The resistance to gentrification in Los Angeles seemed to have found a champion in Joe Bray-Ali, an insurgent candidate who promised to put people before developers.
The 38-year-old community activist and former bike store owner electrified a sleepy election for LA city council by forcing an old-school politician, Gil Cedillo, 63, into a Democrat versus Democrat run-off.
The challenger had fresh ideas, impressive grasp of policy and a globalised LA heritage – Indian, Hungarian and Irish – plus a Mexican Chinese wife.
“Bray-Ali offers the kind of energetic, visionary and community-focused leadership that this district, and city, deserves,” the Los Angeles Times gushed in an editorial last month.
Supporters shrugged off the fact that almost a decade ago, he had posted a YouTube video addressed to Gustavo Arellano, OC Weekly’s Ask a Mexican columnist: “Dear Mexican: I’d like to know why all my neighbors think that the doorbell is a car horn.”
But on Tuesday night, the anti-gentrification poster-boy suffered a crushing defeat, his reputation in ashes and many previous supporters, including the LA Times, embarrassed to have endorsed him.
Bray-Ali’s crime: he was a jerk – arguably a bigoted, racist jerk – on the internet. By his own admission, an “ignorant” one who repeatedly visited a “reprehensible” site.
It emerged late in the campaign that he had posted anonymously on the controversial social media site Voat, including on channels titled v/Niggers, v/FATPEOPLEHATE and a separate one mocking transgender people.
Under the username ubrayj02, the seemingly progressive force for change twice used the N-word in a debate about to whom it should be applied. He commented on videos of black people fighting under headlines such as “Elementary Zoo fight” and “Sheboons fighting at a gas station”. One woman with an artificial hair extension had an advantage over an opponent because it would come off if yanked, he wrote.
In a discussion thread about an overweight woman sentenced to life in prison for her role in raping a child, he wrote: “If they keep her on her diet, that won’t be a long lifetime.” In another forum he said gender reassignment surgery “doesn’t seem like something worthy of praise, but instead of being criticized as a shameful excess”.
Voat hosts disgruntled Redditors who quit Reddit in protest at perceived censorship and political correctness.
When the site LAist revealed the postings, which were made a year and a half ago, Bray-Ali admitted he was the author and apologised. He claimed his intention was to “track” and “spark arguments” with racists and that his comments did not reflect his values, but that he still felt ashamed.
The explanation drew scorn. Instead of being a breath of fresh air for LA’s District 1, which includes Westlake, Highland Park and Chinatown, Bray-Ali came across as California’s answer to Robert Fisher, a Republican state lawmaker in New Hampshire suspected to be the creator of the Reddit forum r/TheRedPill, which discusses turning the tables on feminists.
In an effort to ventilate his other skeletons and reboot the campaign, Bray-Ali posted a Facebook video in which he admitted sleeping with women other than his wife and owing nearly $50,000 in state business taxes and fees.
Prominent allies, such as the city councilman Mitch O’Farrell and the advocacy group Bike the Vote, deserted him.
So did the LA Times, which for the first time in living memory rescinded an endorsement. An internet-era child may be forgiven for unfortunate postings but not a 38-year-old candidate for public office, it said.
“While we cannot ever know for sure what’s in Bray-Ali’s heart or what his thinking was, the comments – both where they appeared and the tone they took – are too troubling to ignore.”
The paper reluctantly backed Cedillo, whom critics say is in league with developers that in some areas have forced out almost a quarter of families. The councilman denies the allegation.
“If we are the City of Angels why must (district 1) choose between the lesser of two devils?” tweeted one voter on Tuesday.
If we are the City of Angels why must #cd1 choose between the lesser of two devils?#unhappy #voter#mydayinla #vote pic.twitter.com/ezLOgodjBF
— Dani Dodge (@DaniDodge) May 16, 2017
Bray-Ali’s campaign did not immediately respond to a Guardian interview request on Wednesday.
As defeat loomed on Tuesday night, he told the LA Times he would stay active in politics and hold Cedillo accountable for missteps.
Bray-Ali said he had not been prepared for “personal smear attacks” but did not regret failing to scrub his web history. He had lived a life where he “intellectually let a lot of things fly”, he said. “It’s part of the package of who I am.”
