By Howard Blume
Los Angeles school board candidate Graciela Ortiz has been removed from her job as an L.A. Unified counseling administrator pending a confidential investigation, school district officials confirmed, leading a school-employees union to withdraw its endorsement of her for the March 5 election.
The investigation was launched after a civil lawsuit was filed alleging Ortiz and a political ally are liable for the actions of a campaign worker, who pleaded no contest to sexual misconduct with an underage volunteer. Both the perpetrator and victim were involved in campaign work in 2021 for Ortiz and Efren Martinez, according to the suit, filed Jan. 9 in Los Angeles County Superior Court.
Martinez is running for the 57th state Assembly district, which takes in parts of downtown L.A., South L.A. and southeast L.A. County. Ortiz is a Huntington Park City Council member running to represent District 5, which runs north to south along an eastern swath of the Los Angeles Unified School District, taking in Eagle Rock and cities including Maywood and Bell.
In the criminal case, Billy Valdivia, the campaign worker, also pleaded no contest to a weapons charge, according to court records. He’s also a defendant in the civil suit.
The suit seeks unspecified damages for the female sexual-abuse victim, identified as “B.A.”
An attorney for Ortiz and Martinez, Robert P. Sievers, demanded that the case be dropped in a letter to the plaintiff’s attorney, calling the allegations “malicious and defamatory” as well as a carefully timed political “smear.”
Read more at: LA Times
