In the eternal rotation wheel which is a political scandal in the south -east of the county of the, the Ticker is now on Huntington Park – and it seems that it will be stuck for a while.
The blue city, the overwhelming Latin city faces a trial by the former member of the Esmeralda Castillo councilallege It was illegally removed in February Following an investigation which determined that Castillo did not live within the limits of the city and was therefore not eligible to serve. Mayor Arturo Flores fights against a reminder of adversaries who claim on social networks that he is a “reckless alcoholic” and abuse women while offering no evidence to support the scurrile affirmations.
His predecessor, the member of the Karina Macias council, woke up on February 26 to the sound of the investigators of the office of the District County Prosecutor outside his apartment with a search warrant as part of Operation Dirty Ponde. This is an investigation into an aquatic center offered of $ 25 million for Salt Lake Park which was announced for the first time in 2019 but so far has nothing to show except half a field of football and a fenced field of dirt and dying grass. The member of the Council Eddie Martinez, two former members of the Council and the municipal director Ricardo Reyes and even Huntington Park City Hall, who saw Yellow waits, saw the entry before the front entry while the investigators presented proofs.
Then a long time ago City Atty. Arnold Alvarez-Glasmanresigned During a special council meeting In early March, just two days after operation Dirty Pond Raids. He said that Flores and his council allies had made his job “unreasonably difficult”.
Is it surprising that the meetings of the municipal council dissolve easily in even more municipal desmadre?
Although embezzlement in politics occur in all regions of southern California, the level of Skulduggery, and sometimes pure and simple, by the members of the Southeast Council of the County cities over the past three decades, has rendered the policy of this region. There was South Gate, where the former mayor and treasurer Albert Robles was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison in 2006 on corruption costs and A member of the elderly council survived a ball injury to the head in a case that has never been resolved. Bell, where five former members of the Council and two city employees were sentenced in the mid -2010s of residents in thief for decades.
It is local policy as Wrestlemania.
Huntington Park was supposed to be different, a city where a new generation of politicians who helped withdraw the previous bad guys reassured the public that they would break the corruption cycle several times. This is what they told me last yearWhen I made a series on the history of Latin politics in Los Angeles.
Well, we are there.
During the meeting of April 7, Flores boasted that he was carrying Macias’ vote against him to succeed him as mayor “as a badge of honor because I not WANTS (his) support “, to which the public reacted with groans and MARMONS of” Oh, God “.
A few weeks later, as Nancy Martiz was sworn To fill the former Castillo headquarters, Macias focused on her mobile phone like someone waiting for a Uber ride.
“Your experience is only corruption,” said Rudy Cruz to the Council at the April 7 meeting during the public comments section. “It’s like oysters to a rock. It is difficult to remove them.”
Subsequently, I asked him if he thought that the ascent of Flores represented a new start for Huntington Park. The 48 -year -old resident laughed.
“There are others, waiting for vultures for an animal to die,” replied Cruz. “Here (in Huntington Park), the immoral becomes moral, the illegal becomes legal.”
An unfinished swimming pool project in Salt Lake Park in Huntington Park. It is the subject of an underway investigation into the County County Prosecutor on allegations of abusive use of millions of dollars in public funds.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
I interviewed Flores and Macias on the site of their choice to dimension them and decide who became truthful and which was full of them. Loquace Flores, a self-admitted “peeonero” – A fighter – who purges his first full mandate, presented himself at Salt Lake Park in a Carhartt jacket embroidered with the city seal and its name. Macias, calm and dressed in a modest black blouse and jeans, chose a Mexican ice cream store where she slowly appreciated a rocky ball inside a waffle horn.
The two are children of Mexican immigrants who grew up in neighborhoods of blue -collar – Flores in southern Los Angeles, Macias in Huntington Park. They worked in jobs that require altruism and attention to detail – Flores was a dog bomb dog coach with visits to Afghanistan and Iraq, while Macias has become a full -time goalkeeper for his parents. These were former political allies who previously worked on political campaigns for Efren Martinez, the broker of the Southeast County of the which lost an assembly race last year and whose residence And Advisory activities were also sought as part of Operation Dirty Pond.
“It’s the heritage of Karina Macias, you know?” 36 -year -old Flores told me when we went in Salt Lake Park. People jogged around the fenced lot, which was once a skating park. “This is a failed swimming pool project riddled with inconsistencies, riddled with doubtful acts and questions of legality and incompetence.”
