Kevin Alexander Leon (born December 10, 1966), known professionally as Kevin de León and colloquially as KDL, is an American politician serving as the Los Angeles City Council member for District 14 since 2020. A member of the Democratic Party, he placed second in the 2018 United States Senate election in California against incumbent Senator Dianne Feinstein and third in the 2022 Los Angeles mayoral election. From 2006 to 2010, de León represented the 45th district in the California State Assembly. He represented the 22nd state senate district from 2010 to 2014, and the 24th state senate district from 2014 to 2018. He was President pro tempore of the California State Senate from October 15, 2014 to March 21, 2018. Since October 2022, there have been widespread calls for his resignation after an audio recording of him and other council members making racist, homophobic, and derogatory remarks was leaked. He was formally censured by the City Council in a unanimous 12–0 vote on October 26, 2022. De León gained further notoriety when a video was released of the councilman involved in a physical conflict with an activist, in which de León "grabs [the activist] and throws him into a table." Early life and education Kevin Leon was born in Los Angeles, to Carmen Osorio and Andrés Leon. Both his parents were born in Guatemala with his father being of full or partial Chinese descent. His mother moved from Guatemala to Tijuana, Mexico in the 1960s. She moved to Los Angeles to work as a housekeeper. A single mother with two children, she met Leon's father who was largely absent. His mother married a man of Mexican descent, taking the name Carmen Osorio Núñez, and relocated to San Diego. She divorced and raised him in the Logan Heights neighborhood in San Diego. He also spent part of his youth in Tijuana where his stepfather's family was located. He strongly identifies with Mexican culture. The first in his family to graduate from high school, he briefly attended the University of California, Santa Barbara before dropping out. He later earned a bachelor's degree from Pitzer College in 2003. While attending UC Santa Barbara, he began going by Kevin de León though he has never legally changed his name. After dropping out of college, de León worked for One Stop Immigration Center, a nonprofit organization in Los Angeles that assists undocumented immigrants. He later