Ysabel Jurado's supporters criticize City Councilor Kevin de León for hiring a well-known activist

Supporters of Los Angeles City Council member Ysabel Jurado on Wednesday criticized her rival, Council Member Kevin de León, for hiring a well-known local activist who was accused last year of harassing a woman he had an affair with.

De León's campaign paid Najee Ali $3,000 this month for campaign work, according to the City Ethics website.

In March 2023, the woman, Susan Bradshaw, accused Ali of harassing her and threatening to distribute illegal photos of her after they ended their four-year relationship, court records show. The judge granted Ali a restraining order.

The allegations received new attention Wednesday when Bradshaw appeared at a news conference in Boyle Heights organized by Jurado's supporters, less than a week before the Nov. 5 election.

De León, who was vilified politically for his role in a secret taped interview that included racist and vulgar remarks, is locked in a bitter battle with Jurado, a tenant rights advocate, to represent neighborhoods in downtown LA and on the Eastside.

“Ali is not the person he pretends to be in public,” Bradshaw said Wednesday. “Beyond closed doors, you're a different person, a monster.”

Ali has denied any wrongdoing, saying he is facing a smear campaign.

During a hearing last year on Bradshaw's request for a restraining order, Ali dismissed him as a “liar” who “cherry-picked” in a lengthy memo to paint him as a threat, according to court documents.

In her 45-page petition for a restraining order filed in March 2023, Bradshaw alleged that Ali insulted, threatened and choked her during sex. She also said she sent “illegal” nude photos of herself to her “live-in boyfriend,” and that Ali threatened the man, according to the documents.

In court in May 2023, Ali said the strangulation occurred during consensual sex, “at her request,” according to court documents. Ali also said Bradshaw's boyfriend threatened her.

Shortly after Bradshaw broke up with Ali, she began sending violent and abusive messages, according to her request for a restraining order.

“Mr. Ali sent a message that I was a prostitute, he hoped I would die, and that my parents would be ashamed. He then started calling and sending messages to my boyfriend non-stop,” she wrote in the application.

Ali, in the interview, said that Bradshaw was bullying him, not the other way around. He pointed to the text where Bradshaw called him a gay slur.

“I begged him to stop texting me,” she told The Times.

Ali is a regular at LA political events and worked on former Mayor Eric Garcetti's crisis response team, which came to the scene of violent incidents. While a member of Congress, Mayor Karen Bass wrote Ali's 2021 book “Raising Hell: A Life of Activism.”

Ali, who often advocates for the families of crime victims, said he has “been the best advocate for women and children in the last 30 years.”

She gained fame after helping bring attention to the case of Sherrice Iverson, a 7-year-old South LA girl who was sexually assaulted and killed in a Nevada casino bathroom in 1997.

In another controversial case, he helped represent Tioni Theus, a 16-year-old girl who was found dead on the side of the 110 Freeway in 2022. Activists say that Theus's case was ignored by the media because he was black.

In 2008, Ali was sentenced to four years in state prison after pleading guilty to attempting to bribe a witness in a criminal case involving his daughter. He was also convicted of robbery in 1992.

In his request for a restraining order, Bradshaw also alleged that Ali was arrested for rape.

Ali said on Wednesday that he has been arrested twice for rape. The first time, in 1982, he was cleared of wrongdoing, he said. In a second incident, he was arrested for trespassing near USC in 1985, he said. The officer wrote “rape” on his arrest papers, but that was a lie, he said.

He said his future is no different from that of other “young Black men who were arrested for a crime they did not commit.”

The Times could not immediately confirm details of the arrests.

De León's campaign did not respond to requests for comment about Ali.