Nury Martinez

Nury Martinez (born July 9, 1973) is an American politician who served as a member of the Los Angeles City Council for the 6th district from 2013 until her resignation in 2022.

Martinez graduated from San Fernando High School in 1991 and from California State University, Northridge in 1996.

Early in her career, she ran a support group for women living with AIDS at the Northeast Valley Health Corp. and worked as a special assistant to then-State Senator Alex Padilla.

Martinez served as the Executive Director of the environmental justice organization Pacoima Beautiful and was elected to the City of San Fernando City Council in 2003 and 2007, where she also served as Mayor.

She was a member of the Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education from 2009 to 2013.

On October 10, 2022, Martinez stepped down from her post as council president following the release of an audio recording where she disparaged fellow council members and their children and used racist language.

She remained a member of the city council, but announced that she would be taking a paid leave of absence.

On October 12, facing continued protests and demands to step down from community members and politicians including U.S. president Joe Biden, she resigned her seat on the council.

Born and raised in the San Fernando Valley, she was the child of a dishwasher and a factory worker from Zacatecas.

In 2009, she was elected as a member of the Board of Education of the Los Angeles Unified School District, representing Board District 6 with the endorsement of Los Angeles Teacher's Union.

Martinez was elected to the Los Angeles City Council in a special election on July 23, 2013, to succeed Tony Cárdenas, who vacated his seat once elected to the U.S. House of Representatives for California's 29th congressional district.

Along with Councilmembers Curren Price and Mike Bonin, Martinez passed a law in 2014 boosting the minimum wage to $15.37 for employees at large hotels in Los Angeles.

The following year, Martinez was one of six Councilmembers that led the successful push to raise the minimum wage from $9 to $15 for all workers in Los Angeles, to be gradually phased in over five years.

Martinez had focused on domestic violence and human trafficking in her district and throughout the city.

In 2014, Martinez passed an ordinance that temporarily prohibited strip clubs, massage parlors and other types of adult businesses from getting city permits along four streets in her district to crack down on prostitution.

Martinez defeated former Assemblywoman Cindy Montañez in that election and again in a 2015 rematch when she won her first full term.

In 2015, the Councilwoman led the creation of the Valley Bureau Human Trafficking Task Force, which targets the criminal enterprise behind prostitution and the "johns" that support this activity, as well as provides services to those who are sexually exploited.

Within three years, the model had been expanded to a second task force in South Los Angeles.

In 2015, Martinez's reelection campaign was accused of submitting fraudulent donor information in order to receive $65,360 in taxpayer-matched funds.

As the former Executive Director of Pacoima Beautiful, Martinez began working on a policy that she ultimately helped pass on the City Council in 2016 called the Clean Up, Green Up Initiative, which designated "green zones" in Pacoima, Sun Valley, Wilmington and Boyle Heights, some of Los Angeles's most polluted communities.

The initiative consisted of special land-use restrictions, the creation of a citywide office to support environmental compliance, and citywide protections for new developments near freeways.

Martinez was the only woman serving on the City Council for four years, until the election of Councilwoman Monica Rodriguez in July 2017 and was the first Latina member in a quarter century.

As City Council President during the COVID-19 pandemic, Martinez used her role to allocate hundreds of millions of dollars in federal CARES Act funding as part of her Families First agenda, supporting impacted Angelenos with rent, child care, and utility bills, as well as assistance to small businesses to stay afloat.

In 2017, Martinez designated the first city-sponsored shelters for victims of human trafficking to be included in an expansion of the city's shelters for domestic violence victims.

A former member of the Democratic Party, Martinez became president of the Los Angeles City Council in December 2019, after serving as the council's president pro tempore.

Martinez was the first Latina to become council president.

In 2019, Martinez supported a successful law authored by California State Senator Henry Stern, which clarified that local governments could adopt local ordinances to prevent slavery or human trafficking and allow for certain businesses and entities to post notices about resources available to victims of slavery and human trafficking.

In early 2019, she joined several of her colleagues to introduce a local Green New Deal for the City of Los Angeles.

In 2019, the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office ended its investigation into Martinez's 2015 campaign, citing insufficient evidence to pursue a fraud case.

In July 2020, she launched the Emergency Renters Assistance Program, which provided $103 million in subsidies of up to $2,000 per household for renters who could demonstrate how they were impacted by COVID-19 and who earned less than 80% of the area median income.

She also allocated $50 million to provide two weeks pay to those who were infected and could not work, $40 million for a regional COVID-19 Relief and Recovery Fund to provide grants to small businesses, which included specific allocations for micro-entrepreneurs like street vendors and for victims of domestic violence, and $30 million to assist low-income families access child care, which included $10 million to establish 50 Alternative Learning Centers at city parks, and $20 million to help child care facilities stay open and offer vouchers to families.

In October 2020, she announced a $50 million program to provide one-time grants of $500 to help Angelenos who lost work because of the pandemic pay their utility bills over the holidays.

In 2020, Councilwoman Martinez opened a temporary trailer shelter in Van Nuys as part of Mayor Eric Garcetti's "A Bridge Home" shelter program that provides shelter and services to homeless individuals before being placed in permanent housing.

She also launched a program called Kids First to provide tutoring and other support services to homeless students living in three motels in her district, with particular support to address the challenges of distance learning caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Councilwoman Martinez had also been an advocate for the undocumented community in the San Fernando Valley.

In January 2020, she placed a ban on migrant centers within Los Angeles city limits after a children's migrant center was proposed in the community of Arleta in her district.

While President Trump was in office, Martinez called on the City of Los Angeles to sue the Trump Administration over its decision to implement a "public charge" rule, which would restrict public benefits such as medical care and housing for undocumented immigrants, as well as challenge the Trump Administration's policies related to detaining immigrant children and separating them from their families at U.S. borders.

In August 2020, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power revealed that there had been methane gas leaks at the Valley Generating Station in Martinez's district for over a year.

Martinez subsequently called for the plant to be shut down, which was formalized by a vote of the City Council in November 2020 directing the department to develop a timeline for the plant's closure.

The Councilwoman employed two dedicated staffers to pick up trash and deal with illegal dumping in her district to supplement service provided by the city's Sanitation Department.