Los Angeles City Councilman Herb Wesson has resigned as the interim replacement for indicted Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas, three days after a judge issued a preliminary injunction continuing to bar him from performing any official duties.
Wesson, in a letter Thursday to the City Council obtained by the Los Angeles Times, said he was grateful to have been appointed to represent the 10th District and argued that residents of the district which stretches from Koreatown to Leimert Park in South Los Angeles deserve “a voting voice.”
The motion to appoint Wesson as a temporary replacement was unanimously approved by the council on Feb. 22. Wesson was supposed to hold the position through Dec. 31 unless Ridley-Thomas was acquitted or the charges against him were dropped.
Deputy City Attorney Jonathan Eisenman argued the appointment did not run afoul of term-limit rules because Wesson would serve less than half of the remainder of Ridley-Thomas’ term.
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference of Southern California challenged the legality of Wesson’s appointment as a temporary replacement for Ridley-Thomas, saying he is termed out due to his previous time on the council.
Wesson initially represented the 10th District from 2005 through 2020, serving as council president from 2012 to 2020. The group also challenged the legality of the council’s suspension of Ridley-Thomas, but Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Mitchell L. Beckloff said Monday he concluded the council did have such authority.
Ridley-Thomas — a former executive director of the SCLC — was suspended from the council last October, following his federal indictment on corruption charges.
Ridley-Thomas and Marilyn Flynn, a former dean of the USC School of Social Work, are charged in a 20-count indictment alleging a secret deal in which Ridley-Thomas — when he was a member of the county Board of Supervisors — agreed to steer county money to the university in return for admitting his son, Sebastian Ridley-Thomas, into graduate school with a full-tuition scholarship and a paid professorship.
Flynn allegedly arranged to funnel a $100,000 donation from Ridley-Thomas’ campaign funds through the university to a nonprofit to be operated by his son, a former assemblyman. The donation prompted an investigation by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles that remains open, prosecutors said.
In exchange, the indictment contends, Ridley-Thomas supported county contracts involving the School of Social Work, including lucrative deals to provide services to the county Department of Children and Family Services and Probation Department, as well as an amendment to a contract with the Department of Mental Health that would bring the school millions of dollars in new revenue.
Both defendants have strongly denied any wrongdoing and promised that evidence will clear their names.