The mayor of Huntington Park Arturo Flores at a meeting of the municipal council at the Huntington Park town hall on April 7, 2025.
(Eric Thayer / For time)
“They (Flores and its allies) put a gray and dark cloud on something that can change the life of the community,” replied Macias, 38, when I shared his thoughts. She has been sitting on the municipal council since 2013. “There have been no misdeeds or hidden things or money or money or to be stolen. What does he say, there is nothing of that, you know?”
The two used “Do you know?” Much in our conversations, like any typical Angeleno Latino. The two claim that the “community” is behind them and welcomed any meticulous exam.
“I don’t panic, do you know what I say?” 36 -year -old Flores boasted. “I’m cool like a cucumber.”
“If you do not have enemies, then you do not press on the buttons or do not try to do good for the community,” offered Macias, 38, with a touch of pride.
This is not his first brush with the scandal. In 2017, The DA investigated and finally eliminated it For having collected funds for an assembly campaign from Efren Martinez to companies that have sought to do business with Huntington Park.
This time, Macias introduced me to a file of documents which included a calendar of the Salt Lake Park Aquatic Center with all the votes of the Council in his favor, including a request in 2023 which gave the municipal director of Huntington Park the power to execute all the contracts associated with the project. Among the votes yes then? Flores.
“The mayor has decided to do something from anything because he has been known on the project since the time he started,” said Macias. Later, when we went down Pacific Avenue and gave me her business card, she noticed that it was obsolete.
“That said, the mayor always,” said Macias, a little smile on his face. “Do not tell the mayor.”
The member of the board of Huntington Park Karina Macias stands in front of one of the many windows open to the affairs of the city center of Huntington Park on April 25. Macias is also the former mayor of Huntington Park.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Flores did not give me any document, but something may be more powerful: a confessional.
After having worked in the Policy of the County of Los Angeles for a decade, in particular by serving as a man for the body for Antonio Villaraigosa during his failed governor campaignFlores moved to Huntington Park in 2018.
“I’m not going to say that there was no political ambition there,” he admitted.
He helped on the successful campaigns of the 2020 municipal council for Eddie Martinez, Graciela Ortizand Marilyn Sanabria; The last two have also seen their residences sought as part of Operation Dirty Pond. Flores said they and Macias initially sold it on the Salt Lake Park swimming pool project.
“I felt inspired. I thought it was a great thing,” he said. “I say to myself:” This is what we need. Latinos need it. Why can’t we have great things in our communities, right?
They told him that the criticisms by the dog dogs were only “los hateful. “But Flores said that his point of view had changed once he was appointed to the municipal council in 2022 and that he went to the town hall during a rainst storm.
“The staff had 30 gallon garbage cans filled with water. There is mold on the walls. The roofs flee. I went to the office of the director of the city and I said:” Hey, as, you know, excuse my French, but what happens here? “”
The subsequent fire hose of the allegations he triggered during our an hour cat seemed random compared to the measured responses of Macias. Humblebrags of flora as “whenever they tried to maneuver against me, they met an insurmountable reaction because I have already planned that it is their tactic” looked like someone who asked to be hoisted by their proverbial firecracker.
But the Macias did not go favors when she insisted that Efren Martinez had “no involvement with” the Salt Lake Park swimming pool project. One of the customers he listed on the campaign disclosure forms for his racing at the Assembly in 2020 failed was the construction company whose owners saw their The residence also looked for operation Dirty Pond.
The Flores and the Macias were both pleasant unless the subject was of each other. They struck me as a seriousness to improve Huntington Park and convinced that they claim innocent about them.
But one of them must be wrong, right?
As a break in equality, I called the old assembly Hector de la TorreWho entered politics a quarter of a century ago to help clean his hometown of South Gate. He is now executive director of the Gateway Cities Council of Governments, which recommends 27 cities which extend from Montebello to Long Beach in Cerritos and in all the cities of the Southeast County of Los Angeles, and worked with Flores and Macias as such.
De la Torre congratulated them both for their “dedication” to Better Huntington Park, and urged that they left the investigators of Operation Dirty Pond Doing their work. But in a tired tone, he told me “in Sela, it is sometimes not a question of getting rid of corruption and cleaning the city.” (Sela is the nickname of southeast of the county of.)
“Sometimes these are two different factions, both as shaded as the other,” he said. “And swings are not corruption to good government; They are from one type of corruption to another. ”