Cudahy, California, a southern suburb of Los Angeles, has always been known as sort of an armpit of California.
Maybe there are nice people there, but the only time this town ever gets its name in the news is when there's a major political corruption scandal, like this one, and there have been others.
Which brings us to just why that may be the case.
Here is the vice mayor of Cudahy, calling on her political base to resist ICE raids, seeking their "leadership," according to NBC News:
The city of Cudahy responded on Tuesday after a video circulating online appears to show Vice Mayor Cynthia Gonzalez calling on gangs to defend their neighborhoods against immigration agents.
“I want to know where all the cholos are at in Los Angeles -- 18th Street, Florencia,” Gonzalez appears to say in the video. “Where’s the leadership at? Because you guys are all about territory and this is 18th Street, this is Florencia. You guys tag everything up, claiming hood and now that your hood’s being invaded by the biggest gang there is, there ain’t a peep out of you.”
EXCLUSIVE: Per federal sources, the vice mayor of Cudahy, a city in southeast LA County, is under FBI investigation after she allegedly posted a video to social media in which she appears to call for 18th Street & Florencia 13 gang members in LA to defend their territory from… pic.twitter.com/afJfxeSCBb
— Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) June 24, 2025
Assuming the video is authentic, I guess we know who "runs" that armpit-of-California town, and why it's an armpit. This local pol is so close to the notorious street gangs she's calling on them as a political ally to stop ICE from depopulating the town, given its gargantuan illegal-alien count. Her city bio is here. Imagine her teaching kids.
Cudahy in fact is 96% Latino. The Census bureau, according to Google AI, says the town's population is "hard to count" due to immigration and language barriers, but officially, its population as of 2023 is 21,723, with 43% foreign-born, among whom would be many illegals. Some 82% live crammed into rental units.
The town has 9,217 registered voters, of which 5,516 are Democrat, 961 are Republican, 205 are independents, and 38 are green. (The State of California didn't say what the other 2,497 were).
Officially, 5,570 actually voted in the 2024 city council race, and 4,093 voted on a local proposition. The state didn't release data on the 2024 presidential race, broken down by city.
Suffice to say, voter turnout tends to be low, which benefits corrupt Democrat political machines. The only positive thing about the place is that its neighboring towns, such as Bell and Huntington Park, are even worse.
And not surprisingly, political scandal (and bureaucrats with oversized salaries) is a way of life in this apparently gang-run city, where even local officials appeal to them for political favors as this one almost certainly did.
Gonzalez, who made the statement, is a charmer, quite adept at milking the political system for big dollars and taking applause from white elites:
NEW: Role model by day, Radical inciter by night?
— Cece Woods (@cecewoodsmedia) June 24, 2025
Cudahy Vice Mayor Cynthia Gonzalez is under FBI investigation after allegedly calling on 18th Street & Florencia 13 gang members to “defend their territory” from ICE agents in a now-deleted video telling gang leaders to “get… pic.twitter.com/AfPmf9z1fM
Now she may be under federal investigation, something the feds should have been doing years ago, except that there have been too many Democrat administrations stopping them from getting too close to the matter of gangsters running governments to protect and ensure vast illegal populations.
It's unlikely she's the only public official in California entangled with street gangs; there are some impressively comparable pols in San Diego with the same pattern and certainly many others in Gonzalez's part of Los Angeles, including East L.A., the desert, and the San Fernando Valley. I have strong suspicions about some parts of Orange County, too. It's as if the Mexican cartels and their street gang allies have been running California for a long time, which explains why the place is so badly governed.
If the feds can get to the bottom of this, California may become a red state again, as it was in the days of Ronald Reagan.
Right now, though, it's a dump, its pols appealing to street gangs to keep the illegal alien population still feeding at the state trough. It's nothing but a northern province of Mexico's notorious cartels, with Democrats serving as its handmaids and it needs to be stopped.
Let's hope the feds get to the bottom of this -- and find out how deep the rot really gpes.
Image: X screen shot