National Urban League Calls For Todd Spitzer’s Resignation

The National Urban League President and CEO Marc Morial, along with the Los Angeles chapter’s President and CEO, Michael Lawson, called for the resignation of Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer in a still worsening racist statement scandal that has consumed the OCDA.

“He has lost the trust of those he is sworn to serve and must step down,” Urban League President Morial said. 

Spitzer allegedly riffed during the course of a recent meeting over whether the office should seek to execute a Black man that “he knows many black people who get themselves out of their bad circumstances and bad situations by only dating ‘white women.’” He also said that while in college, he “knew for sure that this black student did so on purpose to get himself out of these bad circumstances and situations.”

Moriel explained that “not only did Spitzer explicitly raise racial considerations in violation of the law and human decency, he compounded his transgression by withholding his comments from defense attorneys and firing the prosecutor who tried to follow the law.”

Just this week, a video also surfaced showing Spitzer meeting with the Iranian American Bar Association and dropping the N-word three times during his keynote address. Also, earlier this week, a 29-year-veteran of the Orange County District Attorney’s Office alleged in a lawsuit Spitzer assigned a prosecutor to a case “because she was African-American,” and, in a separate incident, told a room full of senior prosecutors, “I need a brown or a black face there” to go with him to a meeting with the NAACP. The California chapter of the NAACP has called for Spitzer’s “immediate resignation”. 

As calls for his resignation have continued to mount, Spitzer has also faced a flood of supporters retracting their endorsements. The current Spitzer retraction list includes:

• San Diego County District Attorney Summer Stephan

• Riverside County District Attorney Mike Hestrin

• Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O’Malley

• Amador County District Attorney Todd Riebe

• Humboldt County District Attorney Maggie Fleming

• San Mateo District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe

• Inyo County District Attorney Tom Hardy told OC Watch that he never endorsed Spitzer in the first place, despite Spitzer listing him as an endorser on his campaign website. 

• California Women’s Leadership Association PAC

Additionally, what appears as a series of silent un-endorsements have also hit Spitzer. Yolo County District Attorney Jeff Reisig, who also serves as president of the powerful California District Attorneys Association, and San Luis Obispo District Attorney Dan Dow have been removed from Spitzer’s endorsements page on his campaign website (as have the other elected prosecutors listed above who have publicly confirmed their un-endorsements). Neither Reisig nor Dow have responded to OC Watch’s requests for information about their endorsement status.