again.
The city council has a number of options going forward.
The first would be to appoint a caretaker who would have no vote on the council. They would serve until the next regularly scheduled election in March 2024, when Ridley-Thomas would have been up for reelection. It would leave the district with no representation on the council for some time.
That would be “a very unpopular thing,” said Raphe Sonenshein, executive director of the Pat…
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