The Los Angeles city council appears to be headed for a long and bruising power struggle, as two councilmen resist widespread calls for their resignation amid a racism scandal and state investigation.

A week since the president of the city council, Nury Martinez, resigned over crude and racist remarks she made during an October 2021 meeting with other Latino leaders, two other councilmembers present at the meeting have refused to step down, despite Democratic leadership – up to Joe Biden – calling on them to do so.

On Wednesday, Magic Johnson, the superstar athlete, philanthropist and one of the city’s most respected celebrities, added his voice to the calls for their resignation, tweeting: “Let the city heal and move forward! The people of Los Angeles voted you in the position, and now they are calling for you to resign.”

Activists from Black Lives Matter Los Angeles pledged to hold a 24/7 protest outside one of the councilmember’s houses until he agrees to resign.

But that councilmember, Kevin de León, a brash, longtime power player in California state politics, disclosed in media interviews on Wednesday that he would not step down but wanted to take a leave from council meetings to attempt to restore his reputation. The city council president, Paul Krekorian, called that unacceptable.

The standoff is unfolding even as there seem to be few hard rules about personal conduct and consequences for public officials.

The council already has stripped De León of much of his power in an effort to pressure him to resign, but it has no authority to expel members.

De León also could face a recall election if he refuses to resign, a measure some progressives in Los Angeles have been advocating.

The remaining councilmember who participated in the meeting, Gil Cedillo, is already scheduled to leave office in December, after being defeated by a young progressive challenger, Eunisses Hernandez, in a primary election earlier this year.

The uproar began with the release nearly two weeks ago of a previously unknown recording of a 2021 private meeting involving De León, two other councilmembers and a powerful labor leader, all Latino Democrats, in which they schemed to protect their political clout in the redrawing of council districts during an hourlong conversation laced with bigoted comments, with particularly demeaning remarks about Black, Indigenous and gay politicians and local residents.

The conversation focused on the relative lack of Latino political representation in a city where nearly half of the residents are Latino, but documented Los Angeles’ most powerful lawmakers talking in derogatory terms about the “Blacks” and about Indigenous people from Mexico, as well as comparing the Black son of one of their colleagues to a monkey.

The blunt backroom talk has prompted conversations about racism and colorism among Latinos in the United States, while also highlighting the enduring American scandal of political gerrymandering, in which voting districts are drawn and redrawn to protect the political power of individual incumbents.

Disclosure of the recording has been followed by days of public outrage and protests, including a march of hundreds of Oaxacan Angelenos demanding the resignation of the Latino leaders who disparaged Indigenous people.

A sign of more trouble came from two Black developers working on a downtown project who said in a letter to the city council that they could no longer work with De León, whose district includes the project that would be anchored to two hotels.

The developers, R Donahue Peebles and Victor MacFarlane, called for his resignation and wrote that De León had been dismissive of their proposal, meeting with them just once over a two-year period.

Democratic consultant Steve Maviglio said it is possible for De León to survive, but he must make sincere apologies and win back his constituents’ trust. That would start with small private meetings with business leaders, or coffee with community groups; any larger event would attract protests.

He pointed to former Virginia governor Ralph Northam, who survived calls for his resignation after a picture surfaced from his 1984 medical school yearbook showing a man in blackface standing next to someone in a Ku Klux Klan hood and robe. The Democrat initially acknowledged he was in the photo and apologized, then reversed course, saying he was not in it.

One person unlikely to lend a sympathetic ear to De León will be the state’s most powerful Democrat, Gavin Newsom. The governor and the councilman, who was once a Democratic leader in the state senate, have had strained relations for years that worsened when De León embarked on a failed attempt to oust Senator Dianne Feinstein in 2018.